Scattered pockets of western Kentucky remain without power nearly three weeks after an ice storm that swept through the state caused outages for more than 700,000 people.

Going into this weekend, about 1,000 Warren Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. customers had not regained power, and officials confirmed the loss of 1,700 utility poles.

“We’re trying to deal with isolated outages right now in the more remote areas,” WRECC spokesman Rick Carroll said, noting that at the beginning of the week 5,300 utility customers were still without power.

Carroll said Union Light Road, from Nolin Lake up to McGrew Church Road, Dickey’s Mill Road and Cave Hollow Bay areas in Edmonson County should have power restored by today, and all Butler County customers should be back on line.

Utility contractors have begun the process of cleaning up work sites, loading debris and hauling it to landfills, except for those items that can be reused or recycled.

“Material that was stored at several remote staging areas will be picked up and returned to our main warehouse in Bowling Green,” said Mike Eastridge, WRECC vice president of operations. “Any customers that need the debris removed sooner should call out district offices to schedule a pickup.”

Eastridge said right-of-way crews will remove trees and limbs that remain a danger to power lines, but landowners are responsible for removing trees damaged by the ice storm. Cleanup efforts will likely take several weeks to complete, Carroll said.

Early estimates of damage continue to arrive, with Federal Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Mary Hudak saying that rural electric cooperatives alone appear to have suffered about $110 million in damage.

“We’ve been deinstalling generators from critical facilities able to receive power and assessing power requirements for those critical facilities so we know what type of needs they have in the event of a future disaster,” Hudak said. “We’re talking with local officials about reimbursement and long-term recovery costs.”

FEMA arrived in the state Jan. 30 and has aided local and state emergency management workers in storm recovery since that time.

The Kentucky Division of Emergency Management scaled down from an emergency response phase to a recovery phase for the disaster on Friday.

“We’ve gotten most of the power restored in relationship to how many were without power, with critical infrastructure back online in almost all counties,” KYEM spokesman Buddy Rogers said.

Rogers said that, at the end of the week, three emergency shelters housing 46 people remained open.

The storm has caused 36 deaths in Kentucky, mainly through hypothermia, vehicle accidents and carbon monoxide related to improperly placed generators, Rogers said.

While the ice has long since melted, weather has continued to slow recovery efforts in certain areas of the state. Saturated ground has limited the access of some utility vehicles to overhead power lines for replacement in isolated areas, Rogers said.

Butler and Edmonson counties were among the region’s hardest hit areas. Both counties have opted into the state’s plan to hire contractors to handle roadside removal of tree limbs and other vegetative debris. Under the plan, contractors will make one pass by residences and pick up all tree trunks, limbs and brush.

The state Transportation Cabinet would be reimbursed through FEMA for 75 percent of the cost of hiring the contractors; participating county governments would contribute toward 13 percent of the costs, while the state would pay the remainder.

Edmonson County Judge-Executive N.E. Reed said that with early estimates of damage in his county totaling more than $700,000, the decision to opt in to the program made the most economic sense.

“If we had opted out then we would have had to front the money (for debris removal), with the assessment team not having been in,” Reed said. “We’re not in a financial condition to front the money to pay for all this.”

Butler County Judge-Executive David Fields said the scope of the damage was so massive that local removal of debris would be too costly and time-consuming.

“We’ve got a massive amount of debris on our roads,” Fields said.

Power is on the verge of being restored throughout the region, and local governments will not be footing the entire bill for recovering from the disaster.

Memories of the storm’s devastation, however, are likely to trump those from previous storms.

“We had those ice storms in ’94, but it was a baby lamb compared to this time,” Reed said. “These people that have been without power since this hit two weeks ago, I appreciate their patience because I know some of them are frustrated – and it’s been frustrating to me to not get them service sooner.”