Texas Congress members to discuss USPS mail delays in Missouri City

MISSOURI CITY, Texas (KTRK) -- For months, ABC13 has been reporting mail delivery delays in the Houston area, and now Congress is getting involved.

Texas Congressman Pete Sessions (TX-17) is scheduled to hold a closed meeting with the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Thursday of next week.

According to our partners at the Houston Chronicle, staffers will also tour the processing center in Missouri City, one of two local facilities the United States Postal Service has blamed for the delays.

"We're going to produce out of this an understanding of the nature of the problem, the nature of the new machinery and see if we can figure out, not how to fight, but how to fix the circumstances that we have there now," Sessions said.

SEE PREVIOUS REPORT: USPS remains hush on incessant mail theft issues, lost packages amid questions from ABC13, Congress

In a statement to ABC13, USPS said the ongoing issues are the result of the postal service's Delivering for America plan, which aims to modernize the postal system.

As part of that plan, the Missouri City facility will become a local processing center, while the North Houston Processing and Distribution Center will become regional.

ABC13 has repeatedly asked the postal service for an on-camera interview to address various issues plaguing the agency, but they've only sent us written statements, one of them reading:

"We are aware of concerns from some local Houston customers regarding their mail delivery. We want customers to know that we continue the expansion of our operations in the Houston area because of increased volume and we are adding additional capacity with a new facility to improve service. The Postal Service has dispatched additional resources from the surrounding area and implemented improved processes to address root causes of sporadic issues to improve the reliability of mail delivery in the Houston area. Customers should also note that multiple severe weather events in Houston and across the nation have impacted many transportation, logistics, and delivery companies, and the Postal Service is no exception. We express our apologies to those who experienced a deviation from our normal, dependable service, and customers should already see improvements in delivery as we work through these issues."

U.S. Congressman Al Green, who covers the city's 9th district, which includes the Missouri City area, has also called for transparency from USPS.

"Until they come forward and explain to the public what the circumstances are that created this backlog, I don't think that we can say that we have finished our business," Green said last month. "I hope that they will do this sooner rather than later, and let's just get on with the other things that we have to do, and they can explain it much better than I."

RELATED: Stuck in transit? USPS dodges questions amid major delays at Houston-area facilities

A day after U.S. Congressman Al Green called for transparency from the United States Postal Service, he said he was told they would be adding more staff to address the backlog.