State officials said 1,500 crews — an unprecedented number — were working to restore power. The officials said they hoped the number of customers without power would be cut in half by the end of the day, but cautioned that some might not get their power back until Friday.
More than 519,000 customers were without electricity at mid-morning, but by the late afternoon, the number of power outages had dropped to around 460,000.
I understand that this storm presented unusual challenges – very early, trees still had leaves, heavy snow, downed limbs, etc. But doesn’t it seem as though there have been one or two storms in each of the last few winters that are “unusual” and that result in hundreds of thousands of people being without power for about a week? Needless to say, being without power in New England for multiple days in the winter is a serious, and potentially life-threatening, problem.
I’m just wondering whether we need to rethink the model. Sure, utilities shouldn’t be required to employ thousands of line workers who would only have to work on super storm days. But maybe there’s some way of adapting the snow-plow model (most people who plow the roads are not public employees, but rather contractors who strap a plow onto their pickup when it snows) to this situation. I know, I know, it’s a lot more complicated to train someone to fix a downed power line than to plow snow. Maybe there’s some other solution.
It just seems to me that there must be a better way. Asking hundreds of thousands of MA residents to make do without power for a week or two every winter is an awfully big request.
Seriously, I don’t remember massive power outages after storms being as common as they are now. The electric industry was deregulated under the Weld in the mid 90’s.
I wonder how many o-rings and such aren’t used by our deregulated electricity providers in the everyday maintenance of the grid causing unnecessary massive outages. Still cheaper than buying and installing o-rings etc.
I understand this storm, unlike most, had the leaves capturing the snow and adding weight to the branch.
But it’s happenig every storm.
Is it time to start regulating again?
the transmission-and-distribution utilities were not deregulated. They were forced to sell of their power plants to unregulated owners.
To the extent weather is more severe more often, that is an expected result of more energy and moisture in the atmosphere.
You can pin that on the utilities in terms of their carbon emissions, but since a lot of that carbon was released previous to utility restructuring I don’t think its because of the structure of the industry.
They are cutting costs somewhere I believe.
Weather patterns show severe winters in the 1960s and 70s. Power outages didn’t occur as often.
Disclaimer: I work as a consultant in the electricity area, and my colleagues do have expertise in T&D (transmission and distribution). I do not have expertise — the remainder of my comments are a bit off-the-cuff and not coming from a thorough study of Massachusetts T&D issues.
If the outages are coming from downed distribution lines, there are some potential fixes. Distribution lines are the local lines — street to home, on wooden poles generally. One fix: bury more wires. There is a method on the books to do it in the state. Essentially, that city or town puts a pre-determined surcharge on the phone bills, and as the money accrues they use it to bury lines, hopefully in conjunction with other major road works so as to stretch the funds. Still, I’ve heard that in my dense community, it would take many decades to complete the process. For more rural areas, it would be even more challenging. That written — making it easier for communities to go this route would could result in fewer outages due to limbs etc *and* make communities prettier and, more importantly, have sidewalks with fewer obstructions — good for those who use wheels on the sidewalk to get around.
If the problem is transformers or other distribution equipment failing, that’s tougher. I suppose the DPU (Mass Dept of Public Utilities) could tighten up the rules on outages, setting up higher service levels. That increase in service reliability *will* come with a higher T&D rate on your bill, you can be sure of that.
If the problem is transmission or generation, that’s not likely the fault of NStar et al. Sometimes a cold snap will reduce the availability of gas for natural gas generators, bringing them offline. Typically the result is higher spot prices, and I doubt that this storm resulted in rolling blackouts because of a lack of generating capacity. Still, it could be part of the cause of some outages for some storms.
P.S. The utilities in MA are still highly regulated. “Deregulation” separated the generation from the customer service end. NStar is still responsible for reading meters and for maintaining the distribution equipment, and must still appear before the commission with future plans, with requests for rate-based recovery, etc. It’s a far cry from the wild west.
It is all downed wires around here. The worst problems are when the last bit of line leading to your house get taken out, because those require each house to be re-connected individually. That was what happened for most homes in the Dec 2008 ice storm, which was why it took weeks to get power back up.
Burying is indeed a fix, but what an expensive fix. This happened Oct 2011, Dec 2008, and I don’t recall the one before that. I suppose that if the frequency of these events is increasing, then the expensive fix begins to look less expensive.
anyone remember the May 1977 storm around here? If you do, you knew that this storm was going to be a huge problem. Not sure what anyone could do about it except clear cut New England back to the 1900 look.
Lived in Sudbury in the May 1977 storm; pretty much every line in town was down. Took about a week to recover then as well.
… you probably have no idea which transformers blew out or caught fire, or any other non-line problems. I’m sure that (a) it’s mostly due to downed wires, but (b) it’s not entirely due to downed wires.
I did speak with a T&D guy at work today. His point is that the utility commissions (i) look carefully at tree trimming activities at every rate case, (ii) would never spend ratepayer money burying lines because it doesn’t yield the greatest increase in reliability per dollar spent, and (iii) if the lege made a move to do this, it would be a nasty floor fight about rates — who’s paying, who’s getting buried wires, etc.
He also pointed out that urban areas are net contributors to the distribution charge, whereas rural areas are net receivers of subsidy, because the distribution rate is on a per kWh base and is typically “postage stamped” — same price everywhere. *If* a rider was used to bury wires for reliability purposes, and *if* that rider was also postage stamped, it is unlikely that it would tip the scales — urbanites would likely still be subsidizing the distribution of rural folks.
Personally, I’d be in favor of a rider on telco/elec/cable/fiber bills to bury for reliability. Not for aesthetics, not for sidewalk accessibility, but based on the calculation of ranking projects by (improvement of reliability times number of customers)/dollar spent. This probably means some opportunistic projects [coordinating with major road or water/sewer projects], and it almost certainly would result in most of those projects being undertaken in leafy urban and dense suburban areas — those are the places which have the density and the risk [trees]. Strictly speaking, I don’t think that the improvement in reliability would be worth the money. However, the side benefits (aesthetics, improved accessibility on sidewalks, opportunity for more street trees) are enough that I’d be in favor of it.
“…would never spend ratepayer money burying lines …” well, they haven’ spent much of it yet, but Chelmsford residents have been paying a 2% line-burying surcharge for at least ten years. They only recently began begin the work.
The commissioners didn’t choose to bury lines in Chelmsford. Chelmsford made that decision by it’s lonesome. I don’t know which funding mechanism they’re using, though it sounds like it’s MGL Ch 266 Sec 22b, which allows, cities and towns to mandate a surcharge on utility bills to pay for it. When they do that, they’ve got to collect the money for a while, then spend it down on projects, which explains the delay. Other mechanisms include free cash, bonds, commercial improvement districts, etc.
Keep in mind that burying lines often costs on the order of $1M/mile.
When you quote me, kindly don’t change the subject of the quote. The “they” in my quote is the DPU Commissioners; you morph the subject to some other ‘they.’
or is it to defray the cost of burying new installations, such as new subdivisions?
They’re starting in the center of town. Some developments, like the 25-year-old Williamsburg condo complex, were built with underground utilities, but I don’t know if that was because of a bylaw change or what.
I don’t think you fully appreciate the damage. It’s like with the ice storm. The only people who truly “got it” were the people deeply affected–like those in my area–who were without power for 14 days.
Central Mass, at any rate, is a mess. The trees that are split, down, etc., are in the thousands. Roads had to be cleared with bulldozers–again. It is not unreasonable that there are so many people, at least in Central Mass, that are without power given the incredible destruction the snow storm caused. My town went back up yesterday and this morning, but the town I teach in is an unholy mess and we’re not likely to be back to school until the end of the week if we’re lucky. Many of the southern Worcester county town are in similar shape. Areas like Palmer, Warren, the Brookfields are also a mess. And the Springfield area is worse. It’ll be a long haul for good reason, I’m afraid.
Lexington got hit hard with just five inches of snow. About half the town is still without power and the kids have no school tomorrow. Rescheduled Halloween is TBD. After a day of cutting and hauling, most of my lawn is still covered with the remains of trees. So I can fully appreciate what the areas that got a foot or more are facing.
One thing to note about this storm is that the trees that are usually the most suspect during a winter storm – those that are not so healthy – are the ones that fared better in this storm because, at least in my area, they had lost most of their leaves already. The severe damage has been to the really healthy trees. The load on the branches had to have been one to two magnitudes higher than it would have been with no leaves.
My neighborhood looks far worse today than it did after the ice storm, and we were in the bulls eye then.
Then again, I recall people saying: so what, an ice storm, what’s the big deal in Dec 2008.
Central Massachusetts is a disaster because of heavy dense snow on leaves–this is just one in a long series of unprecedented weather events. As we continue to spike the carbon content of the earth’s atmosphere we should expect more and more such once-in-a-lifetime events to occur with regularity.
And yeah while no single weather event can be attributed to any one trend, we are creating a new age of extremes of drought and precipitation.
that the utilities have been lax in maintenance of branches. It used to be that you saw the electric company taking down the most obvious hazards and cutting back trees. Whatever happened to doing this on a regular basis? Wouldn’t a little more prudent pruning prevent a lot of pain (and cost)?
I never see them trimming anymore.
After one bad experience years ago I bought a small generator just to power the sump pump which protects my basement from flooding. Now when storms are predicted I gather my supplies and hunker down. Cook and heat a little on the woodstove, read by flashlight, listen to the radio. It reminds one to appreciate what we sometimes take for granted.
During the start of Irene – I was traveling back to Boston from Western New York – there was multiple caravans of Michigan electrical workers coming to Massachusetts.
I also noticed in my town – NSTAR has broken the local grid into small segments which they turn on remotely. I think they are able to pin point electrical problems much quicker than in the old days.
When have we ever gotten this much heavy wet snow with the trees almost completely populated with leaves? There isn’t a whole lot of knowledge we can glean from this storm but there is some.
Emergency systems get tested best by real emergencies and this was a doozy.
I think we should look at the communities in the heart of the storm that experienced the “best” outcomes and see what they did. I believe NGRID and other utilities do not do as well trimming the trees in some communities and that is where the belly of the beast is. My observation is tree lined roads are also “pole lined” roads and when the trees come down… so do the roads.
Add $5/month to utility bills and have a real tree trimming initiative so we never experience this again.
we had this happen. Tree trimming isn’t going to solve the problem (and when we lived in Norwell, utility company was catching lots of flak for said trimming – can’t win for losing) when you have this much devastation with snow on leaves. Short of clear cutting, not much you can do with this type of storm.
National Grid has to get approval from the Board of Selectmen for every single tree they touch.
This is sometimes a multi-meeting discussion.
If it would lessen the frequency or severity of outages, I would gladly see a buffer around the poles clear cut.
Maybe some towns have decided to make this a large issue but typically it is handled routinely.
I agree with your comments about tree trimming in the interim 44 years being a target of criticism. But these critics are silent when things like this happen… or suddenly start complaining that we should have done more.
larger issues of “is this evidence of global warming” or anything of the sort.
My only observation is when you have wet heavy snow coupled with trees still covered with foliage you are screwed; not talking mere branches coming down but wholesale destruction of healthy trees. It’s too much weight and too much surface area.
Not sure what BOS (presume you mean Boston) has to do with discussion; Problems are further away from the coast out in the leafy suburbs or rural areas with heavy foliage. Just go to a town meeting when the issue is brought up of cutting trees back (welcome to “scenic road designations”). Short of mandating clear cutting 50 feet from all power lines (that would make for some entertaining fireworks at the old town meeting when that was brought up) not sure what else would help in this situation.
n/m
problems with acronyms sometimes. Spent years trying to figure out what BUMP stood for in posts, only to finally figure out BUMP meant BUMP the post up for new activity.
How are the small municipal companies doing versus the bigger companies (Nstar, National Grid, WMECO)?
I get the sense that the municipal companies are doing a bit better, just anecdotally. It might be because the larger companies have fewer workers spread out over a larger area whereas the municipal companies are single-town, and though “less efficient” (due to not being able to “share” workers between communities), this translates to more workers on hand to restore service.
Think of it this way – you own a company and you have to employ an accountant. When you have a problem, your accountant fixes it. If you own 10 companies, you might employ 2 accountants. If any of the companies has a problem, an accountant can fix it. That works great if no more than 2 of your companies have problems. But if *three* of your companies have problems, one won’t have it fixed immediately. And if all 10 of your companies have a problem at the same time, you’re in trouble versus if all 10 companies were independent.
It seems to me that this is in some ways similar to the mortgage situation; a consolidated company spreads the risk over a larger area under the theory that problems won’t all occur in the same place at the same time. But when they do, the model breaks down massively.
It would be interesting to see the repair rates of the large companies versus the small ones.
see this Globe article about the difference in recovering from Irene. Will be interesting to see if there are similar observations for this storm.
or they would have routinely coordinated with the cities and towns when the roads were dug up for repaving or other utility servicing to get the power lines buried across the state.
Instead they whine about it being expensive and how the towns or individual users have to pay for it.
What a crock! Bury the power lines, Nstar. You’re sitting on all that money and refusing to use it to hire unemployed Americans. Use all that nice money sitting in your accounts to employ people burying the power lines across the state.
Generally speaking, the utilities *can’t* simply bury lines on their own free will. Well, they can, but they won’t be allowed to get customers to repay their cost.
Now, the state legislature could revise the law to allow — or even require — the electric companies to bury a certain number of miles or dollars worth of wire per year. Thing is, they won’t do it in suburbia first, and they’ll do rural areas last. The number of customers per mile of wire is too low. They’ll (correctly) do it in urban areas first, because the number of customers per mile of wire is far higher, resulting in the greatest increase of service per dollar spent. Do you think that folks in the ‘burbs and rural areas are prepared to subsidize the burying of wires in urban areas?
We have plenty of things in this country that penalize urban areas versus suburban areas. We pay the same for mail delivery, phone service, cable, etc. – all those things should be cheaper to deliver in an urban area because of the density. Yet on the other hand we pay more for things like car insurance. Remember also that the highways to suburbia were built with urban taxes, and now those suburbanites frequently vote to cut services in urban areas.
So why can’t we have this little perk?
… i just don’t see it happening politically. Hell, listen for tour friends west of Springfield constantly kvtech that they’re being ignored, despite the reality that they make up less than 20% of the population of the Commonwealth.
if they didn’t think they had to be reimbursed for providing basic service. The customers pay them for electricity. They put the money in their pockets and insist on being paid more to deliver the electricity.
what a farce.
The state, cities and towns should be legislating building codes to promote inidividual construction providing its own electricity – solar shingle, solar collectors etc. etc. We should’nt be suffering power outages at all.
With due respect, you clearly have no idea about what you are writing.
Whether an investor owned utility [IOU] (NStar, Unitil, etc) or a municipal power company [muni] (Hull, etc), the power company is regulated by the MA DPU. IOUs are not allowed to own any generating facilities*. The amount that they charge you for the energy is exactly what they pay, on average, for that energy. By law, the utility makes $0.00 on the energy. The utility has a separate charge for delivery. For delivery (transmission and distribution, plus some other infrastructure like perhaps meters), they get their expenditures approved by the DPU, and are entitled to ratepayer recovery plus their so-called reasonable rate of return, which is on the order of 9%. If they spend money foolishly (known as imprudence), the DPU can issue a disallowance, and then the utility doesn’t get that money back and just loses it outright. Of course, there is also a customer service charge of something like $6/month — that covers the cost of handling your account, including the databases, customer service, and a number of other things. There are some other line items too, typically designed by either the state or the DPU for some specific public policy objective.
We pay lots of folks for product, and then more for delivery. Sometimes its to two different agencies (Amazon and USPS), sometimes its to the same agency (pizza and delivery charge). In the case of the power company, if you have an IOU in MA, it’s the former. The electric company doesn’t make the electricity — they deliver it. They charge you what they pay for the juice, and they charge you what they pay *plus a reasonable rate of return* for the delivery of the juice. Both of those charges are determined not by the utility but by the MA DPU, and are based on very specific criteria.
That’s not to say that there aren’t arguments in front of the DPU. Taken to the extreme, the IOU has an incentive to get as much cost recovery as they can, even for actions which were imprudent. The customers (through the AG) have an incentive to argue that everything the utility did was imprudent, thereby keeping rates as low as possible. It’s up to the Commissioners to determine if the IOU acted in the best interest of the ratepayers, which is to provide safe, reliable power at the lowest possible cost, subject to other public policy objectives like federal and state environmental considerations and rules about disconnecting for non payment in winter.
It ain’t perfect, but it ain’t a farce either. It’s a rather transparent, albeit cumbersome process, in which a number of parties, including the utility, the state via the AG or consumer advocate, environmental groups, industrial customers, and assorted other parties all hash out their views before the Commission.
As for using building code to promote distributed generation, we’re moving in that direction with legislation like net metering and property tax exemption and the Green Communities Act, and I hope we continue to move in that direction. However, understand that even if you have photovoltaic panels on your roof, you still might lose power in the middle of the day because you’ve got two choices: either (a) not be connected to the grid, and then you’re on your own when it’s dark and not windy and your batteries have run out and your generator is out of diesel, or (b) be connected to the grid, and pay for the net electricity you consume from the grid, but be subject to power outages. There’s no middle ground — Kirchhoff’s Law effectively prevents it, which is to say trying to have both results in linemen getting electrocuted.
* IIRC, there is some allowance for very small generation in the form of PVs, but that may just be a proposal at this point, I don’t remember
NOTE: I’ve made a number of simplifying assumptions. It’s all more complicated than this, and rules change from time to time and some details (nuclear and transmission, for example) involve the Feds and different states have different vocabulary and different requirements, etc. Standard disclaimers.
although you are spoiling some people’s attempts to create a boogeyman in this plain and simple “disastrously damaging storm” (heavy wet sticky snow) at the worst possible time (trees with leaves). People need to stop complaining and go clean up their yards and their towns. I got electricity at 4:00pm today (Wednesday), lost a fridge worth of food, no shower for 3 days… it sucks but that’s the way it is.
but it does require more nuance. The fact is, we could expend more resources
* tree trimming
* burying wires
and that is a public policy decision made in the first case by the DPU (and perhaps by the lege) and in the second case by local municipalities (and perhaps by the lege). In the first case, understand that this will mean that those living in the denser areas will be cross-subsidizing the reliability of those living in the more leafy areas. In the latter case, understand that this will mean those living in the more leafy areas will be cross-subsidizing the reliability of those living in the denser areas.
In either case, moving forward with those plans to increase reliability costs money, and that money will come directly from ratepayers or taxpayers or both. We can have it, but we’ll have to pay for it.
if it reduces the damage done almost every year (some years worse) in our towns and the State.
Stomv, the big question is, did the IOUs perform adequately? Are they staffed properly? Was the response time adequate?
It’s hard to know the answer to those questions in an unusual circumstance. However, In my opinion, the benchmark to compare against are the munis.
Today’s article in the Republican spells it out pretty clearly. As of Friday morning:
Agawam: 32% out.
Amherst: 20% out.
Belchertown:
Chicopee: All but 500 homes.
East Longmeadow:
Easthampton: 25% out.
Holyoke: 50 homes out.
Longmeadow: 50% out
Ludlow: 50% out
Monson: 56% out
Northampton: 6,000 homes out.
Palmer: 40% out
South Hadley: 10% out
Southwick: 30-40% out
Springfield: 41% out
Ware: 50% out
West Springfield: 48% out
Westfield: near 0% out
Wilbraham: 58% out
See the pattern? The 4 lowest communities, and lowest by far, have municipal electric companies.
Those companies typically have lower rates than WMECO or National Grid. Chicopee is regarded to be among the cheapest rates in the area.
So why isn’t this proof enough that the IOUs did not do a good job?
but the evidence you’ve provided certainly isn’t “proof enough.” For one thing, small sample size. For another, not all communities, even in the same region, have the same distribution topologies or tree density. For a third, it’s not even clear that the weather hit those towns the same.
Again, I’m not arguing that the DPU has determined precisely the right amount of tree trimming, or that the IOUs have done a great job performing that amount. I think that there’s plenty of room to argue about how much preventative maintenance should be performed, and it’s a worthwhile discussion. But your list is not proof that the IOUs did or did not do a good job.
The size of the disaster does not answer any of your questions or prove that someone was asleep at the switch or shirking or incompetent.
That said, it does not exonerate anyone either, and your questions are the right ones. I think we will learn more from a thorough investigation.
The muni comparison is suggestive but extremely incomplete. Not a bad starting point however.
power outages. This is a literal disaster. I’m a selectman in a small town in Western Mass and know what’s going on (though aside from declaring a state of emergency for the town, I just try stay out of the way of our professionals and let them do their jobs), but I’m also living through having no electricity.
I don’t think it’s feasible to keep the amount of manpower in reserve to deal with what this is: a disaster. There is too much work and it requires coordination between electrical people and tree removal people.
National Grid is letting our PD work directly with its crews to work efficiently as possible. There have been at least 2 tree removal crews from out of state working into the night removing tree from power lines. There is at least one electrical team. And this is for my town of 6,300!
What makes the job difficult, aside from the sheer number of problems, is the fact that electricity is dangerous and needs to be shut off and/or turned on. Yesterday, live power lines fell on a motorist’s truck. It took a few hours to remove him because it was hard to get the electricity crew there.
I’m at my parents house. They have electricity and cable, but there are two or three nasty looking tree tops hanging upside down on the wires. There’s a wire down in their neighbor’s hard that may or nay not be live.
Our highway department has done all the clearing it can do. Our highway superintendent was clearing debris when wires came down, just missing his bulldozer. He wasn’t working around broken wires, something just came down. He would have been electrocuted.
We have a shelter set up at the high school. We’re up to around 20 people there, and the number is growing.
Since the storm, there has been a run on gasoline, maybe because many people have electric generators for their homes. Cumberland Farms ran out of gas. You couldn’t by gas at the other station in town. By last night, there was gas again, but I noticed only one station open when I was in South Hadley.
This event isn’t that different than the tornado, just much less property damage. My parents have a major tree branch that landed on the house. Tree removal costs in the hundreds of dollars.
I know someone who was in the tornado zone and said things looked worse where she was after this stuff.
over the long run. I’m not arguing that any of these are the right choice for your community; I don’t even know to which community you belong.
1. Bury wires. This will certainly increase reliability, but it ain’t cheap, and in the least dense locations it may never make sense.
2. Become a muni. Buy all the assets from the elec distro company, and run your own utility. Then you can trim as much as you see fit, and bury as much as you see fit, when you see fit.
3. There may be ways (zoning, etc) to require that new development “prepare” for underground cabling by, for example, running underground cable from the building to the curb. This isn’t my area, so there may not be opportunity here, just something to look in to.
My hope is that a number of communities form committees to begin looking into these options. They may not be right for the community, but they might be… and if they are, well then it’s time to start gettin’ ‘er done.
bury wire, no do we don’t have the personnel. Our highway department just finished its yearly trimming.
We can’t manage a muni. We buy our electricity through the Hampshire Council of Governments for a substantial discount. Our industrial tax base results in $50,000 in revenue a year. Our commercial tax base brings in an addition $300,000+ a year.
New developments have buried wiring, but burying wire is prohibitively expensive. Our population is not densely clustered. I’m in Granby. Belchertown is worse. You’re talking about spending millions, just for my town. I don’t think the benefits outweigh the costs.
I’m not convinced this is the fault of National Grid’s trimming program. I’ll know more when I talk to my highway superintendent, but I think many of the trees were on private, not town, property. How far would trees need to be trimmed back to protect wires?
I’m sure trimming programs will be re-evaluated, but I really don’t think this was a matter of poor planning. The few places in my town where there is no power were like a battle zone. This was a disaster and as such, I think the response was pretty good.
I don’t think the issue is tree-trimming. I think the issue is that when a large company like National Grid is in charge of dozens upon dozens of communities, it sees this as a chance to cut back on line crews, because, hey, how often is it that *all* their towns get hit at once? Basically, some accountant somewhere figured out that they could reduce the total number of crews with each community they pick up because each crew will serve a larger area.
A municipal power company needs enough line crews to service the lines in the town it serves. National Grid has figured out that by cobbling together N towns, it can staff at some fraction of N total crews because it spreads the risk, sort-of like securitization, where the assumption is that not everyone will need service at the same time.
However that assumption fails in massive storms.
But if municipal companies can weather the storms, why can’t large investor-owned companies? That’s the magic question. A corollary is, why do munis have cheaper rates?
I believe a similar situation is happening in Springfield with tree removal. A few years ago, Springfield privatized its tree removing crews. So what happens when the city has a bunch of trees down? No municipal workers to do the work, so they call the private companies who tell them “sorry, we’re too busy with everyone else”.
Bottom line is that cost-cutting maneuvers are probably responsible for this kind of stuff. When the cost-cutting is to add to the profits of an investor-owned company, especially when it is a public utility, then I think that there should be hell to pay when there is such an epic failure of their business model.
A number of people died because of lack of power. If it had happened a couple of months later, I bet the number would have been much, much higher.
and I don’t claim that it’s the right move for every town or even every portion of a town. I believe you could put a rider on bills, so that would solve the direct “no money” problem, albeit in the form of a new tax. Still, for low density communities, it takes a long time just to get enough money for a single project. It’s possible that there might be some, ahem, low hanging fruit — a few miles of buried wire which might reduce risk for a decent percent of local residents and businesses, but obviously that’s the kind of detailed analysis that blogs weren’t created for. So, it isn’t “prohibitively” expensive, but it is dang expensive.
As for private vs. public trees, I’m not sure how much that matters. Does NGrid et al not have the right to trim private trees when those trees create a public hazard?
the public v. private trees. That’s what a WMECO representative said in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. (I can’t find the particular link).
I believe the town owns from the middle of the road out 25 feet. That gives about 14 or 15 feet into someone’s yard.
The problem, however, is deciding when something’s a hazard. I have an 80 ft. tree in my front yard. Is that a hazard if there’s a hurricane? Is every branch that can fall on power lines a public hazard? Even if it’s healthy? How about every tree? I think it becomes a matter of cost-benefit analysis.
Today is the first day I’ve seen a National Grid bucket truck and they are clear on the other side of town. This is day 4 with no power. This is an emergency situation and it’s being handled as if there is no crisis whatsoever. I received a text message from National Grid on Sunday saying power would be restored later that day or early morning on Monday. Today is Wednesday, and still no trucks on our street. You would think, with the scope of this disaster, and it is a disaster, they would be calling in trucks from all over the country. If a class action lawsuit is filed, I will most definitely be joining in. I may just call a lawyer myself.
What I learned about the National Grid trucks working clear across town yesterday is that they fixed one street. If they have one crew fixing one street per day, this will take months. I am happy to hear that Govenor Patrick has put some pressure on the utility companies to pick up the pace. Thank You for that Governor Patrick, and please keep the pressure on. This is a desperate situation for all of us. I am one of the lucky ones. I have a wood stove and a generator that we are using to run the fridge for a few hours a day (although I will say that I question the quality of the food since it has been five days of intermittent power to the fridge.) What we don’t have it running water. About two days ago I reached the end of my tolerance of that. I’ve always been big on handwashing and it’s hard to eat and cook without running water. Please let us have power back today. http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/11/gov_patrick_other_officials_sh.html
…there are trucks on the street. Not National Grid but another company that I wasn’t able to identify. So no power as I left the house to seek the WWW and to get take out for dinner again. Hopefully power by the time I get back home. Spent a lot of money during this crisis. It’s been a devastating experience. I was handling it OK until day 4. There needs to be changes made so this never happens again.
Yes, major storms will lash Massachusetts, both inland and along the coast. Power outages will always be with us.
The question however is this: Has the Commonwealth done everything possible through the regulatory process, the Mass. DPU in this case, to demand that utilities in the state do what is necessary to provide the fewest outages overtime. In specific, has the Patrick Administration through its appointees to DPU, or otherwise, addressed the clear instances of repeated outage restoration failures by the utilities in the state? The answer, just as clearly, is no.
Take a look at the Patrick-appointed Commissioners of DPU. All three are highly qualified professionals in the area of energy policy, facility siting, and alternative energy. All great stuff. None of it involves consumer protection.
Not one sitting DPU Commissioner appointed by Governor Patrick has any background in consumer protection, ratepayer advocacy, or the like.
Governor Patrick has a great record on green power and clean energy. On understanding utility operations from the perspective of consumers facing repeated restoration failures, not so much. Believe me, the utilities like it just fine that way.
The Governor’s treatment of UNITIL (Fitchburg area) several years back was terrific. UNITIL is the perennial sick man of utilities in the state. Western Mass. Electric is a close second. What lessons did the Governor’s DPU take from the UNITIL reform effort and apply them to other utility operations? Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer.
It is time for the Governor to move beyond the next press release when it comes to regulating PUBLIC utilities in the Commonwealth. He can show us he is serious by appointing a real life consumer advocate to the DPU. He can remember the tough stance he took with UNITIL and now go looking for answers with the other utilities for their continued operational failures.
But I have no energy to jump for joy about it. I am exhausted and sick to my stomach. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but knew that today would be my last day trying to tough it out. Many of the hotels in the area are either full or without power. I tried to book an affordable one a few days ago with no luck. My current plan was to leave the area, maybe head south to the Carolina’s for a few day. Now I don’t have to do that.
I still have love ones without power. I hope they get it back soon.
This has been a devastating experience that I don’t ever want to have to relive. Something has to be done and soon to prevent this from happening again. I think Governor Patrick should step forward and make it a priority during the rest of his years as governor.
was from Chattanooga Tennessee. A grateful Thank You to all the teams that traveled hundreds of miles to help us. These men and women are working hard to get everyone powered up safely. Our house was inspected by a utility crew at 12:30 am on Saturday morning. The light shining at the house lit up the bedroom and woke me up. It was comforting to know they were being so careful. The crews seem to be very professional and very cautious with regard to safety.
I’m very disgruntled with National Grid’s slow effort to get the teams here. They failed miserably during this crisis. I agree that it’s time to clear the trees. Many of the trees that line Rte 32 are old and decaying. It’s time to get rid of them and plant new for the next generations. It’s time to replace line poles too. I’m speculating that the ones that split in two should probably have been replaced years ago.
According to The Globe, we should apparently all be thankful:
Perhaps The Globe could look into the editor outage down on Morrissey Blvd.