Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Company will remove 30 nests in the area, report says
PSE&G crews this week will remove 30 monk parakeet nests from utility poles in Fort Lee, Leonia and Edgewater, northjersey.com reported Wednesday. The birds were blamed with causing a power outage in December that impacted 3,400 customers in Leonia, Englewood Cliffs and Teaneck. Utility company officials say the removals are needed to prevent more electrical outages and short outs. Although PSE&G and parakeet supporters have clashed, this year's removal effort brought more collaboration, the report said. The birds are being removed in more mild weather. “This is probably the most ideal week to remove the nests,” Alison Evans-Fragale, of the Edgewater Parrot Society told the newspaper. “It will give the birds enough time to rebuild the …
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Widespread power outages in Teaneck, Englewood Cliffs and Leonia were caused by nesting birds, according to report.
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Sunday, December 9, 2012
A monk parakeet nest on a utility pole outside Overpeck Park caused a transformer to short out and power lines to come down, knocking out electricity to more than 3,000 customers in areas from Teaneck to Englewood Cliffs, northjersey.com reported. The outage was reported shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday and impacted up to 2,000 customers in Teaneck, according to PSE&G. Service was fully restored more than four hours later. The large nests can cause heat to build up in transformers, eventually leading to a short circuit, according to the report. Monk parakeets have been nesting in Edgewater and the Overpeck Park area for at least 30 years. Last week, parakeet supporters managed to stop Edgewater officials from cutting down trees where the …
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
A redundant grid, and a smarter one, will help protect power during superstorms
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Wednesday, December 5, 2012
by Tom Johnson, NJSpotlight.com If New Jersey wants a better response to major storms like Hurricane Sandy, the state needs to build more redundancy into the power grid and get serious about aggressive tree-trimming efforts, utility executives said yesterday. The state also needs to look at ways to develop a smarter electric grid, a step that would improve communication between electric companies and customers and allow more efficient dispatch of crews to restore service, the executives said at a forum sponsored by the New Jersey Alliance for Action. The event at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel provided a glimpse of what the state’s four utilities will likely tell a pair of legislative committees today and tomorrow, as they explore what …
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
'Electricity with brains' can speed customer recovery times, help cut consumer bills
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Tuesday, December 4, 2012
In the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy, some policymakers and legislators say the state needs to create a smarter power grid, making the system more resilient and quicker to recover from major storms. According to experts speaking yesterday at an event in Trenton sponsored by the New Jersey Energy Coalition, a smarter grid would help restore power to many -- but not all -- customers in less time. But it is not a panacea to cure all the problems created by such storms. But there is no question that New Jersey, as well as the rest of the nation, ought to take steps to modernize its power grid, they argued. “Without these advanced technologies, we’re not going to meet the demand of the future,’’ predicted Karen Lefkowitz, …
Monday, November 12, 2012
Great? Good considering the circumstances? Terribly? Share your views in the comments.
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Monday, November 12, 2012
Most of Fort Lee lost power after Hurricane Sandy, closing schools for more than a week, bringing many businesses to a halt, causing great concern for the borough's seniors and generally disrupting life around town. Some residents were without service for more than 10 days, and others saw power go out again when a snowstorm hit. PSE&G says Sandy was an unprecededented disaster, among the worst in the history of New Jersey. More than 1.7 million were without power at its peak, and it takes time to work through even with the tens of thousands of crews brought in from other states, the utility told customers. "Since the start of the storm, PSE&G call centers have handled more than 1.9 million calls (more than 12 times the normal volume)," …
Thursday, November 8, 2012
The latest company estimate projects full service restoration Saturday.
More than 160 PSE&G customers in Fort Lee were without electricity Thursday morning, ten days after Hurricane Sandy knocked out power to much of the borough. In an updated company work schedule, PSE&G said 165 local customers were still in the dark Thursday. Full service to Fort Lee was projected to be restored Saturday, according to the plan. Despite the continued outages, the amount of customers without power has gone down in recent days, according to utility company work plans. On Wednesday morning, PSE&G reported 1,791 customers without service in Fort Lee. In a statement Thursday, PSE&G said 70,000 of its customers remained out from Hurricane Sandy and another 40,000 from Nor'easter Athena. The progress of repair work has not …
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Fort Lee school officials had to deal with multiple power outages in multiple schools Wednesday but managed to get the kids through a full day--their first in a long time.
Wednesday was supposed to be a “return to normalcy,” as Fort Lee’s Superintendent of Schools called it, for students in the district after seven days away from their classrooms, classmates, lessons and teachers. The devastation and widespread power outages, downed trees and wires in the borough Hurricane Sandy left in its wake had prevented schools from opening all of last week, in addition to this Monday. Then came Tuesday, which was Election Day. But Wednesday didn’t quite work out to be a “normal” school day for Fort Lee students on their first day back. “We did have quite an eventful day with power going in and out in multiple schools all day,” said Superintendent Steven Engravalle. At about 12:45 p.m., Fort Lee School No. 3 went down…
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
According to PSE&G’s latest work plan, power is scheduled to be restored little-by-little throughout the week until everyone’s is restored by Sunday, but the company continues to stress that its work plan is only a projection and could change.
More than 2,000 of Fort Lee’s 16,580 PE&G customers were still without power Tuesday morning, more than a week after Sandy, according to an updated company work schedule. According to the work plan, 867 of the 2,190 customers in the borough remaining without power were expected to come back online Tuesday, followed by 597 Wednesday, 455 Thursday and 190 on Friday. The company also expected to restore 57 on Saturday and the remaining 24 on Sunday. PSE&G has stressed the schedules are only projections and could change at any point. They also give no indication of what parts of town are projected to get their power back on any given day. "Our work plan is prioritized by where we can restore the maximum number of customers in the shortest …
Monday, November 5, 2012
With as many as 5,000 customers still without power in Fort Lee, Mayor Mark Sokolich delivered a list of all the areas in town needing to be restored. He also said the pedestrian curfew is now 8 p.m. so people can vote.
Editor's Note: This article was updated at 7:15 p.m. Monday. Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich met with the president of PSE&G Monday afternoon—a meeting he said was arranged by State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-37), who will also be present—to give him a list of all the areas in Fort Lee that remain without power. Sokolich said earlier in the day that the meeting with PSE&G president and CEO Ralph LaRossa was “not going to be a pleasant one.” “I don’t know how productive it was for Fort Lee, per se, but I’m appreciative of anyone that faces the music, so to speak,” Sokolich said after the meeting, adding that he confirmed that work orders are in for what he called “critical buildings” and circuit breakers that need to be fixed. Although Sokolich …
Friday, November 2, 2012
Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said Friday that power is slowly returning, and that the only roads that are closed are those with trees intertwined with wires that can’t be removed until PSE&G says the wires are no longer live.
The mayor of Fort Lee provided an update for residents Friday on power outages and conditions in town in the aftermath of Sandy, saying the borough is “looking at three to four days” for restoration of power. “We continue to update the borough’s webpage, but for those people without Internet, I’ve now resorted to having notices delivered to as many places as I can, including apartment buildings, municipal buildings and the community center,” Mayor Mark Sokolich told Patch Friday. “And I’m issuing these notices every day.” He said in fact that power is “slowly but surely” starting to come back on for some residents, with four buildings and a couple of neighborhoods in Fort Lee having been restored Friday. “So we have guarded optimism that …
Just Me
10:40 am on Thursday, March 28, 2013
There are a lot of nests at the bottom of Route 5, too. Go at twilight and you'll hear the parakeets squawking and see them flying around. more ›