JCP&L Invests Millions to Fix Disasterous Response

Shrewsbury Mayor Donald Burden called Jersey Central Power and Light's response to disappointing. Red Bank Mayor Pat Menna called it a "dismal failure."

When hit the New Jersey Coast, it left thousands without power and communities without information about when they could expect to get it back. More so than the outages, officials were upset with the power company's near-complete lack of communication with towns following the storm. Left in the dark, leaders from all levels of state government registered their frustrations with the company and demanded swift action.

More than six months later, JCP and L is hoping it can remedy the situation by investing nearly $200 million with the express purpose of enhancing customers' service reliability. In a release, the energy company outlined plans for service and infrastructure improvements designed to meet the demand of its more than one million customers living in central and northern New Jersey

Among the eight listed fixes JCP and L plans on instituting soon, includes upgrades to more than 40 distribution circuits in a number of communities. The upgrades should enhance service reliability, the release states. The improvements include animal guards, spacer cables, and new wires, among others, and should decrease the number of outages.

The power company also plans on inspecting and making proactive replacements of utility poles that are nearing the end of their service life. The inspections will start in the spring and the poles will be replaced in the fall.

When a significantly downgraded Hurricane Irene hit the Jersey Shore it still caused plenty of damage and power outages. More than 200,000 customers in Monmouth and Ocean Counties found themselves without power following the storm. While many shore communities struggled to deal with issues related to flooding, more inland communities still dealt with problems related to the .

In Shrewsbury, more than a third of the population remained without power for days. Much of Route 35 in the borough, which includes a majority of Shrewsbury's businesses, was without power for close to a week following the storm. More than a dozen restaurants and two .

Though Red Bank's businesses were mostly unscathed by the category one hurricane, and its officials for their poor response.

"Although we had scattered outages, I saw the results of their weak reaction to the area," he wrote then. "JCPL was unprepared. For years, JCPL fat cats have been cutting workers and repair crews locally while padding salaries of corporate executives and consultants who are not the people working to restore power."

In 2011, JCP and L invested $165 million to repair and replace equipment damaged by Hurricane Irene and an October snowstorm, the release states. Since 2001, JCP and L, which serves customers in 13 counties, claims it has made more than $1.6 billion in capital improvements to its distribution network.