Carella: Who will pay to keep lights on?

The Two Storm Panel is counting on the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents who were in the dark for up to 12 days after Tropical Storm Irene hit in August, and again when a nor’easter dropped heavy snow in October, to see the light now.

The eight volunteers on the panel hope you will pick up on cues laid out in their report, released Monday, explaining how Connecticut can better handle disasters.

Follow the bread crumbs, said Joe McGee, a panel chairman.

“We laid it out so you will see it,” McGee said. “We are making a powerful point.”

It is that Connecticut Light & Power executives admitted during hearings with the panel that, to prevent the prolonged, record-breaking outages of last year’s storms — about 670,000 customers after Irene and more than 800,000 after the nor’easter — they should increase their tree-trimming budget significantly.

When members of the Two Storm Panel asked what it would take to strengthen the utility’s infrastructure, CL&P executives said they should spend $366 million over the next 10 years on trimming trees and replacing poles, a 50 percent increase over what was spent in the previous 10 years, according to the panel’s report.

Trees took down nearly all the wires that fell during the storms, the panel found.

“The question is, if tree trimming is so critical to their infrastructure, if it’s such a threat to their business, why has their tree-trimming budget remained relatively flat for the last 10 years?” McGee said. “Why has the number of road miles trimmed actually declined?”

It isn’t that CL&P hasn’t been earning money. The utility’s profits rose more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2010, Hearst Connecticut Media Group has reported.

But the utility does not want to spend more profits on tree trimming. Last month, CL&P executives said they can reduce power outages 30 percent to 40 percent over the next 10 years if state regulators allow the average customer’s monthly bill to increase $13 over that period.

“They believe they can recover the cost from ratepayers,” McGee said.

As it is, Connecticut residents pay among the highest electricity rates in the nation. Ratepayers should be asking what they get for their money, considering that CL&P has shed a fifth of its workforce since 1998 while the number of customers grew, and that for years the utility has refused to pay out-of-state crews to be on standby or to bring them to Connecticut in advance of predicted storms, Hearst reporting has shown.

“That’s the conversation the public should be having,” McGee said.

At least that’s the CL&P part of the conversation. The state regulatory agency, once called the Department of Public Utility Control and now called the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, has a share in the blame for poor storm response, McGee said.

The agency “has been perceived as a passive organization for many years,” McGee said. “They investigate, but they don’t do anything about what they find. When they review a response to a big storm, the same issues come up today as came up 25 years ago. Nobody follows up.”

McGee, a Fairfield resident and vice president of public policy for The Business Council of Fairfield County, was named to the Two Storm Panel by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. McGee and the other members, including former Stamford Fire Chief Robert McGrath, spent about 150 hours looking at how states organize storm response and how utilities handle it, listening to emergency preparedness experts and holding public hearings.

They heard a presentation from a group that rates state utility regulatory agencies. A 1 rating means the agency does nothing; a 5 rating means the agency enforces its rules. Connecticut’s PURA was rated 2, meaning all it does is monitor, McGee said.

Now it is “for PURA to decide if the public should pay” for the increased tree trimming that will make the electricity grid more reliable, McGee said.

“PURA will be affected by public opinion,” McGee said. “We recommend they create an enforcement division. They have enforcement powers. They need to use them.”

In response to the Two Storm Panel report, Malloy, who solved some electric grid problems while he was mayor of Stamford by getting CL&P to bury a few lines in the city’s downtown, is considering issuing executive orders and recommendations for the General Assembly, which convenes next month. Malloy hinted he may push for fining utilities if they fail to restore power within a reasonable time.

There are no rules for storm response, McGee said.

“Utility companies should have their own industry standard, but they don’t,” he said. “They always said that every storm is different, so how can you have a standard? Regulators have bought into that. But there has to be a way to measure their performance.”

Among the panel’s 82 recommendations: Municipal emergency responders should train with state agencies and the utilities; CL&P managers should sign on to response plans with mayors; and the state should establish a fund that provides matching grants to homeowners who clear their property of trees that threaten power lines.

Connecticut now may be at the forefront, but all states are discussing disaster response, McGee said. It’s because the storms are here.

“The whole country is experiencing more extreme weather. The climate is changing,” McGee said. “The two storms were a wake-up call that we are vulnerable. This is a life-and-death issue. The panel is saying: ”Look, we learned all this detail. Pay attention.“

Angela Carella can be reached at 203-964-2296 or angela.carella@scni.com.