On power outages, residents harnessing their outrage
Peter Snoad called it ''par for the course these days" on Dunster Road in Jamaica Plain. His electricity was out again.
He knew it would happen.
So, with little else to do in a powerless home at 7 a.m. Saturday, he walked around the corner to his office to run off copies of his flier promoting a March 31 neighborhood meeting with NStar representatives.
Jamaica Plain has endured a string of outages for the past five years, and many of its residents are finding ways to get answers. Some painstakingly study electric company facts, figures, and how underground equipment is updated. These residents keep statistics. They demand meetings. One resident even has the NStar president's phone number on speed dial.
''We're really going through Electricity 101 here," said Ralph Loring of Dunster Road.
Last month, in preparation for their meeting with NStar, residents pored through local newspaper clippings and recorded some 80 blackouts since July 2003 in JP alone. NStar says it does not categorize outages by neighborhood or keep any such statistics, so the residents compiled their own numbers. Some marked sheets of paper they left scattered around their homes whenever the power went out. Others combed through three years of Jamaica Plain Gazettes and its biweekly ''Power to the People" column listing outages reported to the paper. Others tried to pin down just how the entire power system worked, from pricing to maintenance to infrastructure.
The residents estimate that in the past two years, their 80 outages averaged 3.3 hours in duration. One outage, beginning on Aug. 16, 2003, lasted 35 hours. Of those outages, NStar told the Gazette that 35 percent were caused by circuit problems, such as underground cable faults and blown transformers; 15 percent were outages NStar planned; and 4 percent were the result of trees falling or cars hitting utility poles. The cause of the remaining 46 percent of the outages is listed as ''unknown" by the Gazette. Marc Lucas, an NStar community relations representative who worked until recently exclusively with customers in Jamaica Plain, said the paper's ''unknown" count is likely inaccurate because customers who see digital clocks blinking in their homes often call the Gazette and report an outage, without calling NStar. Without a call from a customer, NStar doesn't know about the outage, which may have lasted just a second before restoring itself. ''The biggest misconception is that we know that the power's out, and that's not necessarily the case," Lucas said.
NStar records outages by circuit, and Lucas estimated that about 20 different power circuits run beneath Jamaica Plain and cross through many other neighborhoods, making a neighborhood count virtually impossible.
In any event, this spring, the JP residents' organizing has grown from informal huddling to en masse rallying in a matter of months.
John Ruch, who writes the outage column for the Gazette and who has had outages at his JP home, said he thinks the column is a fairly good sketch of the problem.
''You can get to see a pattern of outages," he said. ''It's helped for people to look at it as a neighborhood problem in a way they haven't before. JP is a community that organizes quickly and efficiently, and this affects virtually everybody in JP at one point or another. People are mad enough about it. They're bound to organize."
In February, 10 frustrated residents got together in Snoad's home, set up an easel on which they scribbled suggestions, and debated what to do. Some wanted to call NStar repeatedly. Others suggested not paying their electricity bills, or withholding a sort of ''nuisance tax" if service wasn't up to par, perhaps $1 for every outage.
The result of their efforts was the March 31 meeting with NStar. Before the session, organizers used frustration with blackouts to boost attendance. A flier printed in English and Spanish was distributed door-to-door by Snoad and read: ''Sick and tired of power blackouts? Why is service so poor when we're paying so much? Get answers from NStar at a community meeting . . . Come and make your voice heard (and bring a flashlight . . . you never know)."
At the meeting, roughly 100 residents showed up as NStar reps and residents offered dueling power point presentations for more than two hours.
''It's beneficial for us to have these meetings -- we need people to understand what we're doing in their neighborhoods," said NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen. ''We know some customers in JP have not been getting the service they deserve, but we're working to make it better. It's a priority to get it done quickly."
NStar calls the series of planned and unplanned outages ''growing pains" associated with replacing transformers underground. Workers can't build, replace, or repair underground with electricity running through live wires, so they often have to shut them off. Shorter outages occur when customers are temporarily switched to adjacent circuits.
''Should they have done this progressively throughout the years? Yes," said state Representative Jeffrey Sanchez, who represents Jamaica Plain. ''NStar is presenting their case, and I'm glad that they are. And we're still going to keep our eyes open and make sure that the changes come."
NStar officials said roughly 6,000 customers along Centre Street would benefit from transformer replacement and other repairs to be completed by the end of the year. Many side streets will not see improvements until sometime next year.
Lucas said a key problem with Jamaica Plain is that it's farthest from any of the city's 34 electrical substations, which take in power from 21 generators registered with the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy. A department spokesman did not return a call for comment.
Lucas said the distance a neighborhood is from a substation plays a key role in its vulnerability to outages because of exposure to ruptures or damages along the way. For instance, the current distance from Jackson Square to the nearest power substation in Brighton, Lucas said, is 25,000 feet, or roughly five miles. When a new three-transformer substation goes up on Colburn Street in Mission Hill, that distance will be cut to 7,500 feet, or about a mile and a half.
''It makes a shorter run," Lucas said. ''Less cable length, less problems."
Lucas also said the new substation will create smaller ''electrical districts" within Jamaica Plain, which would serve to decrease the chances of one break taking out an entire circuit, making parts of the neighborhood less subject to outages tied to maintenance activity elsewhere. Lucas said residents can expect longer outages through May; the Colburn Street station is scheduled to be put on line in June.
Meanwhile, residents share tips on how to back up their alarm clocks in the event they're unexpectedly reset overnight, recommend keeping flashlights by their beds, and, this winter, discovered how to heat the home with an oven when the heat is out.
While grappling with outages may be a common experience, not every resident at the February organizing meeting at Snoad's house agreed they were such a bad thing.
Some touted the value of romantic candlelit evenings, while others said the blackouts highlight a need to look closely at renewable energy. But others feared for the safety of the neighborhood's elderly.
Donald Whittredge, an 85-year-old widower who lives on Dunster Road, said the outages are not only hazardous for the elderly with limited mobility, but accentuate loneliness.
''I've got no company in the dark," he said. ''I'm not afraid of ghosts, but I don't enjoy the company of flickering candles."
Whittredge did joke about the outages during his birthday party last August.
''It came time for the traditional blowing out of the candles," he said. ''I blow them out and all the lights went out. That gives you quite a feeling of power. It made for a few bad puns and laughs."
Whittredge's daughter Anne lives five minutes from her father and said there's no humor in the situation for her.
''It's really serious when you think about it," she said. ''My dad is lucky he has a place to go. When the power goes out, he doesn't have a telephone because he doesn't keep a landline, and most people don't these days. In the winter, the heat goes out. Every time the power goes out he has to reset every clock. It sounds like little things, but when you're 85 it isn't."
The Hyde Square area of Jamaica Plain was hit hard by similar outages last year while going through similar construction, infuriating many business owners. ''Once you get through the series of replacing equipment," said NStar's Lucas, ''it's night and day."
Carol Downs, co-owner of the Milky Way Lounge and Bella Luna Restaurant on Centre Street, said her business has not had an outage since NStar finished nearby repairs. The restaurant's owners said they lost about $30,000 in revenue in 2003 when power abruptly cut out six times, including during busy weekends. JP business owners called a meeting with NStar and city officials similar to the one held March 31. But Downs, who has felt the latest round of outages in her home on St. Joseph's Street, questions how complicated the task of restoring power really was.
''Why did we have to lose $30,000 and have six outages and meet with public officials in order to get that circuit fixed?" she said. ''Now the same pattern is happening in my residential neighborhood.
''If you talk to the technicians on the street, what they say is that NStar applies Band-Aid after Band-Aid. What our neighborhood desperately needs is the investment in permanent infrastructure repair."
And for all the focus on their own personal habitat, Snoad said he and his neighbors also keep the state of electric service citywide in the back of their minds when planning future action.
''There are probably lots of other communities who are suffering more than their share of outages for the same reasons we are," Snoad said.
''We feel like we could play a role in highlighting an issue that's affecting us that might have broader implications."
