Town to see upgrade work on power lines starting in 2011

Date: 11/23/2009

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



EAST LONGMEADOW -- Representatives from National Grid met with the Board of Selectmen last Tuesday evening to update them and the town on a reliability project.

According to Mike Thompson, Account Executive at National Grid, planners at the company have been monitoring the Western Massachusetts system "for quite some time." Those planners have decided that it's time to upgrade the system for better reliability for its users.

Thompson explained that East Longmeadow currently has two substations with lines leading from Palmer and that those lines could result in potential low voltage during peak hours and overload issues in Palmer. Additionally, the company found that many of its old wooden poles are in poor condition.

National Grid plans to update the system over the next three years. Fourteen miles of lines that currently carry 69,000 volts would be upgraded to lines able to carry 115,000 volts (four miles of which are located in town). The two substations in town would also see minor work for upgrades.

Additionally, new poles to carry the lines would be put in place, some of which will be up to 30 feet taller than those currently being used.

Thompson said National Grid has started its outreach to alert users of the project and that all abutters to the lines will be notified within the next few weeks of the work.

"We're still in the preliminary engineering phase, and we welcome comments," Thompson said. National Grid will be hosting open houses in early 2010 for those interested in learning more. They expect all permitting to be completed by spring 2011, with work to begin that autumn. Thompson said it will take about two years to finish the work.

Selectman Jim Driscoll wanted to know what the negative impacts of the project could be.

"Access [to the poles and lines] is an issue," Thompson replied. "We may have an outage here or there, but we're working on avoiding that."