UPDATED: Premier insists province isn’t in crisis

Says rolling blackouts are proof of need for Muskrat Falls

With the province entering the fourth day of rolling blackouts, tens of thousands of Newfoundlanders without power, and the prospect of a strained electrical grid for weeks to come, Premier Kathy Dunderdale assured the people Sunday afternoon that there's no crisis, and things are under control.

Telegram photo

Premier Kathy Dunderdale says she has no regrets about anything she did in the past year; and she will run in the next election.

What's more, Dunderdale warned that due to aging infrastructure and higher demand for electricity, these sorts of outages could become more common between now and 2017, when the Muskrat Falls hydroelectic dam is built.

There's a critical period that we need to get through until we have a new source of power, new infrastructure, and more than anything else we have redundancy, she told reporters Sunday afternoon. After 2017 hopefully we'll never find yourself in this kind of circumstance again because of the redundancy that will be built into the system.

Dunderdale tied the current outages directly to the Muskrat Falls project, saying that the failure at Holyrood proves that the aging power plant has outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced by Muskrat Falls.

We've talked incessantly, it seems to me, over the last number of years about the aging facility in Holyrood and the fact that that facility needed to be replaced, she said.

Despite insisting that there was no crisis, Dunderdale flanked by electrical utility brass and ministers begged the people of the province to do everything in their power to conserve electricity, or risk further blackouts.

Everybody has a role to play in this, Dunderdale said. You know, if you're not using a room in a house, turn off the heat, turn off the lights. You know, you might want to do your dishes by hand over the next few days.

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UPDATED: Premier insists province isn't in crisis