4 Hudson Valley Utilities Face Penalties For Isaias Response

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — Altice-Optimum, Con Edison, Orange & Rockland Utilities and Central Hudson face "steep penalties" for their responses to the damage caused in the region by Tropical Storm Isaias.

About 1.3 million New York customers experienced power outages during the Aug. 4 storm; most were without power for several days.

In an unprecedented move, the New York Department of Public Service sent Notice of Apparent Violation letters to Con Ed, O&R, CenHud and the cable, phone and internet provider on Wednesday, telling the companies that they face steep fines and also that they must take immediate corrective actions so that similar failures are not repeated during the remainder of hurricane season.

This is the first time the department has front-loaded the investigation process with Notices of Apparent Violation. They have also tightened that process, vowing to be finished in six months instead of the usual one to two years.

Plus, the department is threatening to pursue franchise revocations for Con Edison and Orange & Rockland.

"The response to Tropical Storm Isaias by the electric utilities was completely unacceptable," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday in announcing the violation notices. "Fifteen days later and we are still hearing complaints from families and businesses."

Con Edison said its response was good, given the impact of the storm. "Our storm response plans enabled us to restore more than 300,000 customer outages from Tropical Storm Isaias more than two times faster than after Winter Storms Riley and Quinn and 1.5 times faster than Hurricane Irene," spokesman Allan Drury said Wednesday.

Specifically, DPS cited Con Edison and Orange & Rockland for inaccurate communications, website problems and inadequate pre-staging. Central Hudson was cited for inadequate communications capacity at its backup data center, leading to their website becoming unavailable to customers.

The department identified several potential violations related to Altice-Optimum's storm response in the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island, including a failure to coordinate emergency response with local officials, communications failures and insufficient generator capacity for their network.

The Department letter demands that Altice-Optimum promptly remedy the problems and provides notice that its investigation will include a review of whether the company is in violation of the commission's 2016 order approving its acquisition of Cablevision.

The immediate corrective actions must include:

• Add crewing capacity via retainer contracts from private contractors or utilities located outside of New York, with a goal to be able to secure in advance of a storm double the level of internal linemen and tree crews;
• Test capabilities at all command centers, call centers and back-up command centers to ensure capability to handle an event that affects 90 percent or more of their customers in their service territory and provide confirmation back to the Department regarding the results of this test within 10 days;
• Refine coordination plans with municipalities tailored to each county (road clearing, local liaisons, etc.) and provide to the Department within 20 days a written confirmation from each county Emergency Operations Center that they understand and accept the plan; and
• Update life support equipment and critical infrastructure lists to remove or add customers as identified during Tropical Storm Isaias and file such updated lists to the Department within 10 days.

"We are focused on continuously improving," Drury said. "We are enhancing our reliability, resiliency and storm response in a variety of ways, including implementation of a resilience plan. That is essential at a time when climate change is making severe weather events more frequent and devastating for our customers.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a response from Con Edison.