Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Recently-released state Board of Public Utilities report charges FirstEnergy affiliate with being more concerned with image during Irene.
JCP&L, since Hurricane Irene in August 2011, has said it has committed a lot of money and resources toward improving not only how the utility communicates with its customers, but also how it runs its business. The state Board of Public Utilities, however, handed down a verdict in a recent report that states the FirstEnergy affiliate first spent more energy trying to save face, according to a NJBIZ.com article. The article notes the BPU report cites JCP&L's initial two Irene press releases from Aug. 28 and Aug. 25, 2011, the latter three days before the storm actually hit New Jersey. JCP&L "gave no indication that restoration could take several days or longer. Advice to customers appeared to have secondary importance," according to the BPU …
Sunday, September 23, 2012
The latest data includes four years of income, insurance and job losses.
There was new evidence last week of the damage done by the recent recession. The U.S. Census Bureau released numerous new social, housing and economic estimates for larger geographic areas, including New Jersey's counties. And the results confirm the pain many are feeling. Median household income dropped again last year in Morris, Passaic, Somerset and Sussex counties. And it's been a steady decline in three of the four from 2008 to 2011. In Morris County, the typical household had $91,332 in income, down about $3,000 from 2010 and nearly 11 percent lower than the $102,147 median in 2008. Those changes are in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, so the impact is clear: Morris County households lost about $11,000 to save, invest and spend in …
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Instead of starting work on $790 million project before getting final approval, how about clearing trees along power lines?
Construction has begun on Public Service Electric and Gas Co.'s transmission line upgrade through Northwest New Jersey. That would seem to be slightly premature, as the National Park Service still technically has not given final approval for the work—upgrading the existing 230-kilovolt transmission line for about 45 miles, adding 500 kilovolts onto towers that would be as tall as 195 feet in some cases. The park service's approval is only for its property, but it is still critical, given the line runs smack through the Delaware Water Gap. And while the NPS won't make a final decision for at least a month after releasing its environmental impact statement—expected sometime this month—its approval appears to be a given. Still, it has not …
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Legislators should act quickly to increase penalties and force better management before next storm.
A month after receiving it, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities finally released last week the long-awaited consultant's report on the power outages that resulted from Tropical Storm Irene and the October 2011 snowstorm. Its 263 pages get into minute details of what happened and provide some important background on issues of statewide concern, including the pros and cons of burying power lines. But its overall message, that power companies did a less than sterling job in dealing with the massive outages that resulted from both storms, and in doing the maintenance work that could have prevented some of the problems, was already well-known. There was no reason why Gov. Chris Christie had to wait for the report, done by Emergency …
Monday, March 26, 2012
When reports of a gunman locked down Hackettstown on March 26, the process ratcheting down movement ramped up the anxiety as rumor spread as fast as text messages.
What began as an average march Monday took a turn for the surreal at just after 10 a.m. when word of an armed gunman in the woods near Hackettstown High school triggered a lockdown. Parents were not informed of the possible threat by the school, but rather from phone calls and text messages from their children. As the late morning turned into afternoon, more and more parents assembled outside the barricades, mingling with a growing number of police and media. Each text or phone call caused a flurry of activity as students complained of hunger, the lack of a bathroom break and of underlying fear. But despite all the reports led to an unfounded claim. After an exhaustive search that included a helicopter and a canine unit no suspect or …
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