Petition to the New York State Public Service Commission

From the Residents (and friends and relatives) of Eatons Neck regarding PSEG Electric Service

“Clear The Trees or Bury The Lines – Enough!”

TO: Michelle Phillips

Secretary to Commission

3 Empire State Plaza

Albany, NY 12223

 

FROM: The Residents and Homeowners of Eatons Neck  

Contact: John J Ballow or Christine G Ballow

24 Essex Drive

Eatons Neck NY 11768

631 261 3391

 

We are the Residents of the Greater Eatons Neck Community located in the Town of Huntington, NY.

 

We are petitioning PSC for their assistance to help resolve PSEGLI’s inability to provide safe, continuous electricity to our community. PSEG has admitted, and PSC has confirmed, that we experience “more than normal” momentary outages throughout the year, and because of our location on the North Shore of Long Island we experience high frequency of storm damage from our exposure to high winds.

PSC (and PSEG) will quickly find numerous ongoing complaints about outages, flashes, phase outs, overvoltage, spikes and other unsafe power supply conditions in this area. This petition is a result of our latest storm damage and PSEG’s response. On the evening of Feb 3 at around 8:30pm, as temperatures were dropping to 4 degrees and winds gusted to around 70 mph, yet another unkept tree along Eatons Neck Road (aka Asharoken Ave) snapped near the base and took out the primaries that power over 700 homes, the live wires caused a brush fire and the fallen tree blocked the road – the only road in and out, for our residents, but more importantly for our emergency responders, fire fighters and EMT Ambulance Corp. PSEG quickly alerted via their text system that they were aware of the outage 8:37 and quickly provided an initial power restoration of 10:30 and then a now laughable series of 10 restoration updates with power eventually restored at 12:07pm Saturday Feb 4– a mis-estimate of OVER 15 HOURS!  

 

We understand emergency repairs in foul weather are difficult to estimate, but missing the initial estimate by 15 hours? And updates that misestimated it 6 times? As temperatures dropped to 4 degrees …Come on.

 

Our community has sadly become used to having backup generators as a way of life for those of us who can operate them, but because so many expected the power to be restored as per PSEG text times – many elected to wait it out and those residents without generators had no recourse other than to wait and watch their homes freeze. We have no natural gas lines here so electricity is our only source of power. We estimate at least half of the 700+ homes had frozen water pipes or frozen heating zones, with the resulting burst pipes, water damage, and the plumbing repair and damage restoration bills that followed. And residents were trapped on Eatons Neck Road unable to get to their homes and children for hours until the tree was cleared and power lines made safe to reopen the road.

 

Now – we can all agree this is bad and that storm damage occurs – the issue is (and this is where we need PSC’s help) that this is not really uncommon here and the majority of the instances occur along the same 1 mile stretch of Eatons Neck Road from Bevin Rd to North Creek Road, where PSEGLI has their power supply lines to these 700+ homes running through a forest! The lines run through the Old Morgan Estate, the trees are old and not maintained by the current owner, they tower over our power lines and one by one either decay or a gust of wind takes them down, killing our electric service and disabling our only access road. The same is true for the adjacent trees along both sides of the roadbed – those trees are neglected and have also been the cause of previous outages.

 

PSEG claims to us that they are limited in how far from the lines they can trim and how frequently they can trim back or take down trees. We assert that PSEG has not properly maintained this area and if they cannot maintain continuous electric service through the neglected woods they have their lines in, then they need to either 1) clear an adequate path and remove trees to a safe distance from the lines, 2) move the service out of the woods they cannot control, to the other side of the street perhaps or 3) better yet BURY THE LINES in that area. Burying lines is not unprecedented in this area, feeder lines to us along Asharoken Ave in the Village of Asharoken were buried, and additional secondary feed lines along a different route were run after the 1992 Storm damage to the PSEG service lines.

 

 PSEG’s neglect is putting their own emergency repair crews at risk and causing continuous harm to our community.  

 

The irony here is that we are 4 miles from PSEG’s Northport Power Plant – one of the largest on the east coast, that the rates we pay are some of highest in the nation and in the last few years PSEG’s tax avoidance maneuvers now has us paying their previous fair share of State, Local and School Taxes.

 

We have requested that PSEG assign an individual to address the community in person about the cause of these issues and their proposed solution – to date PSEG has not responded.

 

We petition the PSC to get involved and assist us in assessing the momentary outages, storm outages, tree failures, safety issues and power supply routing options in that area, and expediting PSEGLI in implementing an effective solution.  ENOUGH !

 

Exhibit PSEG Texts;

Text 8:37pm Restoration 10:30pm

Text 10:06pm Restoration 1:30am

Text 10:21pm Restoration 10:30

Text 10:36pm Restoration 12:30am

Text 4:50am Restoration 7:00am

Text 6:52am Restoration 12:00pm

Text 7:03am Restoration 12:00pm

Text 9:15am Restoration 12:00pm

Text 11:31am Restoration 12:00pm

Text 11:46am Restoration 2:00pm

Text 12:06pm Restoration 2:00pm

Text 12:20pm Restoration 12:07