Disaster Response Efforts In Wyckoff Improved After Sandy By Orange & Rockland

WYCKOFF, NJ — In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Wyckoff Committee member (then-private citizen) Timothy Shanley and his family were without power for roughly 10 days — this was just as temperatures were beginning to drop. He recalled other residents in the area living without power for even longer.

Appointed in 2017 to the Township Committee and winning a one-year term in 2018, Shanley was led by his frustrations with the energy service company Orange and Rockland, and what he saw as its inadequate restoration response, to present a motion of no confidence in the utility in 2018.

Shanley's opinion, he said, was that O&R (franchise name in Northern NJ: Rockland Electric), which supplies about 50 percent of electricity in Wyckoff, underestimated the damages that occurred and thus did not have a strategic plan for resource mobilization that would have help arrive in a timely fashion.

His no-confidence motion was unanimously passed by the Township Committee, though the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, to whom — he said — he had then brought before the motion, was "not very responsive."

Peter Peretzman, a Board of Public Utilities spokesman, however, said the Board had not received any petition regarding Wyckoff's desire to be served solely by Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), the township's other energy supplier.

Changing electric utility providers for a portion of the township, Peretzman said, would be a "very complicated process requiring multiple Board Orders to accomplish and a thorough review to ensure ratepayers would not be harmed due to the transaction."

Regardless, O&R, in years following the vote, appeared to shore up infrastructure and step up efforts, Shanley said, in order to respond to these power outage incidents, particularly during winter storms in 2019 and 2020.

"Sometimes you have to rattle their cage to get a response," he said, adding that he had hoped the vote put pressure on the utility to respond more efficiently.

In fact, utility spokesperson Mike Donovan said over the past 10 years since Hurricane Sandy made landfall O&R has initiated a set of resilience programs to "reduce the number, scope, damage and duration of power outages caused by major storms."

Sandy, he said, knocked out power to more than 80 percent of the utility's customers. Based on a comparative analysis performed on restoration times for Sandy and subsequent major storms, O&R estimated that the work completed through the programs has improved restoration times by at least 30 percent.

Through one of the resilience programs — the storm-hardening initiative — the company invested around $58 million "to make the electric system more storm-resistant," Donovan said.

O&R built electric circuits, automated select circuits, buried overhead lines at strategic locations, enhanced overhead systems with stronger wire and poles and expanded tree-trimming clearances at critical service locations, he added.

O&R also relocated overhead power line sections underground, specifically for 12,000 customers in Allendale, Ramsey and Wyckoff, and constructed a $1.6 million substation upgrade in Allendale.

"The more that utilities do this — put lines underground — the better off New Jersey is," Shanley said. "I want these companies to do their best when these storms hit to make sure they have the help they are going to need and the ability to restore power as quickly as possible."