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| By Sarah M. Corigliano Assistant Managing Editor EAST LONGMEADOW In response to a petition received from several East Longmeadow residents regarding their lack of satisfaction with service from the town's electrical provider, the Board of Selectmen recently hosted a public forum. Representatives of the utility company, National Grid, met with the Board and residents to talk about ongoing problems with service in two neighborhoods in town. The areas of particular concern were Pilgrim and Rural streets, and Countryside Street south to the Hampden line. "[National Grid] committed to me and to the town to follow up [on the concerns] and we're gonna hold their feet to the fire," said Board of Selectmen Chairman James Driscoll. "I think residents leaving the meeting were grateful they had the opportunity to share their complaints and frustrations and I think they are cautiously optimistic based on the commitment National Grid and I have made ... the proof is in the pudding, and I have every confidence they will [follow through]." National Grid Spokesperson Debbie Drew told The Reminder one problem in town was related to an underground cable in the Pilgrim/Mayflower/Rural section of town. "The problem they identified there is the need to replace an underground cable that serves those customers," she said. She said National Grid's engineers are investigating the problem and expect to provide a plan and a timetable for the repairs/replacement in the next week. Drew said effected customers would be notified by mail as soon as the information is available. In the other area of concern, the Bettswood/Somers Rd. neighborhood, Drew said the problem is most likely related to weather. "Our hypothesis is that lightning has been the culprit because there have been a number of storms this past summer so we are doing some investigating to look into that," she said. "There are probably three approaches to helping ease that situation." Those three approaches include tree trimming, possible reconfiguration of structures (i.e. installing taller polls) or installing animal fences or animal deterrents at the substation level, she said. She explained that the major concern in this area was a delay in restoration of power. While a good portion of the rest of the town's power came back on, residents complained that it would take several or many hours for their power to be restored. Drew said this problem was possibly due to the fact that those residents are in a rural area. "Those customers are at the end of a feeder line or in a rural area," she said. "The way we restore power is we try to pick up the largest areas of customers first ... sometimes it takes a little time to identify the problem, access the location and make repairs. Depending on what we're looking at, if a large tree is down, for example, we have to get crews there and get the tree cleared." Drew added that animal contact is a problem, especially in rural areas. "Trees and animals are the top two reasons for an outage, followed closely by weather," she said. Drew said that, as a utility, National Grid "cannot assure customers of no outages all the time, but we will do our very best to minimize them and their duration ... but as we spoke of previously, Mother Nature wreaks havoc with our system." She added that National Grid is working to correct the problems addressed at the meeting in East Longmeadow. "Our message to our customers who had concerns is that we hear them and are examining what we can do to respond and we will be communicating with them as we develop timelines and solutions as to their concerns," she said. The customer concern line for National Grid is 800-322-3223. |