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.

Photos From the Recovery in Radburn

One tree removed, countless others remain to be addressed

PSE&G already installing new poles to restring power lines. Tree crews had come through earlier today to dispose of the trees that took out these lines.

Lots of work remain before power gets restored on this segment. At least two more poles have to be installed before they can begin restringing the power lines and other utilities.

The culprit for part of the Radburn Road outage cut down to size.

 

The tree leaning against the Radburn Apartments has been cleared.

The trucks are from Indiana. The crews are from Wisconsin. They're here in Radburn clearing away the trees from adjacent to the Radburn post office.

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.

Connecticut Panel Hands Down Recommendations Over Electric Utility Reliability

Once you attach a price tag to any project, all of a sudden supporters suddenly balk at making the necessary changes.

Connecticut residents suffered horrendously at the hands of Connecticut Light and Power during the double whammy of Hurricane Irene/Lee and then the freak October snowstorm. Millions of people were without power for days on end, and the utility was ill-prepared to deal with the snowstorm even after seeing how badly it responded during the hurricanes.

A panel set up by Governor Malloy has issued numerous recommendations, but it would call on rates to go up 10% in order to increase reliability by 30-40%.

The strongest recommendation was one that came from Connecticut Light & Power on the last day of the hearings – a proposed $2.2 billion plan to boost reliability.

Panel co-chair Joe McGee says the utility claims the plan would boost resiliency by more than a third, but will customers be willing to pay more for this?

“Their proposal was a 10 percent increase in your monthly bill for a 30 to 40 percent increase in reliability of the system,” said McGee.

In all, 82 recommendations were passed onto the governor for his consideration.

One of the reasons that the utility did so poorly had nothing to do with rates, but everything to do with not getting regional assistance plans in place to bring in supporting utilities from outside the region in a timely basis and then doing a poor job coordinating those efforts. Throw poor communications on top of everything else, and what you get is a mismanaged utility that can't do its basic job - delivering reliable power to its customers.

It can claim that those rate increases will improve reliability, but one has to question how other utilities in the state were able to do a far better job without similar rate increases (see PSE&G and even Con Ed and LIPA - and Con Ed and LIPA aren't exactly paragons of virtue when it comes to power reliability and dealing with outages). CPL skimped on tree trimming and other maintenance issues, and that had a large part to do with just how badly it handled the crisis.

So, what else does the panel recommend and find? Well, it realizes that the state has been hit by a string of severe storms, and that climate change may be involved (and might lead to even more severe weather events).

The panel called on the state to develop new engineering standards that will better protect the built environment from the effects of extreme weather and those standards should then be incorporated into the State’s Building Code within six months of development.

The panel also noted that there's a toxic work relationship between the utilities and their workforce, and that the utilities must prepare a worst-case scenario based on a Cat 3 hurricane (which is stronger than what the state experienced but well above the previously planned worst-case scenario that posited only 100,000 outages statewide; there were 1 million outages during the two weather events in 2011).

Tree trimming and infrastructure hardening is one of the priorities that must be addressed, but it shouldn't take a 10% increase in rates to accomplish.

Connecticut's Utility Fails To Meet Own Deadline To Restore Power

Connecticut Light and Power is the poster child for all that is wrong with power utilities in the country. Not only can it not provide its basic purpose - reliable power distribution, but it can't even make its own deadlines to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people across the state.

Thousands of customers are still without power two weeks after the early season snowstorm.

CLP's parent company, Northeast Utilities, has put up $10 million to offer assistance to its customers and waived penalties and other fees from the storm period. That's cold comfort to the hundreds of thousands of customers who were without power for nearly two weeks.

Gov. Dannel Malloy empowered a panel to investigate the utility and thus far there's no good news for the utility. It cut back on tree trimming, and while the utility can claim that it has spent more on trimming in recent years, it's less than it was spending a decade ago (as adjusted for inflation). That translates into less miles of line that gets trimmed - meaning that more trees are likely to cause service disruptions.

Others are now focusing on CLP's parent company, and how the political favors and lobbying has won it the right to little oversight or responsibility when things go horribly wrong.

The State Attorney General is working with a risk management company to try and figure out what the utility did and is an expansion of similar investigations being carried out in the wake of the utility's failings during Hurricane Irene.

There are five separate investigations ongoing into CLP's actions during the aftermath from Irene and the snowstorm.

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.

US Should Adopt "Feed-In Tariff" To Expand Solar Power Installations

Germany has used feed-in tariffs to great success in order to expand solar power installations. Utilities in the US are balking at similar proposals, claiming it would result in higher costs to rate-payers.

I think that the utilities don't want to lose out on the income that could be generated from major wind and solar powered installations since the feed-in tariffs would enable businesses and individuals to receive due compensation from installing their own micro solar power arrays on their own properties.

Under a feed-in tariff program, renewable power installations, including those on residential and business rooftops, are connected to the electricity grid. This allows the owners to sell energy to utilities at long-term, fixed rates.

If such a program is adopted, proponents say, the benefits could be enormous for California as well as for individual producers, who could profit from the sale of the energy and pay off the cost of the installations sooner.

The state could benefit from having smaller, more flexible alternative energy sources than the massive, expensive installations waiting to be built in remote deserts and mountains, green-tech analysts said.

At the same time, such requirements could boost demand for solar panels and small wind-turbine projects, leading to a surge in new clean-tech companies. A July study by UC Berkeley researchers estimated that a feed-in tariff program could create 28,000 clean-tech jobs each year for a decade, as well as generate more than $2 billion in tax revenue and pump more than $50 billion in new private investment to the state.

But critics say although the program is compelling on the surface, the devil is in the details. In addition to coming up with a fair rate structure and determining who would regulate the program, utilities must figure out ways to easily connect the individual producers to the electricity grid, which is sprawling and disjointed.

"It's a bit like talking about the color of the second-floor bedroom before we build the foundation of the house," said Austin Beutner, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who recently met with experts from Germany. "The direction is a good one, but we have to go about it in a sober and measured fashion. It's a lot more complicated than anybody wants to acknowledge."
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Even the name — inherited from Europe — has been confusing.

"When people hear the word 'tariff' they think 'tax,' " said Mary Leslie, president of the Los Angeles Business Council, which is backing a local proposal that the DWP would administer. "It should be 'reward' or 'rebate' or something. The term is undermining the benefits of the program."

The name of the proposal does need work, but the fact is that such a system would enable homeowners to benefit far more from solar power installations and utilities would have access to a wider range of alternative energy facilities, driving down their energy acquisition costs for distribution. To date, that has been one of the drawbacks on alternative energy projects - the cost for alternative energy like wind and solar has been higher than coal or gas. This proposal would help balance the field, and would bring more power sources on line.

It would spur more homeowners and businesses to consider installing solar power systems of their own.

As to the utilities' concerns over figuring out rates for these new providers, a tiered rate system could be imposed based on rated energy output per installation. Someone with a 50-100kw installation would get X, a 101-200kw installation would get Y, etc. The rates would be tiered in such a way that it would encourage larger solar installations - higher rates for progressively larger installations.

This proposal shouldn't just be confined to California, where the idea is under consideration, but should be made a national policy so as to spur production and technological innovation around the entire country. This is an opportunity for utilities to upgrade their infrastructure and build additional redundancy and robustness into their power systems.

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.

Cleanup Continues on NYC Steam Explosion

The driver of the tow truck that found itself enveloped in the steam explosion, Greg McCullough, is still in critical condition with burns to 80% of his body. He was put in an induced coma while doctors treat his severe burns at Cornell-Weill's burn unit. He's got an extremely tough uphill battle and I wish him and his family all the best of luck and prayers for a recovery. His passenger, Eileen Barry, suffered minor injuries and her evacuation from the scene was captured by a New York Post photographer.

Later this morning, a crane will remove the tow truck sitting in the crater caused by the steam explosion at 41st and Lexington. That will enable Con Ed workers to begin assessing the damage wrought to the utilities in the area and begin repairs. Con Ed continues to maintain that air samples have not found any airborne asbestos but soil and ground samples have found trace levels of the mineral. Workers are wearing protective garb while cleaning up the area.

Cleanup continues around the site, and businesses are getting hit hard by the restrictions on traffic in the area. Expect Con Ed to get hit hard in return - a flood of lawsuits should be expected by businesses disrupted by the explosion.

The losses could run into tens of millions of dollars, economists say. Thousands of people have been shut out of offices and shops near the explosion at Lexington Avenue and 41st Street since Wednesday.

Con Edison, which owns the underground steam system, has said it would pay for damage, including replacing clothing worn by people who were showered with mud and debris. Chris Olert, a Con Ed spokesman, said the company also agreed to pay for all of the cleanup, both in buildings and on the streets and sidewalk. He said the company did not have an estimate of the total cost.

Con Ed has not indicated whether it will reimburse businesses for financial losses caused by the closing of the “frozen zone” around the explosion site. Mr. Olert said that businesses could submit requests for reimbursement, and that the company’s lawyers would review them on a case-by-case basis. The company’s critics, however, are bracing for a fight, contending that Con Ed was likely to try to limit its payments.

Because the explosion involved the steam system, Con Edison is not bound by state regulations on reimbursements in the case of electricity failures, according to James Denn, a spokesman for the Public Service Commission in Albany. (This month, the maximum reimbursement under state law for economic damages caused by electrical failures rose to $9,000 from $7,000 for businesses.)

Some businesses may lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenues as a result, and the low cost loans will do little to help them recoup their losses.

Sounding the Alarm Again

Last year, I wrote about the crumbling infrastructure around the country and the need to spend serious money to improve roads, rails, and the energy infrastructure.

This money has to come from somewhere, and it's not a problem that will be solved overnight. Will the latest blast showing the fragility of the energy distribution system be a clarion call?

I doubt it. Sure, there will be plenty of editorials and pundits who demand changes. Some politicians will even demand the utility do more, but in the end little will be accomplished.

Con Ed operates the steam system, and it appears that they've been doing a progressively worse job in maintaining the system in the past several years despite claims that they've increased their maintenance and replacement of systems. The site of the Manhattan steam explosion may have been well known to Con Ed and it had been dealing with various issues in the area for the better part of a year:

Over the last 12 months, the company responded to more than 300 emergencies in the 125-year-old system. Much of the 105 miles of steam mains that run under Manhattan's streets are decades old.

The explosion was merely the latest of Con Ed catastrophes, coming on the heels of last month's blackout across the Upper East Side and parts of The Bronx, and last year's nine-day blackout in Queens.

"It's not the first time it has happened, and it won't be the last," said Cynthia Barnes-Thompson, 48, a receptionist from Brooklyn. "They [Con Ed] are jeopardizing all our lives, and nobody seems to be doing anything when it happens."

Three of the emergencies recorded in the last year were at or near the site of Wednesday's blast. Exactly what happened on Aug. 16, Jan. 11 and April 5 couldn't be determined yesterday. Neither Con Ed nor the PSC could elaborate on the reports.

But some pipes near the blast site at Lexington Avenue and 41st Street needed repair. Street-opening permits filed with the city indicate Con Ed was trying to fix steam leaks near there right up to the day of the blast.

Con Ed had a city permit that would have allowed the utility to work at the intersection between June 21 and July 22.

One could hope that the utility company would begin a comprehensive system to replace and modernize the system - digging up 10 miles of pipe a year, but even that effort would take a decade before the system is at least relatively current. Consider that everyone should have known about the need to upgrade the steam system after the 1989 explosion that killed three people. In the years since then, how many miles were replaced? It would appear that Con Ed took the route that if it isn't broken, don't replace it.

That said, there are efforts to try and deal with the creaky infrastructure in the City. New technology is in the process of being applied to scanning the steam pipe system for leaks.

Of course, there are some folks who think that the steam explosion was done on purpose. Conspiracy nutters one and all.

UPDATE:
Gothamist notes that quite a few are not taking chances accepting the Con Ed and City view that the air is safe to breathe and are wearing respirators to err on the side of caution. They also note that there are some who question Con Ed's capabilities to manage the energy infrastructure in the City given all its recent problems.