Proposed legislation could provide relief from losses due to prolonged power outages in Michigan
(CBS DETROIT) - Power outages in Detroit can be costly for families and small business owners, but a new push on Capitol Hill could change that.
Rep. Haley Stevens has introduced the "Prolonged Power Outage Relief Act" to Congress. She says the proposed legislation helps residents and businesses recover losses due to extended power outages through low-interest loans. She brought it to a roundtable discussion Tuesday afternoon in Farmington Hills.
Of those in attendance was Valentine Distilling Co. president and founder Rifino Valentine.
"Essentially what we're doing here as a distillery is we're taking raw grain and creating alcohol from it," Valentine told CBS News Detroit.
He says the creation of your favorite adult beverages is tedious and fermentation goes on daily in his Ferndale headquarters in tanks just like the ones you see in the video above.
"We need to keep those tanks cool. So when we lose power, we lose the pumps, and we lose the cooling fluid, and if that fermentation gets too hot, we lose thousands and thousands of gallons at a time," Valentine says.
"This does not contribute to our deficit. This is existing appropriated dollars that are already at the small business administration, and this is an adjustment to existing law to allow businesses and residents to apply for these very low-interest loans that will help them carry through in the event of a power outage," Stevens said at the roundtable Tuesday.
Valentine says outages last summer amounted to over $10,000 of losses. He says small businesses often get praised as the backbone of society, but efforts like this need to happen more often to help in times of adversity.
"We generated a lot of tax revenue. We hire people, and then we're often the first line when things go wrong. We take the brunt of a lot of things. This is what we need from our representatives, this is what we hire them for," Valentine said.
As of Monday, Jan. 22, the same day the bill was introduced, it was referred to the House Committee on Small Business.