By: Chris Munzing
The blackout that the City of Long Beach experienced at the beginning of December was the result of a transformer fire in Island Park. However, the blackout, which affected the entire city, brought to light the power interruptions in sections of Long Beach that occur on a regular basis.
In the Westholme section of the city alone, power interruptions occurred on Nov. 14, 16, twice on Nov. 18, and again on Nov. 19 and 21. Outages also occurred before the widespread blackout last August. Residents often find themselves resetting clocks and VCRs when they come home from work.
Helen Maley, of 663 W. Market St., said that her home has had power outages about once every other week since last summer. She said that the outages don't last more than a few seconds, but are enough to cause an inconvenience. "It's just enough to make you reset your clocks," she said.
Maley initially thought the problem was unique to her home, but found out that all of her neighbors, and homes as far as three blocks south, were experiencing the same problem.
Maley took her complaints to LIPA in November, after the barrage of outages, and received a reply in late December. She said that LIPA had a number of reasons for the outages, but in some instances didn't even realize an outage had occurred. Maley did say, however, that LIPA seemed committed to addressing the issue.
According to LIPA spokesman Michael Lowndes, the recent trips in the system could be the result of an unusually windy autumn and winter. "We've had a lot of high-wind days," said Lowndes. "We've broken records on Long Island. When we have high winds, we have associated outages."
When winds are high, the most frequent problem is the downing of tree limbs. According to Lowndes, more than 95 percent of all power outages are the result of tree limbs coming into contact with power lines. From the customer's perspective, there's little that can be done to reduce the chance of an outage, except to contact LIPA and have trees trimmed aggressively. Lowndes was adamant that people shouldn't try to cut the branches themselves or hire an outside contractor.
In offering the frequent high winds as a likely culprit, Lowndes explained that the outages couldn't be the result of service problems or technical glitches, or else LIPA would know about them immediately. "There are no system problems," he said.
"If people are experiencing ongoing interruptions, they need to contact us each and every time it occurs, and we'll correct it," he said. "We don't ignore complaints." Lowndes added that LIPA can't do anything about the outages if they don't know about them.
In fact, according to Lowndes, LIPA is the No. 1-ranked electricity provider in New York State in terms of reliability, a distinction it has held for the past three years. He added that LIPA is also No. 1 in restoring the power of its customers when there is an outage.
However, Lowndes asked customers to keep in mind that LIPA is not infallible, and that problems do crop up from time to time. "The system isn't 100 percent foolproof, and it never will be," he said.
High winds, however, could be the answer to Long Island's power issues in the future. A plan is in place to install a windmill farm in the Atlantic Ocean, seven miles off the coast of Jones Beach. The power the windmills could generate could drastically reduce pollution and reduce the energy bills of LIPA customers. "Think of the barrels of oil that wouldn't have to be purchased and burned," Lowndes said. "We're not using foreign fuel, we're not polluting the air. It's win-win."
The plan is still years from being finalized, with fishermen, beachgoers, residents and politicians all having opinions. Lowndes assured the Herald that the windmills would not pose the aesthetic problem many believe they would. The distance of the windmills from the shore would make them nearly impossible to see. "On a very clear day, you might be able to pick them out," Lowndes said.
