New Rochelle City Council members Marianne Sussman and Barry Fertel announced today that they had called on Con Edison to fix the infrastructure in their areas, covering many of the north and east areas of the city.

Sussman, a Democrat representing District 6, including the most northern areas of New Rochelle, is running for re-election against Republican Bruce Negrin. Fertel, another Democrat, is running unopposed to keep his council seat in District 5.

Here is a press release on the Con Edison matter issued today by Sussman:

Members of the New Rochelle City Council Marianne Sussman, District 6, and Barry Fertel, District 5, of the New Rochelle City Council have called upon Con Edison and the Public Service Commission to require the utility invest in infrastructure repairs to stop unusual outages in areas of their Council districts.

The areas suffer multiple-day service disruptions at times when no other sections of the city or the surrounding region are affected, in addition to times of widespread power outages. While the recent instances are well known, for more than then years there have been frequent outages of minutes to hours on random occasions with no obvious cause. This has continued for more than ten years in some of these areas.

During a rainstorm on June 27, 2007 at about 4 pm. more than 1,000 residents in the Hillanddale/Winding Brook area of District 6 lost power for more than 30 hours Power was restored at 5 am on June 28, only to go off immediately, with burning power lines and a transformer â€Å“explosionâ€? at Hillanddale Drive and Ramona Court. Power was not restored to the neighborhood until 11 pm that night,

On July 31 over 1,500 Con Ed customers and on August 3, 3,000 customers lost power in the area of Dusk Drive, Pondview Lane, Skyview Lane, Quaker Ridge Road, and Sussex Road.

On each of these occasions, there are significant delays in repair by Con Edison, and to date there has not been a satisfactory investigation or action undertaken to provide reliable service to these homes.

A report by Con Edison to the City on the incidents dated September 27 faults tree damage to wires for most of these outages, but infrastructure failure is evident from the report.

Ms. Sussman said, â€Å“Infrastructure repair is evidently long overdue, yet Con Edison appears unwilling to address these failures in its systems. The outages result in dangerous conditions in both winter and summer, as well as significant damage to property. After many attempts by individuals and through the City, we have now reached out to the Public Service Commission and the highest corporate levels at Con Edison for action.â€?

Noting that some of the affected areas in his district have underground power lines, Mr. Fertel called upon the Public Service Commission and Consolidated Edison to address the causes of these service disruptions without delay. Mr. Fertel said, â€Å“Con Edison’s lack of response to the chronic power outages is unacceptable. Residents are fed up with Con Ed’s inaction, and I am hopeful that the Public Service Commission will direct Con Ed to address this serious situation and take immediate action to correct it.â€?