Unsteady Peace Between PSE&G, Sparta Neighbors

PSE&G  Corp. responded to complaints from Sparta residents and township officials with better communication and steps designed to reduced the impact of the company’s project to build a new power line from Pennsylvania to East Jersey.

Neighbors said Tuesday they were still concerned.

The Sparta Township Council outlined Tuesday the steps taken after neighbors of an exclusive mountaintop neighborhood complained about the project two weeks ago.

The neighborhood, centered on New Star Ridge Road is, near the site where the power company is rebuilding a switching station in adjacent  Hopatcong. Supply trucks, construction equipment and workers’ vehicles pass through the neighborhood daily, and residents complained about unsafe conditions.

The switching station is part of the Susquehanna-Roseland reliability  project,  a $1.2 billion project to built a 146-mile,  500-kilovolt power line through Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Work on the switching station is expected to be done by June. Stringing the new transmission lines is expect to take place during the summer.

Construction began last fall resulting in what the residents had described as "about 100 to 200 trucks a day” rumbling through the area.

Socrates Platides, a New Star Ridge Road resident, who spoke at the last council meeting, said Tuesday he was still angry and concerned about the impact of the project on his neighborhood.’

“This is a quality of life issue,” he said. “We don’t know how long the project will take, a month, three months, a year, three years.”

Councilman Jerry Murphy said this was a project designed for “the greater good.”

Platides replied, “This is not my plan.”

Mayor Gilbert Gibbs said he has met with power company officials often, has daily messages and alerts about the project and met with residents to hear their complaints. He offered to meet with Platides on Saturday.

Gibbs said the company has made concessions based on residents complaints, but that this was still a large construction project and the impacts will remain.

Township manager David Troust read a letter from David K. Richter, assistant regulatory counsel for PSE&G, which said the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities approved the power line project, and its approval supercedes local issues.

In the letter Richter said the company will, in response to complaints, reschedule deliveries of materials, drive workers to the site in larger numbers and fewer vehicles, rather than allow single vehicles, and placed day and hour limits on the scheduled work.

The company will also restore a former house lot that is being used as a staging site and access area, and will pave curb-to-curb township roads damaged during the construction.

Gibbs said every neighborhood resident who is on the township’s email list will get a copy of Richter’s letter.