The
Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) has put forth a scathing report on PSEG Long
Island’s botched response to Tropical Storm Isaias that left thousands across
Long Island in the dark for days.
LIPA
says the power company had major management problems and knew its telephone and
automated outage-reporting system was faulty.
“PSEG
Long Island's failures during Tropical Storm Isaias could have been avoided,”
according to LIPA CEO Tom Falcone. “LIPA customers deserve top-notch management
and first-class customer service.”
Among
the "significant findings" in the report were:
- Voice
communications failed outright.
- Faulty
estimated times of restoration misled the public.
- Many
system defects remain uncorrected 90-days after Isaias.
Now
the power authority is demanding PSEG Long Island make changes in the next 90
days.
State
Sen. Todd Kaminsky says LIPA’s demands are well deserved since little has
changed at PSEG Long Island. He adds LIPA now must either renegotiate its
contract with the utility or find another company to run the power grid on Long
Island.
“The
most damming part of this report, and should concern every Long Islander, is
that if there was another outage today, PSEG couldn’t manage it any better than
they did back in August,” he says.
In a
statement sent to News 12, PSEG Long Island says, “We remain fully committed to
understanding what went wrong and continue to improve our organization and our
systems to avoid similar failures in future storms.”