Borough Generating Backup Power Plan for Extended Outages

Borough officials, cognizant of the strain that storm-related power outages have wrought for residents and town operations in recent years, are devising a backup power plan.

Through a combination of capital funds and Federal Emergency Management Agency mitigation grants, Fair Lawn is hoping to outfit its fire companies, Rescue Squad building, Ambulance Corps building and Department of Public Works garage with emergency generators.

With generator power, those essential emergency service organizations would remain operational throughout extended outages and their buildings could be used as warming stations, phone charging centers or general information hubs for residents who have lost power, Mayor John Cosgrove said.

Manager Tom Metzler said the borough needed to begin seriously thinking about the threat posed by an extended power outage in winter.

“If we had a sustained power failure and it had been in the middle of the winter, we would have lost all of our fire apparatus. They would have froze," he said. "There’s another whole thing that no one has addressed, and we are. We gotta start thinking about this stuff because I really do believe that a power interruption from ice is really a major threat in this part of the country and we can really see how vulnerable the infrastructure is as a result of the hurricane."

Generators are being recommended first for Fire Company 2 — because the building is owned by the borough — and the Rescue Squad building — because it's located on borough land. Metzler said the budget includes a capital funding request for both.

Fair Lawn will seek generators for the other five buildings through the federal government, which makes 15 percent of the first $2 billion in state disaster aid available for mitigation projects of any kind.

On March 5, council authorized the emergency management coordinator to apply for $650,000 in FEMA hazard mitigation grants to pay for those generators. The borough would be on the hook for a quarter of the bill if it received and accepted any of the mitigation grants.

However, because the grants are so competitive, Metzler said it's unlikely the borough will receive everything it has requested.

“We’re certainly not anticipating getting all this," he said. "But again, you’ve got to be in it to win it. If the federal government turns around and awards any one of them, then council at that point can say, ‘We want to proceed or not proceed.’”

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