Slingerlands resident Janice Pata moved into her home on Southwood Drive about four years ago, and it didn’t take her long to become acquainted with the neighborhood gripe: power outages.
It seemed like any small weather issue and we’d have an outage, she said.
The problem was frequent enough for the neighborhood to band together in petitioning National Grid and the Town of Bethlehem for a solution to the problem, and after a $36,000 March upgrade, the power company says that outages to Pata’s neighborhood have decreased dramatically.
In 2007 and 2008 the circuit feeding the neighborhood experienced 10 outages and 13 outages, respectively. Four outages have been recorded in 2009, according to National Grid.
The biggest cause of outages in this part of town is foliage bringing down lines, which happens most often in ice storms and periods of high wind, said Manager of Overhead Lines Jim Murphy.
`We did have issues,` he said.
The solution was to trim tree branches and remove `danger trees,` or dead, heavy trees that could collapse onto the lines. Since the power lines in these neighborhoods ran behind the houses, they were not only more likely to be surrounded by foliage but were also more difficult to access.
National Grid made numerous equipment upgrades in the area, including replacing and improving poles, transformers and fuses.
It took the area’s most dramatic ice storm in years to bring crews out to the neighborhood. Pata and her neighbors raised their concerns at a January meeting at Bethlehem Town Hall that was called to discuss the December 2008 ice storm. National Grid representatives were present at that meeting, and agreed to meet again in March to listen to the Slingerlands residents.
`[It was] the second time in my memorywhere we had a large area in town complaining to Town Hall that they were having frequent outages,` said Supervisor Jack Cunningham, the other instance being during the administration of Theresa Egan.
Slingerlands resident Philip Carter questioned why it took residents approaching company officials at an open meeting to get the problem addressed. He said that the January meeting wasn’t the first time National Grid had heard about the problems`he’d been complaining for years.
`They did a lot of work, but it was only after years of instigating,` he said. `We just had lots and lots of power outages. It takes forever to get crews in here for some reason.`
National Grid spokesman Patrick Stella said that the company reacted quickly when it became aware of the problem, and added that communication is key to smooth service.
`It comes down to the customers having us know this is a chronic issue,` he said.
Stella added that National Grid inspects its lines and equipment on a rotating basis, making repairs and replacements where needed.
`Over a period of time we make sure we inspect all of our lines to make sure they’re working correctly,` he said.
Crews generally trim along lines in a five-to-seven year cycle; they last did rotational trimming in this Slingerlands neighborhood in 2006.
Carter also wondered whether residents could be sure the fixes have worked until a hard winter is experienced, but Murphy contended that there have been several weather events that have tested the upgrades.
`We’ve had great reliability in this location with the work that we’ve done,` he said.
Pata agreed, and said that she and her neighbors are much more pleased with their service.
`It’s really night and dayits dramatic,` she said.
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