DESOTO COUNTY, Mississippi — Holly Springs residents are hoping for change now that the city's utility department is under investigation by the state of Mississippi.
The utility has suffered from years of mismanagement, few employees and a lack of organization, with the people of Holly Springs paying the price.
Stephanie Berry said the power lines near her home are held together with bungee cord.
“I would like for my power to not cut off every time the wind blows. That is really the truth. I would like for it to not cut off every time we have a cloud come up, and I would like to have one utility pole,” Berry said.
Another such resident is Mark Bullock, who has started an unofficial outage group on Facebook with the goal of increasing communication and awareness of outages where the utility was lacking. He said they are tracking close to 600 this year, with four more on Wednesday alone.
He has even written a book on the issues at the utility, titled “The HSUD Power Crisis.”
“I know a lot of people in the service area want to see a complete separation from Holly Springs. These problems haven’t just originated overnight, as far as I can tell, they originated in the late ‘70s early ‘80s and just got worse over time. So a lot of people don’t want to remain part of Holly Springs any more,” he said.
Bullock is optimistic some real progress will come out of this investigation, noting the city has been summoned to a public state meeting early next year.
The director of HSUD did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.