Politics & Government

Blumenthal and Murphy: Delegates Seeking Federal Investigation into CL&P

Officials at the local, state and federal level express frustration over slow response time to restore power to the Farmington Valley after the late October snowstorm.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and congressional delegates are seeking a federal investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state of Connecticut into Connecticut Light and Power’s slow response to restore power all of Connecticut after the Oct. 29 snowstorm, the Farmington Valley in particular.

About 90 percent of the region remains in the dark, U.S. Congressman Chris Murphy (D-5) said.

“FERC has the responsibility to restore the integrity and safety of lines and grids that provide power to the state of Connecticut,” Blumenthal told the media in the Avon Police Department, where the Avon emergency operation center is located. “Many of the lines down were in fact within federal authority, so there should be and I believe will be a federal investigation coupled with perhaps a state inquiry, the two should go together and ensure steps are taken to prevent this kind of delay...and complete inadequate timeline in response from happening again.”

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CL&P still projects restoring power to 99 percent of Connecticut, but Murphy and town officials are questioning whether this target is realistic.

“We understand CL&P still intends to bring everyone online by the end of the weekend,” Murphy said. “Frankly, they’re going to have to perform miracles here in the Farmington Valley to get that done. We’re all going to hold them accountable for that…. There are a lot of unanswered questions about why we are sitting in this situation today. Why do we still have nine out of 10 residents in the Farmington Valley without power and why, as of last night, we still couldn’t get fire and police vehicles through major roads in a very heavily populated area of the state.”

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Blumenthal, Murphy and town officials expressed frustration with slow response to Avon when 78 percent of residents do not have power, a similar story in many Farmington Valley, Hartford County and Litchfield County towns. Avon, Bloomfield (84 percent without power) Farmington (89 percent), Goshen (96 percent), Simsbury (84) have the highest percentages of customers without power. Canton, which just got power back on Main Street Wednesday, had a 100 percent outage over the weekend.

“We’re also going to start asking some serious questions about why in the Farmington Valley we’ve had roads impassable and been without power for far too long,” Murphy said.

Before the town can remove a lot of the trees near power lines and on roads with downed wires, line crews to de-energize the lines, according to Town Manager Brandon Robertson. While local public works crew is ready to clear roads, they are doing a lot of waiting.

“Since Sunday, and we’ve been going on six days of this now, we’ve been asking for line crews simply to keep our Public Works Department working so they can open roads,” Robertson said. "We have wasted at least 80 to 100 of our hours of our crews’ time waiting for CL&P crews to arrive. They were promised and never showed up. Our crews are idle without those CL&P line crews. We’ve been promised a response, we haven’t seen it and we’re mad.”

Since a conference call between municipal officials, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and CL&P and a press conference that Farmington Town Council Chairman and Avon Town Council Chairman held at the Farmington Marriott Thursday, Avon has already seen more crews respond. CL&P told the town there are eight line crews and four tree crews in town working on restoring power to Huckleberry Hill, Talcott Notch and West Avon Road area.

After Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene, Blumenthal and U.S. Congressman Joe Courtney (D-2) wrote a letter to CL&P suggesting that power company officials be embedded in each town. Yet, even the CL&P liaisons, including the one stationed in Avon, have often been kept in the dark. Robertson said that sometimes CL&P told them there were crews on the ground when there weren’t.

“I think what you’re hearing across the state, in West Hartford and the Farmington Valley, is that municipal officials are sick of this,” Robertson said. “We’re tired of this situation. It’s absolutely unacceptable. Municipal officials, as always, are on the front lines. Residents look to us, not necessarily looking to CL&P

"We do have a CL&P liaison embedded in our emergency operations center, but that service is only as good as the information they’re being provided," he added.

Blumenthal had similar complaints during Irene.

“It follows a storm where there were complaints by me and others, very strong complaints, about lack of communication and adequate response,” Blumenthal said.

A federal and state investigation into these issues could yield development of a mutual aid agreement between Connecticut other states, supervised by FERC, for and shared resources for emergency situations.

“Clearly there was a failure to respond in adequate ways to protect public health and safety, not to mention quality of life, Blumenthal said. “The federal investigation the delegates will be seeking will assure there is not only adequate information to why that happened and why the failures occurred, but how we can prevent it in the future so it never happens again.”

Murphy said the deputy Federal Emergency Management Agency chief was in Avon Friday and that municipalities and residents need more help from them, as well.

“It’s a 72-hour window with which to compensate local towns with debris removal,” Murphy said. “We need more help. We need reimbursement for uninsured homeowners and businesses that have had to expend extraordinary amounts of money to deal with this storm.”

Residents have suggested to Robetson that Avon sue CL&P, as Simsbury may do. Simsbury sued CL&P before, in 1990.

Nonetheless, Murphy praised the work at the local level in relief efforts following the biggest storm damage and widespread power outages the town of Avon has seen in recent history.

“They’ve been doing a good job over the past week, unfortunately, they’ve been doing it largely alone,” Murphy said. “As of Thursday night there were still 25 roads in Avon still impassable. That is a public safety nightmare…. There has been progress made overnight, but there are still 90 percent of customers in the Farmington Valley without power. There are elderly residents whose health is in jeopardy.”

Murphy and Blumenthal thanked local officials and employees, police and firefighters for their work to restore order to Avon post-storm.

“I’ve been impressed by the work that’s been done here,” Blumenthal said. ”The emergency operations in towns across the state, they have reacted with tremendous vigor and care. I am going to fight and I believe the entire delegation will fight for the kind of emergency relief, dollars and cents, that’s needed to reimburse this town and even the homeowners to the extent their damage is not covered by insurance.”


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