Punching The Lights Out of Them

For years I've been grousing at what seemed to me to be an excessive number of blackouts in Connecticut. For many people,it is more than just the inconvenience of not being able to surf the Internet or watch television. It's hard to believe, but there are many people, even in affluent Fairfield County, whose water supply comes from wells (sounds healthy, but it ain't necessarily so) and goes into septic tanks. What that means is when there is no power, one runs out of water. You need to dump a big bucket of water into the toilet to get it to flush and you quickly run out of tap water with which to wash your hands. It's like living in a third world country, only without any benefits of globalization.

My family moved to Stamford the year after the ice storm hit in the 1970s. (Hollywood even made a movie about. I never saw it so I don't know if they touched upon that quaint aspect of having no running water.) For many years we were absolutely paranoid about not having enough water from the well. When we heard predictions about storms, we would fill the bathtub with water. Fortunately, for more than 30 years, we were rarely without power for more than several hours -- overnight a few times -- but it was infrequent enough for us to stop worrying.

Until the year 2010 and we were without power for five days. We ran out of water. We were lucky that friends of my in-laws had city water and were happy to help us fill big buckets so we could flush the toilet. The grandmother of my son's then best friend in school let us shower at her apartment. Hurricane Irene left us without power for a couple of days and we considered ourselves lucky. My in-laws, who live ten minutes away, had no power for five days. The surprise snow storm last month has left some people in northern Connecticut without power for 10 days and counting.

Governor Dannell Malloy is feeling, well, the heat from residents and he's hinting at taking legal action against Connecticut Light and Power. "I feel that CL and P has let the state of Connecticut down," he told reporters on Monday. That's a light statement, in my opinion (no pun intended).

One thing I've never understood is why electric companies are publicly traded companies. To me, if there's no competition for basics such as electricity, there should be no privatization. That said, here is something I must disclose: my husband and I own shares in three utility companies because the dividends have high yields.

It turns out that CL and P, legally known as Northeast Utilities, is actually the merger of several companies: Connecticut Light and Power (the name among customers still stuck), The Hartford Electric Light Company, Western Massachusetts Electric Company, Holyoke Water Power Company and Public Service Company of New Hampshire. This was the first new multiple state public utility company created since the Public Utility Holding Company Act was passed in 1935. Thirteen months ago, Northeast Utilities announced its intention to merge with NSTAR and still retain the NU name. The deal is still pending regulatory approval. NU provides power (under the best of circumstances) to 149 cities and towns in Connecticut.

Here is something I noticed in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. As I passed the A and P Shopping Center just across the ramps of the Merritt Parkway (Exit 35), I saw about a dozen utility trucks. This was close to 9:00 a.m., as I was driving my son to school. Since so many areas of Stamford were still without power, I couldn't imagine that all the workers were just taking breaks. (For comparison, workers at Kohl's Department Store are not allowed breaks until they've worked six hours.) The trucks just seemed to be sitting there later in the day. Even if the workers were entitled to breaks (and I'm all for that), why weren't they staggered?

I failed to mention that about three years ago CL and P managed to get a 22 percent increase in rates. Where did all that money go? Executive compensation? Probably. What they should have done was have a plan to bury the old wires underground. Old wires can be a problem. I notice that in my mother's nearly 50-year-old house, some of the wires in the walls are rather brittle -- and her house is well-insulated.

Which brings us to the federal level. It's a well-known fact that the infrastructure in the United States is crumbling and at lower standards than many third world countries. What will take for the president to come up with a viable jobs plans and for Congress to allocate the funds for this?