Dear Colleagues,

As you are aware, we experienced three significant utility outages on campus over the past month. While some of these outages were out of our control, we do want to share additional information about what happened and the steps that we are taking to minimize interruptions in the future. 

The campus-wide water outage on May 31, and the building-specific outages that followed, was caused by an equipment failure. In addition to repairing the parts that failed, we are assessing our entire system. Our ongoing Utility Upgrades Project will also include several upgrades to our system over the summer, all of which should reduce the number of water main breaks we experience on campus. 

The recent campus electrical outages on June 9 and 16 were both precipitated by events off campus. We are in regular communication with BGE about improving power reliability to campus. BGE is installing a third electrical feeder to support the campus, which should be completed by December 2023. In the meantime, BGE initiated a comprehensive inspection of our entire distribution system and is trimming trees along the distribution route.  

We regret the inconvenience and delays caused by these interruptions. We take these outages seriously and are working to streamline our response processes so we can share information with you quickly and efficiently. We also appreciate your patience as we complete necessary maintenance and improvements across campus this summer on these and other systems. You can learn more about our current utilities projects on the Facilities Management website. 

Kathy L. Dettloff, Vice President for Administration and Finance

Lenn Caron, Associate Vice President, Facilities Management