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Cold Weather Rule For Winter Utilities Goes Into Effect

Keith Ewing
/
flickr Creative Commons

An annual program meant to protect low-income Kansans during the coldest months of the year is set to go into effect this week.

Kansas’ Cold Weather Rule, established by the Kansas Corporation Commission in 1983, runs from Nov. 1 through March 31. It helps to ensure that electric, gas and water service won’t be disconnected from a person’s home during the winter.

Customers are protected from service cut-offs only when temperatures drop below 35 degrees. During warmer weather, people struggling to pay their bills need to arrange a payment plan with their utility company to prevent disconnection.

Customers are still responsible for their overdue bills once the rule ends in the spring. Only companies under the KCC's jurisdiction participate in the Cold Weather Rule.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.