City Utilities alerts FBI after bullet strikes substation

City Utilities alerted the FBI this week after discovering that someone fired at an electric substation in the city.

CU General Manager Scott Miller told the News-Leader Thursday that evidence of the shot was found during a Tuesday maintenance check. He declined to detail the location of the substation.

Miller said the bullet struck a bushing, an insulated device connected to a transformer that allows for the safe passage of the electrical current. He said incidents involving the nation's electrical grid come under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

"We have a protocol that, because we are part of the grid, we have to have a sabotage policy," Miller said. "And when you have something like this that happens, that's a reportable incident and we have to report it."

In 2014, the president and CEO of the industry group American Public Power Association said at a U.S. Senate hearing that "shooting at substations, unfortunately, is not uncommon." Sue Kelly was discussing a 2013 coordinated attack on a northern California substation.

Miller, who has been in his current position for five years, said he could not recall any similar incidents during his tenure.

"My gut is that if they were really wanting to do something bad, bad, bad, it would've been more than one shot and they would've done other things," he said. "I think it was probably someone just not being very smart and taking a potshot at something."