'Very old' hydro infrastructure worries Leamington mayor

Leamington's mayor is fearful over the thought of losing power after Tuesday's massive, near-countywide outage.

A failure at a key Hydro One power station near Windsor briefly knocked out power to 16,500 EnWin customers and another 22,000 Hydro One customers in Essex County.

John Paterson is worried by the aging infrastructure in neighbouring Kingsville.

Kingsville's power grid, which he described as "very old," supplies power to Leamington.

"If that ever fails then we're in a lot of trouble down here in the southern portion of Essex County," Paterson said.

He has been working to get a new power line and transmission station in the town. It should be up and running in 2018.

Hydro One, the Ontario Energy Board and the Ministry of Energy are all on board to build the new infrastructure, Paterson says, with much of the land needed already purchased.

"Leamington and Kingsville are very dependent on the transmission station in Kingsville, which is very aged infrastructure, and that's why we've been pushing so hard to get this line into Leamington, so we can be taken off the Kingsville station, take the pressure off there, and then have our own system here," Paterson explained.