Con Edison Fined $102M Over Tropical Storm Isaias Response: Cuomo

Updated Friday at 9:12 a.m.

NEW YORK CITY — Con Edison faces a $102 million fine over its response to an August tropical storm that left thousands of New Yorkers without power for days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced.

Cuomo on Thursday said a state probe into utility companies' handling of Tropical Storm Isaias uncovered dozens of violations.

Three utilities led by Con Edison face a combined $137 million in penalties from what Cuomo has long deemed a lackluster response.

"We are serious,” he said.

Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power to about 257,000 Con Edison customers as it landed in New York on Aug. 4 — the second-largest storm-related outage in the utility's history, behind only Hurricane Sandy.

Crews scrambled to restore power from trees and branches that fell on power lines, but outages stretched into days for thousands across New York City.

The outages for some city dwellers in Queens and the Bronx lasted for nearly a week.

Cuomo publicly lambasted Con Edison and other utilities in the state and promised an investigation, as well as legislation to lift a cap on penalties for utilities.

He said Thursday the probe eventually found Con Edison committed 33 violations in their response to the storm.

Con Edison will have a chance to appeal the fine, he said.

Cuomo's office later released another statement outlining an additional $25 million in fines related to Con Edison's response to two power outages days apart in Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2019 that, among other landmarks, left Madison Square Garden without power.

A spokesperson for the utility issued a statement about the fine, which they noted has not officially been levied. They provided a statement on behalf of Con Edison.

"We will review the orders and respond while continuing to improve our storm response and maintaining our industry-leading reliable service," the statement reads. "Following Isaias, our women and men worked 24-7 to restore more than 300,000 customers. We mobilized more than 2,200 additional restoration workers, issued estimated service restoration times to nearly all customers who were out of service for more than 48 hours and communicated via our outage map, briefings with government leaders, social media, texts, e-mails and dozens of press releases and interviews."