Rep. Chip Roy to American Plumbers: We Need Your Help in Texas to Repair Frozen Pipes

Plumbers from out of state are needed in Texas to help repair frozen pipes, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) temporarily waived certain state licensing requirements to allow out-of-state plumbers to work in Texas. An NBC affiliate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area reported, “Abbott’s office announced Friday it is giving out provisional permits to out-of-state plumbers, and waiving some fees and examination requirements for plumbers whose licenses have expired.”

Roy explained, “I do know that Gov. Abbott has changed the rules in allowing people from outside of state. You don’t have to be licensed in Texas, so get on down here if you’re a plumber from another state and you can get to Texas or any of the surrounding states around us.”

“We’re going to need you, and you’ll be put to work,” Roy said in an open call to America’s plumbers. “It’ll be good.”

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Roy said his office is working on securing plumbing materials and supplies for large infrastructure repair projects.

“We’re working right now with some different people and suppliers,” Roy stated. “My office has been calling suppliers to make sure that we can get what we can get. That’s one of the things we’re worried about, especially [water] mains in cities. I’m not talking about half inch [plumbing] packs or copper which you can do to Home Depot to get. I’m talking these main valves and stuff in cities.

Roy added, “We’re all working to make sure the supply chains are as good as they can be right now, but if you’re a plumber and you want to come help, we’re going to be able to need your help over the next few weeks.”

Marlow asked about lessons learned from the winter storm in Texas and related electricity shortages. Roy identified wind power as vulnerable to freezing.

“The problem is that about 50-something percent of our [electrical] grid is natural gas, and about 22 to 23 percent is wind,” Roy replied. “About half the [wind] turbines froze up. They couldn’t produce. Now, you have to make that up. The other wind generators were trying. They couldn’t make it all up, so they dropped way down. Natural gas continued … and they produced energy, but we had issues and had slowdowns because of the temperatures on the moving gas.”

Roy went on, “If you take a step back, what’s the real problem here? You’ve got to have your base capacity to produce power. You’ve got to have a good enough mix [of energy sources] that when you have a situation like this, you’re okay. So coal [and] nuclear, they have fuel on site. A lot of the regulations that have been pushed down on coal [include] not allowing us to build new nuclear [infrastructure], not putting enough resources into making sure our natural gas infrastructure could deal with bitter cold, and instead spending billions on some of the renewables out there.”

 Roy warned of political exploitation of Texas’s state of emergency, including use of the energy shortage as a pretext for “a big government takeover.”

“What I don’t want to see is a massive reaction by Democrats — or Republicans, frankly — for political purposes to have a big government takeover of our [energy] system,” Roy concluded. “We need to fix it. We need to make sure that we can winterize and deal with these [storms], but we’re also a state that rarely deals with this kind of situation, so you know, you have to be thoughtful about how you do this. … What we don’t need is Washington stepping in and telling us what we need to do.”