Many Water Valley Businesses to Close Saturday for Black Out

By Alyssa Schnugg
News editor
alyssa.schnugg@hottytoddy.com

Residents and businesses located in the city of Water Valley are preparing to be in the dark Saturday, Nov. 3.

Earlier this month, Water Valley Electric Company announced that Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies electric power to Water Valley Electric, will be shutting off the power from sunrise to sundown on Saturday.

According to Malinda Hunter with TVA public relations, TVA will be replacing wooden poles on the TVA 161-kV transmission line that serves the Water Valley substation. The wooden poles will be replaced by steel poles which have a much longer service life and will result in increased reliability for the community.

“TVA will have multiple line crews working during this time to minimize the inconvenience to the community,” Hunter said in an email. “The outage is required because several of the poles to be changed are located in the wastewater treatment lagoon, which increases the difficulty in changing poles and creates a safety risk to the workers.”

The cost of the project is $1.5 million.

“You’ll see additional work taking place even after the outage as some poles can be changed with the transmission line energized,” Hunter said. “This replacement is part of a much bigger effort to replace additional poles on the line that serves Water Valley from Coffeeville and Batesville.”

Hunter said TVA is working closely with Water Valley Electric to ensure facilities such as those that provide medical care are aware and prepared for the outage.

Subsequently, the city of Water Valley decided since the power would be off, it would go ahead and make necessary improvements to its system.

Shutting down

Monica Turnage, manager of Turnage Drugstore, said the store will close Saturday but will open for medical emergencies.

“If someone needs insulin, we will come and open the store,” she said Wednesday. 

Turnage said she learned about the planned outage on Facebook.

“And then it was in the newspaper,” she said. “It would be too expensive to rent a generator. It’s easier for us to be closed.”

Humble Bee Cafe owner Maggie Richardson said her store will also be closing Saturday. Her only concern about the power outage is the gallons of milk in her refrigerator.

“I have a friend who lives outside of the city limits,” she said. “By Saturday, I’ll only have four or five gallons left. I go through like 30 to 40 a week. If she can hold those for me and wait until on Monday, we should be fine.”

The BTC Old-Fashioned Grocery Store reported on its Facebook page that the store will be “open and serving just like normal” on Saturday.

Hottytoddy.com intern Carson McKinney contributed to this story.