Politics & Government

Legislature Convenes Irene Hearing

The General Assembly today is hearing testimony on the state's response to the historic storm.

CL&P’s response to Tropical Storm Irene was “appropriate and strong” and the utility company was able to restore power to all its customers ahead of schedule after the storm, Jeff Butler, CL&P’s president told state lawmakers Monday.

“In nine days we safely restored as many outages as we normally do in 11 months,” Butler testified during the morning session of a daylong hearing before a legislative panel on the state’s response to Irene.

Butler’s testimony lead off the hearing. As it progresses throughout the day the forum will feature testimony from other electrical suppliers, including municipal utility companies, town leaders and cable and telephone providers on the overall response to Irene.

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As he said in the days during and directly after the storm, which struck the state on Aug. 28, Butler reiterated that the storm was the most damaging CL&P has experienced in its 100 year history and the outages from it were the most widespread that the company has ever had to address.

CL&P spent six days before the storm getting ready for Irene and spent nine days after cleaning up from it.

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Most of the nearly 800,000 customer outages from the storm were the result of line damage from trees and Butler said that going forward CL&P needs to work with local and state officials on an advanced tree clearing initiative. He said the damage to poles and wires mostly came from trees that were well outside of CL&P’s normal “trim zone,” trees that lie on private property and his company can’t cut or trim without permission. The state, along with the utility, needs to figure out how to deal with that issue for future storms, he added.

“The majority of trees were not trees from along power lines,” said Sen. Joan Hartley, D-Waterbury. “I think it’s something we really have to deal with. We are the most treed state in this country.”

Hartley and other lawmakers also questioned how long it took CL&P to get out-of-state crews dispatched to work areas. They said many constituents complained about delays of up to 24 hours in getting some crews assigned to work sites.

“I was hearing from people who said to me things like ‘How long does it take these replacement workers to get dispatched?’ ” Hartley said.

Butler said a 24-hour delay was “highly unlikely” and that crews from other states generally were on the job by 5 a.m. the day after arriving in the state and went through at least a 1.5-hour safety briefing and then breakfast before being sent out to a work.

“Every employee who worked for CL&P did an outstanding job,” he said.

Despite the company’s response to the storm, Butler said he realizes that many people, including town leaders, were upset about the amount and detail of information from CL&P on when power would be restored to their areas. Part of the problem, Butler said, was translating his company’s circuitry data into street-by-street updates on restoration.

The company, he said, will develop a system to make those translations easier so the company can provide information faster and with greater detail during and after future storms.

James Torgerson, chairman and CEO of United Illuminating, said his company intends to spend upward of $15 million to improve its communication systems to provide more concise and timely data to customers during outages. UI, which provides electricity in the southwestern part of the state, had 158,000 customers without power during the height of Irene, nearly half of its customer base, Torgerson said.

The hearing before the legislature’s Energy & Technology, Public Safety, Labor and Public Employees, and Planning & Development committees is one of two hearings scheduled for this week. The committees will host a second hearing on Monday, Sept. 26, where the public will be invited to speak.

Sen. Majority Leader John Fonfara, D-Hartford, said the hearings would help  the legislature develop policy for the state to better deal with future storms.

“This isn’t just for show. We need to develop better policy because there will be another storm,” Fonfara said.

The hearings represent the first time the General Assembly has utilized social media in its proceedings. The committees are inviting the public to send comments and questions via Facebookand Twitter throughout the hearings.

Those sites were already garnering comments before the hearing started Monday morning, including this one on Facebook from user Allison Scotti Waddington:

“We lost power on Sun. Aug. 28 11AM & it wasn't restored until Tue Sept 6 11AM. Ten days. I live in the middle of the state where there wasn't much more than a windstorm. A loss of power for me also means no running water. We had no telephone either. My complaint is with CL&P. I was patient for 7 days. I called them daily and sent requests in through my iPhone. All they told us is that our info had been passed onto the crews. After a week we stopped to talk to crews on the road and questioned them. They told us they did not have instructions OR our specific address & to call CL&P again.”


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