Parsippany, Morris Officials Get JCP&L Review

PARSIPPANY, NJ—Days after several Morris County officials, including Parsippany's mayor, called on the Bureau of Public Utilities to investigate JCP&L's performance during the recent storm, the state agency announced it will review the company's response.

"The Board’s Division of Reliability and Security will conduct a post mortem on utility performance in restoring power lost as a result of Tropical Storm Isaias," said a statement by the BPU on Friday. "If need be, we will conduct a further investigation after the post mortem is completed."

The scrutiny comes after Parsippany Mayor Michael Soriano and Councilwomen Janice McCarthy and Emily Peterson were among more than two dozen elected leaders who called last week for JCP&L to improve infrastructure, emergency response, and communication—and for the state to make sure it all happens.

The officials were pleased with the news, but stressed that the probe must get to what they see as the major problem.

"It's the grid," the mayor said. "Storms are becoming serious events, and the power grid was not built for this."

Last week's statement by Morris officials also called for the utility to compensate customers for items lost because of the outages. Soriano, who initially called for the reimbursement in an earlier statement, said he's trying to secure the payments with the most vulnerable residents in mind.

"We're going to push for it," Soriano said. "I've gotten calls from elderly people, unemployed, disabled people. A hundred dollars of food or medicine isn't a big deal to some people. To others, it's devastating."

A JCP&L spokesman said the company does not compensate customers for items lost because of power outages. The utility added that the reforms the Morris officials demanded were being addressed through the Reliability Plus Program, the utility's $97 million investment in upgrades.

"Once the projects are complete," said Cliff Cole, JCP&L spokesman, "JCP&L expects that customers will experience fewer sustained outages under normal conditions as well as a reduction in outage duration."

Parsippany Councilwoman McCarthy, echoing Soriano, said the issue is that JCP&L needs to invest more in New Jersey, noting hundreds of millions in projects happening in other states.

"Unfortunately, we're going to endure severe storms more and more frequently," McCarthy said. "And I don't see JCP&L investing in anything here, certainly not in Parsippany."