Con Ed Restores (Most) Power But It's Still "Con Dead" to Queens

At 4AM this morning, Con Ed said that most of Queens had its power. About one hundred or so customers are still without power and "some restored customers may experience lower than normal voltage conditions or sporadic outages as crews reinforce the area’s power cable system" (or power being totally knocked out again), but other than that, things are sort of back to normal. Which means the lawsuits can begin: The mother of a feverish 2 year old is suing because the hospital told her to feed cool drinks and ice cream to bring down the 102 fever, but with the blackout, that couldn't happen!

All the papers are wondering why Mayor Bloomberg defended Con Ed so strongly, in the face of alienating the Queens community (the Post suggested brain blacked out). The NY Sun points out that Mayors Koch and Giuliani have sued Con Ed in the past, but Mayor Bloomberg probably won't, as he thinks there's "not a lot we can do" about blackouts. Say what? How about developing an infrastructure to enable Con Ed to avoid these kinds of problems? If Con Ed can't go turn off power to a removed street lamp after the Department of Transportation tells it the lamp's gone, which ended up killing a dog...

The Observer talks to a few pundits, and a professor at Columbia University, Steven Cohen, thinks that "since Con Ed is a regulated utility and there is no alternative company for delivering the city’s electricity, the city had no choice but to make the best of the situation." But if Con Ed is the only resource, then you have nothing to lose by questioning its abilities (though maybe it's not the motivational way to go about it). At any rate, Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke still doesn't know what caused the problem.

The NY Times has an excellent article about how Queens neighborhoods affected by this blackout frequently have feeder cable failures by looking at Con Ed's records with the state: The "Long Island City network" had 71 cable failures in 2005, for a total of 3,039 hours.

Photograph of Con Ed workers earlier this week from Tina Fineberg/AP

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By Jen Chung in News on July 26, 2006 11:06 AM

Comments [rss]

simon

tg, couldn't agree more.

Daniel Millstone

Now power outages are popping up in Staten Island. But Mayor Bloomberg shouldn't worry -- it's not the upper East Side in the dark.

tg

Clearly ConEd has some serious, serious problems going on, but when it comes to how to handle the situation I'm going to go with a guy who built and ran a billion dollar corporation before I'd listen to business advice from NY Post columnists or local city councilmen. They are all populists and will say whatever they think people expect them to. And yes I lost my power too (though not for the whole 8-9 days).

tom

bob,

They may have 4 power plants as you say, but there were no problem with the plants, its getting that power out to local communities that is the problem. Queens is growing extremely quickly, they are going to need to get some large infrastructure and substation projects through to meet the demand as this blackout proves. fortunately for the city those plants you speak of were built at a time when people realized they need to make compromises for everyones good, otherwise we would have to discuss generation issues as well. btw, bob i love how you keep the conversation on such a intellectual level.

dan Selzer

most of Queens is unsightly enough, who's gonna say "oh, those power lines detract from the natural beauty that is Major Chevy on Northern Blvd, or the delightful scenery that is the elevated 7 line that keeps Roosevelt Avenue cloaked in shadows and dripping in subway drippings". I'm sorry, as a recent convert to Queens, all I can say is, you don't move here for the scenery.

Jeebus

oops. sorry

Jeebus

Tom is correct. That is exactly how most communities would react to any proposal to expand power lines, substations, etc. No one wants it in their backyard, but of course they’d love the benefits.

“Ohhh but the power lines are unsightly and they bring down our property values, not to mention our quality of life” It’s the same shit, over and over all over this country.

Jeebus

Tom is correct. That is exactly how most communities would react to any proposal to expand power lines, substations, etc.

“Ohhh but the power lines are unsightly and they bring down our property values, not to mention our quality of life” It’s the same shit really.

bill brasky

I'd like to say that while they may have complained about the substations, these are also the people who, despite objection, are living in the literal shadow of Con Ed and still have a week plus of black outs.

tom

while i feel badly for what people had to go through and I am no apologist for con ed, these are also the same people who complain every time the city or con ed wants to put a substation or backup gas generation in an area and say not in my backyard. the use of power is going up as queens expands in population and people use more power hungry items. its quite a problem for both sides, but these community groups are really going to have to stop fighting infrastructure changes.

Automocar

I'm glad that my power is back on and all, but nothing has changed at ConEd. This morning I witnessed seven workers standing around eating and smoking while one guy dug a hole. If this is indictative of the way they work, perhaps the power could have been back on last week if they had actually started working on the problem before Friday. Or maybe not.