Infrastructure Failure

Southeastern Connecticut was spared the worst of this October Nor'easter that knocked out power to over 800,000 Connecticut Light & Power customers. In Colchester, it was a close call with major tree damage and power outages to the immediate north and west. My lights stayed on this time. That good fortune was not lost on me, thanks to the recent memories of the six day outage caused by Tropical Storm Irene two months earlier. For CL&P and other area utilities, these two events made for a one-two punch. Connecticut's biggest power provider has taken a lot of criticism over its speed at restoring service, but officials in Massachusetts and New Jersey are also calling for investigations into restoration delays. For CL&P, issues over payments to out-of-state repair crews were not resolved before the storm, apparently adding to the delays. Since Connecticut has more forests and less utility workers than several decades ago, planners had no reason to be surprised when the last two storms brought record power outages. Are we really saving money cutting back on line maintenance when overgrown trees crash down on wires and disrupt millions of lives already in the middle of a troubled economy? This is as much of a wakeup call as a bridge collapse. It speaks volumes about the state of our infrastructure. We can pay for prevention now or disaster relief later.