Letter From County Executive Ike Leggett To Pepco
Jul 30, 2010 13:48 - 3 Comments
Ike Leggett
Now that the massive and widespread power outages are behind most (but not all) of us, it’s appropriate to begin looking at why they happened, and what can be done to mitigate them moving forward.
Montgomery County County Executive Ike Leggett has written an open letter to Pepco CEO Joseph M. Rigby that is worth reading:
Dear Mr. Rigby:
On Sunday, July 25 at approximately 3:20 p.m. a line of severe thunderstorms passed through the Baltimore/Washington region. As a result of those storms, over 219,000 of PEPCO”s 302,000 customers in Montgomery County lost power.
While I understand the size of the storm was considerable and the damage extensive, I am at a loss to explain to County residents and business owners why PEPCO took so long to mobilize sufficient contractors to assist in restoring service to its many customers, some of whom, as of today, still have no service.
I assumed that PEPCO, like the County, has pre-established mutual aid agreements with regional utilities and independent contractors whose resources can be mobilized quickly in situations such as what we are experiencing. I also expected a significant increase in resources to have been mobilized sooner instead of hearing that they were just arriving Tuesday, nearly two full days after the storm hit and the extensive damage was clear to you.
Further, there is little acceptable explanation why current conditions exist for PEPCO, and not for utilities servicing adjacent jurisdictions. The storms that we experienced on Sunday were region-wide and BG&E and Allegheny Power have had nowhere near the outages being experienced in the PEPCO service area (see enclosed
map).This causes me to draw a number of conclusions:
- PEPCO’s preventive maintenance and tree trimming programs need review and revision;
- PEPCO’s contracting and operational procedures and practices for bringing additional resources to bear in emergency situations need reconsideration;
- PEPCO was unable to communicate useful and accurate information in a timely way to customers; and
- Practices regarding coordinating activities with the County under these kinds of emergencies need improvement.
Montgomery County will continue to cooperate in whatever way necessary to coordinate with PEPCO’s efforts. Still, Montgomery County is not in the business of distributing electrical power. That is PEPCO’s responsibility - and County residents and businesses deserve much better and more reliable service than we are receiving. Many of our residents have suffered great inconvenience and sometimes life-threatening problems due to the extended outages. Meanwhile, many of our businesses have suffered significant losses at a time when they can ill afford to. The unreliability of your service must be addressed.
Given the experience of the February winter storms and this most recent emergency, I am sure there are “best practices” available from which PEPCO can benefit. I look forward to reviewing your post-incident analysis and how you plan to make system improvements and changes to your operating practices to improve system reliability.
Plainly put, the status quo is unacceptable.
By copy of this letter to the Governor and the Public Service Commission, I am also seeking their assistance in ensuring that Montgomery County residents and businesses are better served by a public utility on which they are completely dependent for vital and sometimes life saving services.
In addition, I am convening a work group of Montgomery County residents and businesses that will be exploring the explanations for the poor service we receive and options for improvements. I am hopeful that we will be able to depend on PEPCO staff’s assistance in the work of this group.
Sincerely,
Isiah Leggett County Executive
The “attachment” referred to in the letter in below:
Current Outages (7/29/2010) - Click to enlarge
While it was pretty inconvenient for us to be out of power for nearly 48 hours after last Sunday’s storm, to be realistic, when help was called in from out of state immediately after the storm, how realistic is it to expect trucks to be driven from Ohio and Pennsylvania and be put into service in just hours? It takes time for other workers to stock up and mobilize and drive from there to here, even from say Harrisburg, a 2-hour drive AFTER being called in and stocking up and tanking up or Philly (3+ hours) assuming no travel on roads blocked by trees and wires down.
Not sure how feasible it would be to bury power lines. In the event that repair would be needed on buried lines, repair would take longer and be more expensive; witness the work needed on our water system. I’d need more information before joining the call for buried lines.
Totally agree that tree maintenance could be better and coordination with other local agencies could be vastly improved; Mayor Fenty in DC was telling of troubles getting PEPCO to turn off power to downed lines so DC workers could safely cut and remove fallen trees for far too long. The downed lines across the Metro tracks yesterday in Silver Spring took a very long time to resolve.
Hoping to hear back from PEPCO on this for sure. One would think that more lessons had been learned from the power outages this past Winter, but it’s not looking to have been the case.
WSSC is what I do not understand. I get a quarterly bill, not monthly like PEPCO and yet WSSC charges me $11.00 for account maintenance and $7.50 for bay restoration. Without these two charges my bill to about $22.00. (40% lower) No other utility seems to needs this large of a fee base for even monthly bills.
PEPCO should invest the resources necessary to bury it’s lines, so that the wind will not affect power reliabiltiy. This is the Digital Age, and power outages are not acceptable from a utility/monopoly.