The Boston Globe offers a great example of how politicians work hard on behalf of suffering citizens:
“Amid growing public outcry over protracted power outages, Governor Deval Patrick said he had lost patience with the state’s electric companies, while the state’s leading prosecutor said her office would seek an investigation of the utilities’ performance in responding to last weekend’s snowstorm.” (full story (behind paywall))
In our Boston suburb of about 2,000 households there were at least 100 power lines knocked down by trees and tree limbs. Towns farther west were hit much harder by the recent storm. I do wonder what the government investigation will conclude. That a typical family, using ordinary household tools, cannot remove a tree from a live power line?
[Related to some earliest stories in this blog: The same issue of the Globe carries a story about how one of Massachusetts’s 200 public housing authorities pays its manager, Michael McLaughlin, $360,000 per year and will be saddling taxpayers with the obligation to pay him a $278,842 per year pension for the rest of his life. The authority, in Chelsea, has 1,415 apartments.]
Question: are electricity companies required by their contract, or by law, to upkeep the infrastructure? and what kind of requirement are they under? it is perfectly possible that they are contractually or legally obliged to remedy any fault such as ‘tree knocked power line down’ immediately and no matter the weather, and it’s also pretty possible they might have decided to save in costs for such emergency leaving you, the good people of Massachusetts without electricity.
Unless the contractual and/or legal requirements on the electricity companies are provided how can we hav an informed opinion on the reasonableness of Mr patrick’s actions?
I’m jus’ sayin’
I have always been baffled by politicians expression of frustration. Who cares? But they keep getting re-elected. The things worth investigating are whether sufficient maintenance was done. Many utilities have been increasing their profits by reducing maintenance. When they have to do emergency repairs they can charge for that too.
Federico: The kind of contract that you mention (“no matter the weather”) would surely be enforceable just as long as you could get God to be one of the signatories.
Matt: I suppose that it is possible the utilities were skimping on maintenance. Perhaps it was something as simple as they neglected to plug in the deflector shields that were supposed to keep 8-ton oak trees from contacting the cables.
oak trees, of various tonnage, can be cut down in advance, and their path of most probable fall be predicted. You still gotta do that though.
Do monopolies granted by the people have to operate in the public trust? Does that trust need to be explored from time to time?
I now live in Brooklyn so large oak trees aren’t an issue. When I lived in the burbs though if the power companies tried to cut all those majestic trees (near the power lines) everyone would scream bloody murder. Buried cables don’t work in the NE because of the salt in the winter so that option is out. I always thought that break away cables between the poles would be a solution but I think all the couplings would bring down the efficiency of power delivery.
Federico: Cut down all of the trees in advance? Our suburb has above-ground powerlines on almost every street. Most of the town is pretty woodsy. I did a quick count of the trees along the powerlines in front of some houses. There were about 25 sizable (more than 50′ high) trees per house that, if blown down, would take out the power. I guess they could be removed at a cost of maybe $25,000 per household, but the power company doesn’t have the right to do it, much less a requirement to do so. I suppose that the power companies would be happy to cut down most of the trees near houses in Massachusetts because electricity consumption would go way up in summer (less shading of windows and roofs).
Mikek: It is possible that the electric utilities should be investigated from time to time, but I’m not sure how that relates to a freak once-per-100-years weather event (heavy snow falling at a time when the trees were still in full leaf). It would have been nice if our politicians had investigated Fannie Mae and AIG before they bankrupted the United States. Instead, however, they are trying to figure out why NSTAR couldn’t keep the trees from falling.
Smart politicians would not go on a witch hunt against the utilities; they would ask themselves how they could have organised the utilities to work with (basically trained) emergency services personnel and volunteers to get the job done.
I see that chopping down trees is not in the MIT curriculum. Trees do not just simply ‘fall’, they do so in a way that any logger could predict with the accuracy of 20 degrees tops. Making a tree fall outside it’s normal falling path is actually a very skilled job. Having said that, electricity company X could pay someone to (1) check which of the bazillions of trees are a risk for the lines, and (2) cut them or prune them so that their fall path is not going to take down a power line. This procedure is going to affect fraction X of the Y trees of any given area, and gives the information whether the area needs underground cabling at all (say X == y, and Y is too big). Privates whose trees trees could affect the lines would most likely welcome an assessment and a removal, if in case — and the most stubborn and stupid could be threatened with legal action if they refuse to take remedial measures.
All the above require plan and preparation, and costs money, but does not exceed the realms of what people can do. Whether the companies in question did it, and should have done it in view of their legal and contractual obligations is not clear so far.
Be careful what you ask for. When I lived in Florida a few years ago, power companies caught flak from politicians after a hurricane. They spent the next few years on a wicked cutting spree, butchering everyone’s trees in advance. Similar story in Pennsylvania– 30′ pine trees removed as a preventative measure, even though they were still fully below the wires. The PA power company rep claimed the government had passed some law forcing them to do it. Maybe they were bullshitting me, but maybe not. After all, it had to cost the power company some money to take down those trees.
Curious though– Driving past the country club, I’ve noticed their trees have been spared the butchering. Do you live in a very wealthy suburb, Phil? Perhaps that’s what protected your trees from the power company thus far.
Jim: I do live among the Millionaires for Obama and houses in our town are generally $500,000+. But we’re not the only folks with trees in Massachusetts. The system is simply not engineered to handle a once-every-100-years weather event without some pain.
Listening to Uncontrolled Airspace podcast this morning, it seems your fellow New England resident and host of the show, Jack Hodgson, doesn’t believe these to be “once-every-100-years weather events” anymore, more like an annual event.
Time to bite the bullet and spend the money to burry the cables?