It was a cold weekend in Western Massachusetts, with wind chills pushing the temperature down to 30-below zero. That kind of cold makes heat an absolute necessity.
“We live in a small, old house built in the 1860s, 1870s. Our first floor and our stove and our hot water are all heated by propane. Without that propane, we're in pretty dire straits," said Middle school teacher Anna Lawrence.
She lives in Haydenville, a centuries-old village inside the small town of Williamsburg at the foothills of the Berkshires in Hampshire County. Lawrence and her family rely on Superior Plus Propane for their heating fuel supply — a supply that was supposed to be refilled automatically once it fell to a certain level.
“If you look at their website about their autofill, they have all these questions and answers," she told WAMC. "If my tank's getting low, should I call you? No, no, even if it's lower than you're comfortable, we know what's best. If a storm is coming, should we call you? No, no. So, we haven't looked at that, because they're supposed to be on it.”
Saturday afternoon, the Lawrence family realized something was terribly amiss. Despite setting their heat to 67, the temperature inside the home had dropped to 60 and then into the 40s and showed no signs of stopping.
“Fortunately, my daughter asked for a cup of tea, which is actually really unusual for her, and while I was boiling it, I realized that the flame was super low, and then suddenly we thought, wait- We're out of propane," said Lawrence. "And we went looked at our account, and sure enough, it said we were at 0% and we realized they had skipped our last delivery.”
Efforts to contact the company went nowhere.
“We tried calling them, spent half an hour on hold," Lawrence continued. "Finally got through, I don't know, I think to Canada, because it started with the message in French, and then they asked me if I was in Canada, and they told me they were sending an urgent message over nothing happened.”
The Lawrence family’s experience has been common for Superior Plus Propane customers in Western Massachusetts this bitterly cold winter.
“I went online, and I reported that I needed a fuel delivery, even though I'm not supposed to because I'm monitored, and they're supposed to put a ticket in for fuel delivery once I get lower than 30%. That did not happen," Julia Kaplan told WAMC. "So, I tried calling, and I was on hold for over 20 minutes, and then I finally get through to an answering service that was subcontracted out, I'm guessing, because they did not have access to my account information, and they said they would get the information to Superior on the next business day. This was a Saturday that I’m down to 10%.”
Kaplan lives in the Berkshire County town of Becket, another small community tucked into the region’s wooded hills.
“Over the weekend, I look at it again, and I'm down to 7%," she said. "So, I then turn my thermostat down low to like 60, and kick on space heaters so that the furnace doesn't kick on so I don't run out of fuel, because it says on their recording that they might not be able to get to us, and they might not be able to service us due to the extreme weather conditions.”
It took days for Kaplan to finally get a refill, forcing her to anxiously wait out the long cold hours without fresh propane.
Democratic state Rep. Leigh Davis of the 3rd Berkshire District says complaints about Superior Plus have flooded in over the last few weeks. She’s declared their conduct disastrous and amounting to a regional emergency.
“We have a lot of calls from Becket, Sheffield, Middlefield, Hinsdale, Peru, Worthington, and they range from not being able to get on to the website to fill out a form saying they're in need of service to not having their phone calls delivered to someone arriving at their home after being out of town and having burst pipes and having a disaster when they when they arrived after being on the autofill,” she told WAMC.
State Sen. Paul Mark, the Democrat who serves the Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin and Hampshire District, said he’d also found Superior Plus Propane to be negligent during the coldest months of the year.
“I had one of my staff call down to their 24-hour emergency line to try to get a delivery schedule for someone in the district, and it led nowhere," said Mark. "And eventually, the only way that my staffer could speak to a live person was by clicking on the buttons that said, I want to become a new customer, and that was the only place that led to anywhere.”
In a statement to WAMC, Superior Plus Propane acknowledged delays for customers during “periods of extremely high seasonal demand,” citing extreme cold, snowfall, and difficult road conditions as significant challenges, and offering both an apology and commitment to improve service.
Mark says enough is enough, and the Berkshire legislative delegation is working to bring in backup from the commonwealth to pressure the company into better service.
“It's frustrating at a time where it's extremely cold and people are getting worried that they're going to run out of propane, and we've been trying to work with the Attorney General's Office and the Department of Energy to try to see what kind of solutions there might be moving forward,” he said.
For Anna Lawrence of Haydenville, this weekend’s debacle is more than enough to call time on Superior Plus.
“Well, as soon as I get off the phone with you, I'm calling to cancel our contract," she told WAMC. "George Propane just rescued us. They came out, filled our tanks, did a safety check, filled our tanks, and we are up and running with heat coming as we speak. They arrived at 8 this morning.”
Another existential crisis facing the westernmost region of Massachusetts is a proposed rate hike from the Berkshire Gas company that could see customers paying over 20% more on their natural gas bills. For communities like North Adams in the Northern Berkshires, that could have dire implications.
“Our renters are already paying a huge chunk of their income towards rent, their housing costs are stretching them thin, we have the third highest electric rate in the country, and our heating costs are also high as well. So, this would be a huge impact to regular people," said first-term City Councilor Lillian Zavatsky. “For the city as well, it is asking us to do a lot with less. So, the city uses natural gas to heat our schools, our city buildings, and so in a time when our school funding that we receive for the state doesn't cover everything that we need for the schools — and in general, state aid is a little stretched — then an increase in our heating costs would force us to make difficult choices."
Her concern is that the fluctuating market cost of natural gas means the rate hike could grow even higher for Berkshire customers.
“They're asking for an increase in the distribution portion of your bill, which means that if it's an average of 21% rate increase for the distribution portion, consumers might see an even higher increase in their bills if the cost of the supply of natural gas period is higher,” Zavatsky explained.
The increase has been widely condemned by Massachusetts leaders. Gov. Maura Healey described it as unaffordable and coming at the worst possible time for families and businesses.
State Rep. Davis told WAMC she agrees.
“We're looking at upwards of $53 a month increase in cost for residents, customers of Berkshire Gas, which is equivalent to about 23%, and that is unsustainable," she said. "You look at their profit margin, you look at the fact that they're based not even in this area- So, it's called Berkshire Gas, and it's really not run by a local company.”
In a statement to WAMC, Berkshire Gas — which has been owned by Connecticut-based Avangrid since 2019 — ascribed the rate hike to infrastructure and safety investments to meet regulatory standards.
Mark told WAMC that legislators are turning to the commonwealth, including the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, to press Berkshire Gas over the rate hike.
“Our delegation made a joint statement requesting DPU to follow what the governor has also asked for, and make rates more stable if there's going to be an increase, make them more reasonable, make them spread out over a longer amount of time. And I know DPU is going to spend a lot of time digging into what happens. The attorney general's office has signed on as an intervener, and the attorney general seems to also think this rate hike is certainly not in the consumer's best interest. So, hopefully all of these factors will combine to give people some relief in the immediate term.”
The state senator says the situation underscores broader issues with rising energy costs in Massachusetts, which he said are untenable.
“We just don't generate electricity, because we've made a choice not to have coal plants anymore, the two nuclear plants have shut down, we, I think, are phasing out natural gas burning within the state- So, when you look at all of those things, and we've been trying really diligently to try to bring in energy from Canada, to try to do the offshore wind project that's been stalled by the Federal Administration, trying to do things a little bit differently.”
While the region’s broader concerns about heating fuel won’t go away as quickly, Western Massachusetts can expect a reprieve from the cold this week as temperatures are expected to rise to almost 40 by Wednesday.
