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Shocked city councilors demand independent oversight of NStar transformers
By adamg on Fri, 05/11/2012 - 8:43am
At a hearing next week, Boston councilors will demand answers from NStar on two recent transformer problems in the Back Bay, one of which left much of the neighborhood without power for several days.
Council President Steve Murphy says he wants more than just soothing words from the utility - he wants somebody independent of the company to start monitoring the way it delivers power in Boston.
"I, for one, have a difficult time believing that we can't do better than allow NStar to inspect their own equipment and just tell us that, wink, nod, everything is OK," he said at the council meeting at which he called for the hearing, after the March blackout but before this week's blackout.
"It's not like we could decide tomorrow that we're going to get our electricity from Chicago Power and Light," Murphy said. "We're stuck with who we're stuck with, and we have to make sure that there's a way that we can take at face value what they say will be accurate, because, when you think about it, how many different people were impacted, how was the city impacted?"
Councilor Tito Jackson (Roxbury), agreed, and said any independent inspection should include a look at backup, because the transformer that was supposed to take over for the transformer that caught fire was in the same building. "We are a major American city and much of our city was offline for close to four to five days. That can't be something that we stand for in the future."
Councilor Charles Yancey (Dorchester, Mattapan), said he was particularly struck by NStar CEO Thomas May's "dismissive" tone in comments about efforts by Mayor Menino to get the company to compensate residents and businesses for blackout losses.
The hearing, before the Committee on City, Neighborhood and Veteran Affairs, starts at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 18 in the council's fifth-floor chambers. NStar and the heads of Boston's public-safety departments have been asked to attend.
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Comments
Did it really take two blown
Did it really take two blown transformers for the city council to realize Nstar is a horrible monopoly that never does proper work on its own lines/transformers and grossly overcharges people?
What about the fact that when the first transformer blew and they acted as if it wasn't their own negligence that caused it and refused to pay money to the restaurants that lost thousands of dollars of refrigerated food and days worth of business, or any of the thousands of other residents / businesses in the area that were directly affected by Nstar's bullshit
Like the councilor said, Boston is a major American city and aside from all of the other problems caused it is just downright embarrassing to have such poorly managed infrastructure. It's not just the electricity, either... internet (which is now a necessity for most jobs) is also monopolized and provided in an extremely backwards manner even though Verizon wanted to bring Fios to Boston. Big construction projects still get bids from mafia/unions and cost way more than they should, and usually the company buying the building gets such a huge tax break from Massachusetts that the only people losing out are taxpayers. Road repair in Boston and all of Mass is a joke (much like the rest of the East Coast), the MBTA is an even bigger joke and everything only seems to be getting worse.
National security issue
You really want to talk about a national security issue, then we really need to take a step back and look at what the privatizing of essential infrastructure has done in terms of our ability to respond to both forces of nature, and to possible sabotage.
Think of the millions of dollars in lose economic revenue caused by the shutdown of one substation in the back bay. It might not be as panic inducing as a bomber in the prudential mall; but now imagine if fires were set in multiple substations through out the city?
Take 3-4 offline and the city could be dead for months.
It amazes me we don't frame these issues in these terms.
Especially when it's becoming painfully apparent that private capital, in a near monopoly markets, see's no benefit in making large capital improvements in the infrastructure that was handed over to them.
They'd rather charge more when demand goes down, and let ice storms and system failures dictate their maintenance schedules.
One substation fire taking out 1/2 of Boston or the yearly coming of the flying manhole covers is not acceptable, especially when granting near monopoly status to a private company.
I'm glad to see this
This appears to have galvanized the City Council. Could be an electrifying hearing. Sounds like Murphy's pretty amped up over the issue, although I'm not sure that the Council, as an institution, has enough juice to make anything happen. At least your coverage of this story is generating a little interest. I'm sure you'll get static from the usual naysayers.
I've alternating on whether to comment
On the current situation.
Get off the fence
It's time to rectify your indifference.
Don't resist
We all have the capacitance for humor on this site.
While we're at it, could we
While we're at it, could we get an independent assessment of the Boston public schools? How about BPD?
We can expect perfection from the power company. From the city, not so much.
It's not about perfection
It's about accountability. If the schools or police protection do a terrible job, we can blame our elected officials and vote in ones who will do a better job. If our "public" utilities screw up, what is our recourse? We can *blame* NStar, sure - but they're not accountable to us, they're accountable to their shareholders. That gives them little motivation to do the maintenance work that would result in lower profits and improved service performance.
They're accountable to their customers, too.
What does the contract say? What is the extent of NStar's liability if they fail to provide power? Rather than rant about it, has anyone actually RTFM?
Yup, sure
Just like the big dig contractors?
Cause everyone can just unplug from the grid. No need for power. we'll show them!
Last time I checked this is a company that raises rates when demand for their product goes down, to make up revenue for shareholders. That's one giant bolt from the blue tipping you off that they are not a normal player, but a monopoly.
But yeah it is a good question. As far as I know, through lobbying and changes, most utilities don't have (appropriate) liabilities written into their contracts anymore. When no one was looking, the laws were changed, in the name of profits.
Irene and the Ice storms have a lot of Massachusetts municipalities looking to go back to town based light departments, because they are held accountable, and frequently don't put off repairs, maintenance and tree trimming.
I do agree though, Government and the DA needs to start pushing contracts with very clear standards, expectations and punishments; for government granted monopolies and government granted contracts. You fuck up, the entire wrath of the AG should be coming down on your for compensation or to fix the issue. Too often contractors are low balling bids to get contracts and then producing unacceptable and shoddy work. Or utilities are skirting maintenance and upgrades to pump more money to shareholders.
You want to reduce gov spending, lets hold these people accountable for shoddy work and fleecing public / private spending.