Making Hash of the Commute

I'm so glad I'm not commuting into NYC this morning.

NJ Transit is an absolute mess. They claimed that they had service restored on a couple of lines, but here's what that meant.

For Main/Port Jervis, it was 7 trains inbound in the morning, and 3 would get to New York City after what's normally considered rush hour (10-11am). No reverse commute trains. In the PM, you'd have the same situation - 7 outbound trains, with staggered times that include times outside rush hour.

Those attempting to do the commute found themselves in a mess - serious overcrowding. The overcrowding was so bad that #NJTransit suspended service on the North Jersey Coast Line service and customers utilizing the Woodbridge station were told to use Metropark station for service to/from Newark and New York.

Meanwhile, bus service isn't much better. Mrs. Lawhawk who had to get to court this morning, had to let three buses pass her by with standing room only before she found one with a seat. That's crazy.

But, once she got into the city, the commute was much smoother. The MTA has done a phenomenal job in restoring service, including to Lower Manhattan and service was being added faster than the MTA cartographers could update their service maps (which are being updated daily). When you think of all the millions of people who rely on the subways, Joe Lhota has done a tremendous job in getting service restored, even though some stations may be out of commission for a while - particularly in the Rockaways and South Ferry. Other lines are being bypassed because of lower ridership and the need to concentrate on the routes that have the ability to restore service to the greatest numbers of people in the shortest time. It means that some areas are still cutoff, including Williamsburg, Coney Island, and parts of Lower Manhattan, but if someone did a time lapse of the service maps, you'd see just how fast the service was restored.

Now, going forward the question will be how to prevent the disruptions we've seen from getting as bad as they were.

For starters - the feds and states ought to consider legislation requiring all gas stations to retrofit with generators (and in flood-prone areas - sufficiently elevated to reduce chances for disruption). That would allow people to refuel, and to power their generators to get power back quicker. It would alleviate traffic considerably and hasten the recovery rather than lose time to waiting in lines for gas.

New York should have implemented even/odd gas fill ups just as New Jersey did for affected counties. It's alleviated some of the lines around Bergen County - but restoring power does that even more.

New York State has to pony up to fund the MTA to get more storm mitigation in place - better drainage/pumping systems/flood gates to prevent the tunnels from getting swamped.

And in New Jersey, they've got to take a critical look at NJ Transit and how they were ill-prepared to deal with the storm and the after-effects. Did they not realize that people would attempt a commute during rush hour and the limited trains they would run would get overcrowded due to conditions.

It's the same problem they had after last year's storms (Irene and Lee). Now, we're going to see just how slow NJ Transit will be in restoring service, though it's not all their fault - PSEG has to restore power so that NJ Transit rail signals/gates can function. But that's another place where backup generators could make a difference.

A Slow Slog To Recovery From Sandy

Relief efforts in Fair Lawn continue. I was out and about and PSE&G is busy in my vicinity. They had tree crews working ahead of them - cutting away trees that had brought down lines on Radburn Rd., and were already in the process of putting up new poles. They had to take a break to get additional poles. Once the poles are up, they'll have to restring the lines followed by running new lines up to the homes where the power was ripped from the poles.

Elsewhere, tree crews are out by the Radburn post office (and we even got mail this morning). But incredibly, cars were ignoring traffic cones about ongoing work and drove through the active work scene - putting everyone at risk. Crazy stuff.

The tree crew I spoke with had trucks from Indiana and came in from Wisconsin. They'll be in the area as long as it takes.

It's a monumental effort.

I've got pictures to post later - some from the same area I took the other day to see the difference.

Also, I saw PSE&G survey crews marking down where additional trees need to be addressed - those leaning on poles/wires/etc. It's heartening to see, even though it's taking too long by half.

Neighbors from on the other side of the park said that they were told a week to 10 days. They have generators running for now. Other folks I met said they were conserving their generators because of the lines for gas.

The quicker power gets restored to gas stations, the sooner the gas mess will ease. The more homes that see power restored, the less people will need to go for gas to fill up their generators.

Oh, and speaking of generators - I saw way too many of them located too close to their homes, even to the point of being in garages or enclosed spaces. Those are CO poisonings in the making.

People wont even realize they're getting poisoned until it is too late.

Have We Learned Anything From the Great Blackout of 2003?

Nine years ago, the Great Blackout of 2003 struck the United States and parts of Canada from Ohio to New York. 50-60 million people were thrown into darkness, including millions in the New York City metro area. I was among those who had to figure out how to get home without subways/PATH or rail signals operating. Highways and roads were jammed because traffic signals were out.

Power was eventually restored, with the outage running as long as 30 hours in some parts of the affected area, and we learned that the outage was initially due to a transmission line in Ohio failing due to a tree falling, but the outage spread as utilities failed to contain the problems. That triggered a cascading failure across the Northeast.

The utility responsible for maintaining that Ohio transmission line failed to maintain its right of way and carry out tree trimming and other preventative actions.

Has the United States improved its transmission infrastructure to the point where we don't have to worry about another catastrophic blackout? I'm not so sure. Utilities and their regulators have improved their communications to reduce the chances that a blackout in one interconnect will affect others.

But as we've seen over just the past year, utilities have repeatedly fallen short on maintaining their utility rights of way - particularly on tree trimming. Blackouts due to Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Irene, and the October blizzard of 2012 all were exacerbated by utilities that failed to deal with tree trimming issues in a systematic way. Connecticut was particularly hard hit by those storms, and CLP's disastrous efforts in restoring power were hammered by state and local officials. A failure to carry out an effective tree trimming program was identified as a contributing factor.

Regulators have to do a better job in making sure that the companies are investing in the transmission grid and responding to outages in a timely manner. They have to make sure that the utilities are investing in tree trimming programs to protect their infrastructure, though that would seem like a no-brainer since it's cheaper to protect the transmission lines through a systematic tree trimming program than trying to rebuild parts of the network during a crisis. Utilities have to upgrade and invest in technologies, and that also means that rate payers have to deal with higher costs that are passed on to them.

PSE&G has been doing a better job of trying to upgrade its infrastructure; it's currently upgrading transmission lines in Rutherford and Fair Lawn as well as building out its distributed solar power system. Con Ed is also spending on its infrastructure, but with mixed results - there are perpetual concerns of brownouts and blackouts whenever the temperatures spike during the summer because the distribution system can barely keep up with demand. That has to change.

Utilities Still Working To Restore Power Across Northeast

While PSE&G and Jersey Power and Electric are close to getting the lights turned back on for all of its residents, Connecticut consumers aren't so lucky. There are more than 300,000 customers still without power.

Why did Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy wait until yesterday to activate the National Guard to help with clearing trees and debris from roads? Activating the National Guard would have freed up resources and helped localities get reconnected to the grid faster.

Yet the real problems lie with Connecticut Light and Power (CLP). They've done so much wrong in handling this crisis that someone will likely do a case study about how a utility shouldn't function.

But giving Northeast, specifically its Connecticut Light and Power subsidiary, a divine pass is like absolving Lehman Brothers of any blame for its demise in 2008. Like financial firms, utilities need to manage risks. And they have it relatively easy: much of the task simply involves clearing overhanging trees and other hazards from power lines.

Yet according to regulatory filings, Connecticut Light and Power cut its maintenance spending by 26 percent, from $130 million in 2008 to $96.5 million last year. Put simply, that seems to suggest that one in every four trees that could have been trimmed was left untouched, though the company says the maintenance line was depressed by a deferral of expenses for accounting purposes.

The utility showed the same kind of tin ear as some banks, too. Even as customers still faced a week without electricity after Irene struck, the Connecticut Light and Power boss, Jeff Butler, suggested any restoration costs should be covered by increasing electricity rates — when Connecticut’s power is already the most expensive in the continental United States. Mr. Butler later backtracked. But this week he suggested the weekend snowstorm came without warning — words he was again forced to eat.

There’s even a near-perfect model of how Connecticut Light and Power could have done the job better. Norwich, Conn., a city of 40,000, has owned its own electric utility, as well as those for sewage, gas and water, for 107 years. Norwich Public Utilities’ customers pay, on average, a bit less than Connecticut Light and Power’s. Yet after this past weekend’s snow dump, power was out for only about 450 of its 22,000 customers — and for no more than an hour. As of Thursday morning, nearly half a million Connecticut Light and Power customers were still waiting for the lights to go on.

That’s not luck, either. After Irene hit, just 13 percent of the city’s customers lost their power for more than a day. Within three days, the whole of Norwich had been restored. It took more than a week for Connecticut Light and Power to fully restore power.

That makes it seem odd that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has tended to appear alongside Connecticut Light and Power’s Mr. Butler and to support the utility, even though far more customers lost power than should have and restoration proceeded too slowly. There’s solid numerical evidence to justify Mr. Malloy’s berating Connecticut Light and Power and calling for Mr. Butler’s head on behalf of the citizens of his state.

In contrast to Connecticut Light and Power, Norwich’s electric unit last year increased operations and maintenance spending by 11 percent, to $2.9 million. Put another way, in 2010 Norwich allocated about $132 a customer to this line item in its accounts. Connecticut Light and Power reported maintenance, unadjusted for deferred expenses, of $96.5 million, or around $78 per client.

They refused to get mutual assistance calls in before the storm hit so that they didn't have prepositioned units ready to respond. They didn't take the weather forecasts seriously enough - even after everyone in the region knew that the early season snows would bring down trees because most trees still had their leaves. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that snow of any significance would lay low trees and power lines when the leaves are still on the trees.

CLP can't make its own self-imposed deadlines for service restorations, and that's completely unacceptable, particularly in light of the way that the company has cut back on basic maintenance.

It's abundantly clear that CLP failed its customers, but it further appears that the state of Connecticut failed its citizens as well in not taking appropriate steps to handle the natural disaster. When the state saw that CLP wasn't getting the job done in any semblance of a timely manner, it needed to act. The governor failed to do so.

Someone must be held responsible for the ongoing failures, and that includes both the utility and the governor.

Back in New Jersey, the last few remaining outages are being dealt with and some single customers may be out of power for longer because the damage affects more than the power line to their homes or businesses (taking out the lines all the way to the utility box/meter for example). Some towns are already out of snow days and are contemplating extending the school year to meet requirements.

Municipalities around the region are also dealing with how to clear tree debris. Some, like Fair Lawn and Wayne, are allowing residents to bring all tree debris to the curb and crews will pick them up if they bundle the trees/branches and cut them down to size. Landscapers will have to cart away tree debris.

However, in Mountainside, New Jersey, the town workers are cutting branches along the right of way but are then throwing the tree debris back on to the properties for the owners to remove. That's an absolutely asinine policy - but the town claims that they aren't responsible for removal.

And for a real estate market that is already rocky, the loss of so many trees means a reduction in curb appeal. Healthy trees can add up to 10% in value to a home. I'm spending quite a bit of money to get the damaged trees on my property pruned following the storm. Healthy trees were most affected by the storm since they still were in full leaf.

Frustrations Mount As Millions Remain Without Power Across Northeast

While there's been quite a bit of good news in New Jersey (particularly PSE&G) in restoring power, other areas aren't so lucky. Jersey Central Power and Light has the bulk of the outages in New Jersey, and PSE&G has reduced their outages to about 20,000 statewide (mostly Northern NJ). Those that are still without power can't take solace in those figures.

JCP&L is urging people to be patient, but as the outages wear on and the weather remains cold, it's hard to give the company any slack. After all, PSE&G was able to cut down the number of outages significantly, although towns like Teaneck remain a mess and schools remain closed as a result of the ongoing outages.

Orange and Rockland still has thousands without power across the Hudson River valley, and CLP still has more than 400,000 customers without power.

The frustration is mounting, and there's quite a bit of chatter about how CLP has misallocated its resources, including not giving mutual assistance crews the go-ahead to fix downed lines and equipment when they have the ability to do so. Power isn't expected to be restored until the weekend in large parts of Connecticut, and it doesn't appear that anyone is going to hold the utility responsible. Gov. Malloy is talking the talk about how they're trying to safely restore power and that it will take time, but isn't taking the right tone in dealing with the utility, which seems to have done everything wrong - from refusing to make the mutual aid calls in a reasonable time frame, to underestimating the level of damage, and then not giving its mutual assistance crews the ability to fix what needs to be fixed so that areas can be restored.

Some localities are considering suits against the utility. One in particular is Simsbury, which claims that the utility has only one crew working there - and that the public works crews are trying to clear streets, but need the utility to sign off on whether the lines are safe to work around and clear.

When asked whether the town was going to seek a lawsuit against Connecticut Light & Power, Glassman said the town is extremely disappointed that up until Wednesday they have had one CL&P crew working in Simsbury.

The town sued CL&P in the 1990s for the same reason because there were too many outages at the same time.

As a result of that lawsuit, CL&P increased their tree-trimming program, upgraded their transmission lines and added a substation in Simsbury which has since improved power in Simsbury.

“But we have a lot of questions now,” Glassman said. “Why five days into the storm do we only have one crew assigned to Simsbury, which was one of the hardest towns hit? So we will be exploring our options including litigation.”

Public Works Director Tom Roy said Tuesday they have every single person working on the restoration efforts and there are several contractors clearing the streets and debris.

“What our goals are right now is to get access to residents by car and emergency vehicles,” said Roy. “The limiting factor for us the majority of trees that have not been cleared at this point are entangled in the power lines. We need CL&P to verify that it is safe to work near them.”

Clearly, it appears that CLP is in hot water with its customers and regulators better take a good look at whether it's exercised reasonable prudence when it comes to maintaining its grid, handled trimming trees properly, and then failed to address the outage in any semblance of urgency.

Power Remains Out For Millions In Northeast; Connecticut Remains Hardest Hit

While I may have gotten power restored yesterday, millions of other people in the NYC metro area and up into New England are still suffering for lack of power.

PSE&G has been ramping up its response, and they've got more trucks and equipment stashed at the parking lot for Garden State Plaza than when they used it as a staging area for Hurricanes Irene and Lee. They're using the lot to stash equipment ranging from poles and transformers to power lines and other key equipment to get the distribution lines up and running.

Connecticut Light and Power is saying that it hopes to get power restored to 99% of its customers by Sunday. There are also reports that CLP's response may have been slow because the company hadn't paid contractors for work done during the storm response to Hurricane Lee and Irene.

On Tuesday, Butler also said that he was aware of reports that a slow response from out-of-state contractors who were hesitant to travel to Connecticut to aid in power restoration was because they had not been paid from their work during tropical storm Irene.

When asked if the non-payment had been an issue that prompted the contractors to avoid showing up sooner in Connecticut this week, Butler said, "I'm not aware that it has been.''

"I know our customers are extremely frustrated,'' Butler said. "It's not a pleasure to have customers without power.''

He added, "Unlike Irene, it's cold at night. ... We recognize the frustration.''

Butler is the COO of CLP; and the company better be looking at revisiting the policy in light of the devastating outages that affected all parts of Connecticut and nearly took CLP off the grid entirely.

Trying to pin the blame on the lack of mutual aid from PSE&G or Con Ed makes no sense, not when utilities up and down the East Coast from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York were struggling to deal with millions of outages themselves. PSE&G was bringing in crews from Ohio and elsewhere to assist; so too was Con Ed; yet CLPwas finding it difficult to track down mutual assistance? That would appear to have more to do with the CLP company policy than the mutual assistance companies.

Even the feds are noticing that the storm response is slower than during Irene, particularly in Connecticut:

Bryan says utility companies didn't have time to get additional workers from other regions in place before the snowstorm like they were able to do before Irene in August. The companies had several days to prepare for Irene and only a few days to prepare for the snowstorm, which hit the region harder than was forecast. At midweek last week, some forecasters said the storm was going to miss New England.

Thousands of extra crews from across the country are now helping to restore power in the Northeast, where some utility customers aren't expected to get their electricity back until next week.

"When you know you've got a hurricane coming, part of the mutual assistance package is to pre-stage crews," Bryan said. "So after the hurricane has come and gone, you already have crews on the outskirts ready to come in and start working. … This storm hit, and these crews were not mobilized."

Six thousand extra utility crews were either working in the Northeast on Tuesday or getting close to arriving, officials said.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who asked the Department of Energy for help in coordinating the cleanup and power restoration response, said Tuesday that he was disappointed that the number of out-of-state crews helping in the state was lower than expected. A spokeswoman for the governor said he wasn't criticizing the utilities' response, just trying to do everything he could to get the power on quicker.

About 700 extra workers on Tuesday were helping the 200 regular crews of Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state's largest utility, which had requested 1,000 additional crews. The weekend storm caused more than 830,000 outages in the state — a record — and about 650,000 customers remained in the dark Tuesday.

Bryan said it appeared there were problems in the way extra workers were being distributed in the region.

"If you look at the outages in Connecticut, which basically equal the outages of all the other places combined, you really don't have yet a fair distribution of workers, mutual assistance teams out here doing this," Bryan said.

CLPadmits that they didn't request mutual assistance before the storm hit, as they did in preparing for Hurricane Irene. That was a serious mistake on their part, and one of the reasons why it is going to take as long as it is for power restoration.

The latest figures on outages is here.

Recovering From The Pre-Halloween Snowpocalypse

In some respects, this storm was a whole lot worse than the double whammy of Hurricane Irene and Lee across Northern New Jersey. The heavy snow felled far more trees than those two storms, and outages are likely to extend to midweek.

Northern New Jersey is an absolute mess. Towns across Bergen County are reporting outages and downed lines are complicated by the heavy snows that blocked roads and made it treacherous to navigate.

I happened to be coming back to New Jersey from Long Island last night, and while the roads were fairly passable, the moment I crossed the George Washington Bridge, I saw something was wrong - power was out from Englewood/Fort Lee all the way to Fair Lawn along the Route 4 corridor. Everything was shut down. Malls, diners, gas stations.

Everything.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

PSEG is warning that it wont have power restored until midweek, and in New York, Orange and Rockland power is not even giving an estimate of when power will be fully restored due to the massive outages and trees down across the region.

Expect disaster declarations to be issued for Northern New Jersey and Lower Hudson River valley. Things were also pretty bad in Connecticut, where hundreds of thousands of people were without power as well.

It will be quite some time before power is fully restored, but the lasting effect of this storm will be all the hundreds and thousands of trees across the region that were damaged or destroyed as a result of the early season snowfall while they were still full of leaves. That will be a lasting legacy of this storm.

Personally, we didn't have much in the way of damage to the house, but we've got more than enough big branches down that we've got to bring in an arborist to trim back trees and clear the downed branches and widowmakers.

Despite Multiple Tax Incentives, Few Go Solar In New York City

For all the efforts by municipalities and politicians around the country to push alternative energy and solar and wind power incentives to reduce the need for conventionally generated electricity, only a handful have actually made the switch. The numbers, while increasing since fiscal year 2009, aren't exactly encouraging:

In the 2011 fiscal year, which ended in June, just 75 residential property owners received city approval to install solar-panel systems. That number was up sharply from 2009, just after the creation of a property tax abatement to encourage the use of solar power. That year, there were just five approvals, for both commercial and industrial projects; in 2010, the number of residential approvals jumped to 13.

“We’ve seen a tremendous amount of growth even though the numbers are small,” said Robert D. LiMandri, the commissioner of the Buildings Department. And he is bullish, he said, that the growth will continue. “At the end of the day, to me, this is just another permit,” he said, “and if enough people do it on the block or in the neighborhood, it really will change the way New York City lives.”

To that end, the department is about to roll out new educational materials to help the licensed architects and engineers who are required to file for permits. In addition, there is a new interactive map, developed by the City University of New York with the city and the federal Energy Department, that shows the estimated solar potential of each of the nearly one million buildings in the five boroughs.

But there are still challenges to creating your own sun-driven power generator, installers say. Not every building is suitable; the panels should be placed at a 30- to 40-degree angle facing south to maximize their power, said Mark Chandarpal of Go Solar Green NY in Hollis, Queens, who put in the Antonios’ panels. That is easier on a sloped roof like the Antonios’, but a flat roof would require a support structure, he said.

Some roofs are simply too small or shady to pay off. For example, a neighbor of the Antonios’ son wanted to install a system on his house in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, but could not because the city would not let him prune the tall trees shading his roof.

5, 13, 79. That's in a city with 8 million people, and hundreds of thousands of properties. Not all properties are amenable to solar power projects, and many of those owners aren't willing to plunk down tens of thousands of dollars for the possibility of recouping that investment over 20 years or more (though if electricity prices skyrocket, the return on investment could be cut).

I would contemplate solar power on my own home, but shade trees would block much of the sun, and I already derive a benefit from those trees in the form of lower power needs during the summer. Cutting them down to be able to generate more power isn't a winning argument.

I haven't seen Consolidated Edison push a solar power initiative along the lines of PSE&G's dispersed solar power generating plan, where solar panels were installed on tens of thousands of light poles and transmission poles throughout New Jersey to generate 40 up to megawatts of power. Con Ed is in a better position to do the kind of solar power installations than individuals or businesses, but there is a place for individual and business solar or wind power generation installations. Even state and local authorities like the MTA should be contemplating installations along their rights-of-way or structures to capture power that otherwise would go to waste. Co-locating power along those rights of way would improve reliability of power to mass transit that is a heavy user of electricity, reduce costs to the transit authorities, and provides locations that are often free of obstructions that would make power generation difficult.

Take a parking garage for example. Hackensack, New Jersey recently installed a major solar power array on the roof of one of its parking garages at the courthouse. The installation, done by Pfister of Paterson, will provide 10-15% of the Bergen county administrative building's power demands, and will hopefully save anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million over 15 years as comparing the PSE&G power rate to the reduced rate charged by Pfister. The County didn't have to pay for the project, which means that Pfister was able to acquire the space to build the solar array for no cost in return for the reduced costs to the county.

That's space that would have gone to waste but is a good site for solar power. The MTA has plenty of similar structures, including any number of bus and subway depots.

PSE&G Moving Ahead With Pole-Mounted Solar Panel Systems In Northern NJ

PSE&G had previously announced its intention to install thousands of small solar panel arrays on its transmission poles throughout the state. They've begun installing the panels in Northern New Jersey, including in the Radburn area.

When completed, the installation of 200,000 solar arrays would be the nation's largest distributed solar power generating system and would generate 40 mW of power.

This is a great utilization of existing infrastructure and facilities to generate distributed power, and begins a process of weaning New Jersey from its reliance on fossil fuels for generating power sufficient to power the state.

Individual units will generate 200 watts of power during optimal weather conditions (summer).

Neighboring Ridgewood apparently has some concerns over the installations on transmission poles that it owns in conjunction with PSE&G, but I think that may be yet another case of NIMBY when the costs are being borne by PSE&G and ratepayers will see a long term benefit - to say nothing of eventually breathing cleaner air as fossil fuel plants are replaced by cleaner alternatives.

There is a legitimate concern though about whether the structures can handle snow loads such as we've seen this past winter and who would be liable in case snow/ice falls from those solar arrays onto pedestrians or vehicles causing injury/damage.

Welcome to the Baked Apple

After cooking at 103 yesterday in Central Park and triple digits throughout the area, the NYC metro area is only supposed to simmer at around 98 (though it will again hit 100 in many parts of the area). Some weather people here were saying that an onshore flow and some clouds will keep temps down a little, but that only means that the humidity will be pumped up to unconscionable levels. If anything, the higher humidity will make it feel even worse outside than yesterday.

Demand for power is hovering near all time record demand. Power lines are sagging with some scattered outages, but no widespread blackouts to report. Con Ed and PSE&G are calling on customers to reduce their demand. Amtrak and NJ Transit are dealing with power and rail issues as the temps are causing problems with both the overhead lines sagging and the rails expanding and coming out of alignment (causing a possible derailment hazard) primarily on the NJ Coast Line, Morris and Essex, and the Northeast Corridor. That means fewer trains running and those that are are doing so slower. The MTA has had to deal with reduced power in some parts of the subway system so signals and elevators/escalators are off inconveniencing commuters.

More importantly, people must check on the elderly, infirm, and children. One person died yesterday from the sweltering heat. Cooling centers and pools are open all over the area, and it's a good idea to limit outside exposure.

PSE&G Moving Ahead With Plan To Build New Nuclear Plant In Salem Cty, NJ

PSE&G is moving ahead with its plan to build New Jersey's fifth nuclear power plant in Salem County alongside one of the other nuclear power plants. It requires Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, but it also requires approvals from other agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps owns the site in question, and the utility needs to get approval to purchase the site that is currently used as a dredge disposal site.

To build the plant, it must secure 84 acres of wetlands from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The agency currently uses the land as a dredge-disposal site, the company's report states.

The company applied in May for an early site permit, which is designed to resolve safety and environmental questions about the proposed location. The company has not chosen a reactor design and has not decided whether it actually will invest in a new nuclear plant.

The NRC's application review is expected to take three years.

The NRC hosted a public meeting last month over the proposal even before PSEG filed its formal application. Testimony was divided between environmentalists who opposed expanding nuclear power in New Jersey and local residents and politicians who supported the jobs and tax revenue a new plant would generate.

"We wanted to get the issue out there," PSEG spokesman Joe Delmar said. "One of the reasons we picked the location we did was it was next to existing plants. Any new plant would have similar impacts as existing plants. From an emergency planning standpoint, the plants operate under the same guidelines."

According to the 136-page environmental report, PSEG also plans to build new 500-kilovolt transmission lines and a new causeway to the island, filling in 45 acres of wetlands and temporarily affecting 24 acres more.

The company rated the expected effects on the environment based on three categories: small, moderate and large.

The only large effect was deemed to the local tax base, since the plant presumably would contribute more in local tax revenue. The power plant pays for all municipal services in Lower Alloways Creek Township, which as a result does not have a local-purpose property-tax levy.

So, if the utility jumps through all the regulatory hoops, it would be at least three years before a shovel can get in the ground to start construction, and it would be years before the new reactor goes online.

The PSE&G application before the NRC can be found here.

PSE&G Proposes New Nuclear Plant In Salem County, New Jersey

PSE&G currently operates four nuclear power plants in New Jersey and is considering the construction of a new unit at its Salem facility. The company is in the process of submitting a permit application to keep its options open:

The owner of three nuclear power plants in Salem County plans to get paperwork moving to build a fourth in May.

PSE&G, owner of the Salem 1 and 2 and Hope Creek plants, will submit an early-site permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for what would be New Jersey's fifth nuclear power plant and the first built here since 1986.

The application does not obligate the company to build a plant but merely identifies a location and explains why it is secure and environmentally suitable, said Joe Delmar, spokesman for PSE&G.

The company is sole owner of Hope Creek and majority owner of Salem 1 and Salem 2, all in Lower Alloways Creek Township.

"It does not designate what kind of reactor technology it will use. We don't know if it will be one unit or two or what its megawatt output will be," he said.

The new nuclear unit would allow the utility to decommission some of its more polluting coal and oil plants as well as provide more power as energy consumption is expected to increase as more people bring more tech items into their homes and businesses.

Siting the waste would still be a concern, but PSE&G's efforts are buoyed by the loan guarantees proffered by the Obama Administration to help defray the expected astronomical costs of constructing a nuclear power plant in the US.

PSE&G Renovates Coal Plant; Environmentalists Say Not Good Enough

PSE&G is spending $700 million to upgrade the environmental control systems on its Hudson power station, which is visible from the Secaucus Transfer and is the single largest pollution source in Northern New Jersey. After the filters and new equipment are installed, it will be one of the cleanest coal-powered generating facilities in the nation.

Some environmentalists would like to see the plant shut down. You see, it's a coal fired plant, and they want to eliminate the 2.7 million tons of CO2 that are emitted annually. There are numerous other pollutants that are emitted as well, and the reduction in emissions improves local air quality.

Even with the upgrades, critics call the 41-year-old plant a relic to a time when the effects of carbon on the environment were not known.

“This plant feels like a dinosaur on life support,” said Matt Elliot of the advocacy group Environment New Jersey.

The plant, which provides electricity for up to 750,000 homes, spewed 1.5 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air and water in 2007 — about 7 percent of all the toxic releases in New Jersey. By contrast, all businesses in Bergen, Passaic and Morris counties combined emitted 242,000 pounds.

The emissions range from ammonia, which can irritate the eyes and lungs, to more toxic substances such as mercury, which can cause birth defects.

“This is one of the dirtiest plants in the Northeast,” Elliot said. “It’s an old, disgusting plant, and it should be taken offline.”

The plant supplies power to 750,000 homes.

Where is the power to supply 750,000 homes going to come from? It isn't going to come from wind power any time soon. In fact, the largest of the wind power projects in New Jersey that are currently planned or underway would produce 350 mw of power when it finally comes online. That's sufficient to power 280,000 homes. (1mw can power 800 homes for a year).

Nuclear power would be able to power far more homes with far less space, but opposition remains firmly against it, even among many environmentalists despite the fact that nuclear power would result in no greenhouse gas emissions and would be far cleaner and more reliable than any other energy source.

It might have been a better use of the $700 million to build a nuclear power plant in its stead, but that would take far longer and local opposition would keep the plant from being sited where the demand for power is located.

New Jersey Set To Approve Solar Power Projects

New Jersey regulators are apparently set to approve solar power projects proposed by utilities in New Jersey. This includes PSE&G's proposal to put solar arrays on nearly 200,000 utility poles around the state, which would be the largest of its kind in the nation.

The PSE&G portion is a $264 million investment where the utility will contract with solar developers to design, manufacture and procure solar devices for nearly 200,000 utility poles and street lights in neighborhoods throughout PSE&G’s service territory.

Curiously, the other three components in the PSE&G proposal were not included in the news report.

Earth Day 2009

Today is Earth Day, which makes me wonder why every day isn't treated as earth day, just like every day should be Mother's Day and Father's Day (via the 5th Commandment).

There are lots of efforts to make folks go green, although many people, like Al Gore, are tremendous hypocrites in telling people to reduce their personal consumables while doing little to reduce their own ravenous energy consumption habits.

PSE&G - a utility in NJ, now says that they want to see Congress impose a carbon tax.

The insanity must stop.

If the eco-left is serious about stopping emissions, do something about it. Get out of the way and start construction of new nuclear power plants that can generate sufficient power to run electric cars and eliminates smokestack emissions.

Otherwise, this is all just another tax redistribution scheme that benefits no one except a few who can game the system that the rest of us will pay for in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for goods and services.

At the same time, buried in this same story is a quick note that an offshore wind farm project that is a partnership between PSE&G and Deepwater Wind is being delayed by a year. Really? Why the delay? If reducing emissions are so vital, why the delay?

So far, there are lots of promises to move forward with wind power projects, but there are no shovels in the ground and we're now seeing at least one of the projects delayed. Deepwater Wind has lots of projects it is mulling, but they're all in the planning stage. The New Jersey project was supposedly the furthest along, but the delay is so far unexplained.

PSE&G Launches Solar Power Campaign

It will require requesting and receiving authorization from New Jersey to add surcharges to bills, but PSE&G is moving forward with a plan to install solar power collectors on its utility poles and other properties around the state.

The proposal, filed today with the Board of Public Utilities, calls for the installation of solar panels on 200,000 utility poles – the largest such project in the nation – as well as on schools, municipal buildings, low-income housing and brownfield sites.

The panels would produce electricity that would be fed into the utility’s power grid.

The proposal calls for a five-year rollout, Ralph LaRossa, PSE&G’s president and chief operating officer, said by phone.

Customers would pay only a small part of the cost — an average of 10 cents a month during the first year. That will increase to 35 cents a month by the fifth year, but will drop after that, the company said.

The company would recoup most of its costs through a combination of sources, including the sale of energy, adjustments from the regional power grid, a federal investment tax credit and the sale of energy credits, LaRossa said.

So, the average customer would see their annual bill rise between $1.20 and $4.20 by the fifth year to install the solar power arrays around the state.

The plan breaks down as follows: Neighborhood Solar (40 megawatts) - $264 million investment; Local Government Solar (43 megawatts) - $273 million investment; Centralized Solar (35 megawatts) – $221 million investment; and HMFA/Affordable Housing Solar (2 megawatts) - $15 million investment.

When fully implemented, the arrays would produce 120mw of power, or 1% of the state's peak needs. It would also satisfy only 7% of the state's renewable energy requirements by 2020.

I'd say it's a good start, but it also highlights that the private sector is moving forward on alternative energy even without government interference or supposed stimulus from the government. Now imagine if $13.2 billion could put arrays on utility polls around the entire nation, adding 2,000mw to the grid (based on the neighborhood solar portion of the PSE&G allotments, multiplied out by 50 states).

That's far more concrete than any of the plans put forth by Congress, and PSE&G did so without a stimulus check.

Still, this is a stopgap because the only way to truly wean the nation off petroleum based fuels is to go nuclear, and the state and federal government continues to stand in the way of development in that area.