(Harlan) Ken Weber, CEO of Harlan Municipal Utilities, has released the following statement regarding COVID-19:
“The current concern about the COVID-19 virus makes all of us pause and consider how an outbreak may affect our employees, customers and operations. As a critical service provider, we have special considerations to take into account.”
Here is HMU’s plan:
- We will continue to support emergency and critical functions. We will respond to electric outages, gas safety functions, water main breaks and widespread telecom outages. We will respond to emergency outages. Customers should continue to call us for suspected gas leaks or potential carbon monoxide detection. We will respond to widespread telecom outages. We will continue to operate the water plant as usual.
- We will be limiting onsite service and support of telecom services. We are currently not scheduling any new cable TV, Internet or telephone services. We will prescreen current telecom customers to see if services can be restored without entering the premise. Commercial and residential telecom services may be addressed on a case by case basis. It may be necessary to defer restoring services until the threat of infection is eliminated.
- We strongly ask customers to avoid coming into the office. We request customers make payments in one of the two drop boxes at our main office. Drop boxes are checked regularly during the day. Please take advantage of our online payments. You can pay electric, gas, water and telecom bills online.
“It’s important we do our part to help slow or curtail any possible spread of the corona virus. We do not take these steps lightly. We understand how our actions may affect our customers. We will continue to monitor and follow all federal and state recommendations and guidelines. It may be necessary to take additional stronger actions in the future but we feel this is the best measured course of action at this time.”
