Yet another Con Edison power outage

In New York City, where Con Ed’s boast that it provides the most reliable system in the country provokes raucous laughter, the energy company has lived up to its reputation. On June 27, the second day the temperature went over 90 degrees, the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the South Bronx lost power for 45 minutes.

John F. Miksad, Con Ed’s senior vice president for electric operations, told the New York Times that the power outage was caused by a lightning strike, a “very rare event.” He did admit that it was possible to take measures against such events but didn’t say that Con Ed had.

This was after Con Ed supposedly spent $90 million to fix the problems that caused an 10-day outage last summer in the areas of Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside and Long Island City in Queens, which caused major disruptions in the lives of the more than 200,000 people it services in that area. The State Public Service Commission concluded in February that Con Ed’s performance in last year’s crisis was ‘’unacceptable and a gross disservice to its customers.’’

It was also after Con Edison asked for an 11.1 percent rate increase—really a 17 percent increase for residential customers—that would bring it more than $1 billion a year.

Politicians swiftly ran to press conferences after this latest outage. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who staunchly defended Con Ed last summer, defended it again. He said it was “a minor inconvenience to people” because “the power came back on in 15 minutes.”

Actually, power was cut for more than 45 minutes and subway lines—which hundreds of thousands of workers use to go home—were severely disrupted. Some, whose commute is normally one hour, spent more than three getting home.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer chimed in the next day, saying, ‘’We are quite confident we will be ready for this summer.’’

Some of the local politicians were harsher. ‘’Their word over the last year has proven not to be worth very much,’’ said Michael N. Gianaris, an assemblyperson from Queens. ‘’Their history is to obfuscate.’’ He also referred to smaller outages that hit Queens after the big one on June 27 that also were caused by lightning.

“Apparently their system is to wait for a blackout to happen and then make improvements,” said Queens Councilperson Peter Vallone Jr.

Western Queens Power for the People (www.powerforthepeople.info), an organization that sprang up after last year’s outage, is organizing a flashlight march July 17. The march will tell Con Edison “Accept responsibility for last year’s outage! Pay us what you owe us! No 17 percent rate hike (use your $12 billion profits for upgrades).”