Residents Testify on Irene Power Outages at Dept. of Public Utilities Hearing

Just days prior to the Halloween Nor'easter that dumped more than two feet of snow in some areas of Massachusetts and icy rain in Plymouth, causing major power outages that could last until next weekend, NStar officials attempted to explain the lengthy outages from Irene to local residents and state officials.

According to WATD 95.9 FM, about 30 people attended the Department of Public Utilities hearing at Plymouth South High School last Thursday night.

More than half a million NSTAR customers were without power for several days in eighty-one cities and towns, in Plymouth many residents did not get power turned on until the Saturday after the storm, seven days later.

Many of those testifying at the Department of Public Utilities hearing were officials from surrounding towns. Marshfield Fire Chief Kevin Robinson’s experience was typical of those reported by officials of other communities:

“The issue was we had no response, no ETA’s and no physical presence of NStar in the community of Marshfield until after 6 p.m... when wires started falling at ten o’clock in the morning, nothing was addressed until eleven o’clock at night so we went more than 12 hours before the first downed wire was addressed.”

Plymouth resident Laurien Enos was one of the few residents to speak.

“The power outage was not caused by tropical storm, it was caused by the failure of NSTAR to maintain its power lines.”

Craig Hallstrom, NStar’s vice president of Electric Field Operations, told officials and residents that the utility's main concern was getting the priorities of each town.

“We need to work closer with our communities to get their top three, four of five priorities done quicker.”

The next step is the DPU will hold a hearing where NStar  officials will testify and be subject to cross examination by the DPU and the Attorney General.

In a letter to Senate President Therese Murray, NStar acknowledges the "impact that outages of long duration have on our customers and the public officials who represent them." Murray had written a letter to NStar after Irene questioning the utility's abilty to respond and it's emergency response plan, which is required of all public utilities under a 2009 state law.

"There are always opportunities for improvement," NStar writes. "We intend to pursue ways to improve our wires down procedures, coordination with municipal public safety officials about the use of designated public safety emergency lines for priority public safety calls, and the communication of restoration times."