Last week LIPA CEO Michael Hervey fell on his sword and announced that he would resign at the end of the year. Good.
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, LIPA management dropped the ball. Power failures occurred all along the East Coast, but residents of Nassau County were left in the dark much longer than should have been necessary.
Businesses ran for weeks on generators, if they could get the gas while families shivered in the dark. But the worst thing about the crisis was that no one at LIPA could make even an educated guess about when power would be restored in any given community.
The resignation of Hervey last week was a step in the right direction. We don’t wish the man harm but the buck stops on his desk. If he didn’t know that the entire power grid in Nassau County was at risk of failure, he should have. A report issued in 2006 and a second report issued last year saw the faults in the LIPA system.
On the same day that Hervey announced his resignation, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he was creating a 10-member commission “to investigate the response, preparation, and management of New York’s power utility companies” during major storms over the past two years, including Hurricanes Sandy and Irene, the Nor’easter that followed Sandy and Tropical Storm Lee.
The panel will be led by former state Attorney General Robert Abrams and Benjamin Lawsky, one of Cuomo’s top lieutenants.
Much is already known. The response to Sandy was coordinated by an antiquated 25-year-old mainframe computer. Because of this, power trucks often sat by the side of the road without direction. LIPA failed to keep up with the trimming of branches that could have prevented many lines from coming down.
A class-action suit charges that LIPA’s inability to provide power during Hurricane Sandy was due to its “failure to replace an outdated, obsolete outage management system which lacks the ability to manage large scale outages.” It also alleges that LIPA ignored a 2006 state Department of Public Service recommendation to replace LIPA’s outdated outage system.
Unfortunately if damages are awarded in this suit, the cost will be passed on to you.
We hope that the Cuomo panel will uncover all the reasons for this crisis and, more importantly, that its recommendations will be promptly acted on.
