A Municipal Utility in Wrentham?

The idea of creating a municipal power utility in Wrentham has gained traction in the wake of two storms that caused prolonged outages.

National Grid, which provides power to the town, announced completed restoration to Massachusetts customers on Sunday, a week after the Snowtober storm.

Most of Wrentham did not have power until Wednesday, and some did not see it return until days after that.

Wrentham Town Administrator William Ketcham has said the idea of a municipal utility is still out there, but said the process for doing so is difficult.

"There are some issues created by the present state of Massachusetts law," he said. "There are amendments that have been introduced in the legislature [to make the establishment of municipal utilities easier], but they've been introduced for a number of years."

State Rep. Daniel Winslow (R-Norfolk) said he would be in favor of making the process less onerous.

"I'm in favor of anything that gives towns more options," he said. "There has been proposed legislation to make it easier, but utility lobbyists have spent millions of dollars to fight it."

Winslow said he was unsure as to whether the recent storms would spur the legislature to action.

"I don't know — I think, during the storm, the towns with municipal utilities fared better," he said, noting the example of Princeton, Mass. "I would hope it would [lead to action]."