2003 Blackout; Five Years Later

It's been five years since the massive Northeast blackout, and Gothamist has a retrospective.

Since then, the power infrastructure remains a question mark in the NYC metro area as Con Ed has had power woes annually, but operational and administrative changes have seemingly improved the situation so that the 2003 blackout could not happen again.

One of the measures to prevent another blackout is for utilities to engage in trimming trees along their right of ways. That's got some people upset, since some trees have had to be cut down.

You can't please these people. They want uninterrupted power, but don't seem to care that the reason that the blackout occurred was because power lines were cut by tree limbs that fell on them in the Cleveland area and that as remaining power lines sagged under the added stress, they too came into contact with trees and shorted out.

Gothamist also notes that power demand in the NYC metro area is expected to increase 30% by 2030, which makes one wonder just where all that power is going to come from because the eco-left doesn't want to build power plants or the transmission lines that can deliver power from outside the immediate region. Conservation alone will not save the day either.