LIGHTS OUT FOR AREA RESIDENTS—AGAIN

Mike McCagg

ccSCOOP News

03-18-10 - 12:30 p.m. - It will be months before the New York State Public Service Commission finishes its review of the latest power outage to strike Columbia County—a several day affair that was the result of the late February snowstorm that blanketed the area with heavy, wet snow. But some businesses and residents of the area are wondering how a 21st-century community can be the victim of so many prolonged power outages and what, if anything can be done, to prevent them. The power outages have impacted all utilities serving the county, including Central Hudson Electric and Gas, National Grid, and New York State Electric and Gas.

The February outage was the latest outrage in less than two years to leave portions of the county with no power for 24 hours or more. The December 2008 ice storm ravaged Columbia County, leaving some residents in the Chatham-Canaan corridor and the Taghkanic-Claverack area with no power for as long as two weeks.

Anne Dalton, a spokesperson for the Public Service Commission, told ccSCOOP that the PSC extended the hours of its public complaint hotline during the outages and was now examining those complaints. She noted that the complaints were from across the eastern part of New York and not exclusively from Columbia County. The PSC will review the complaints and the utilities’ responses to the outages and compile a report with recommendations. That process, she said, can take up to six months. “We will be looking at their response to the outages, how they acted to correct the problem, as well as how well they kept the public and government representatives informed,” Dalton said.

Dalton made reference to a June 2009 report issued by the PSC on the response of utilities to the massive December 2008 ice storm, which made the following recommendations:.

• Information gathered by power line patrollers ahead of repair crews should be acknowledged and accounted for in damage assessment procedures.
• All utilities should participate in mutual aid conference calls in anticipation of and in response to major storms.
• Central Hudson should retain information on speed of answer rates for emergency calls for longer than the current time period, which company officials stated was six weeks, especially for major storms.

Questions about utility response times to emergencies in Columbia County are nothing new. County emergency leaders discussed at length about a decade ago response times by utilities, specifically the former Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. (now National Grid). Firefighters had complained that the utilities were taking too long to respond to downed power lines, requiring that volunteer firefighters “babysit” downed lines for hours on end. In some instances, firefighters would wait as long as twelve hours for a utility crew to respond to the scene. Emergency responders have also alleged that slow response times place firefighters at risk when battling fires and utilities were needed to disconnect power to the affected house or business.

National Grid officials countered that their response times were adequate and that they attempted to get a representative from Columbia County whenever possible, though that was not always possible and sometimes representatives had to be sent from the Albany area.

The service questions at local utilities appear to be the result of cutbacks. Niagara Mohawk once employed more than a dozen workers at its Hudson facility. Now, the county is served mostly by crews from the Albany area, although National Grid does maintain a limited staff in Hudson.

New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) was purchased in 2008 by Iberdrola, which implemented cost-cutting measures that have raised concerns on several fronts. In particular, a plan by Iberdrola to reduce costs at a Kirkwood, NY, call center by forcing more than 200 employees to take a 50 percent pay cut or lose their jobs, has drawn the fire of Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D- NY), who wrote a scathing letter to the PSC last week about the plan. Iberdrola has also reportedly scrapped plans already approved to make $4.7 million in upgrades to the former Seneca Army Depot, in Seneca County—a move that has earned the ire of county officials there and led to complaints being filed with the PSC.

Dalton told ccSCOOP that agency investigators are looking into the matter.  

In Columbia County, reports indicate that the number of NYSEG crews in the region have been reduced by as much as 66 percent.

NYSEG officials didn’t return repeated calls for comment.