Mayor Says Bernards Is Moving to Have JCP&L's Franchise Revoked

Bernards Township has joined neighboring Warren Township and at least one other municipality in petitioning the state to revoke JCP&L's franchise to be the power company with the exclusive right to serve the township.

Malay said Bernards is approaching the state Board of Public Utilities will a request that Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G), which serves the area south of Bernards, extend its franchise northward to replace Jersey Central Power & Light as the township's electric service provider.

Malay acknowleged that the state BPU may not grant the request. But he said that only the prospect of losing customers may force JCP&L and parent company First Energy to make "meaningful changes" in responding to power restoration in this area.

Malay was responding to a question about — along with a continuing cleanup — as a result of an unusually early winter snowstorm on Oct. 29.

After sodden snow blanketed trees still full of leaves, a massive outage throughout the region led to a loss of power for about 8,800 homes in Bernards Township, most of the town.

More than 4,000 of those customers received power restoration within about a day, but — for thousands of additional households in areas throughout the township.

Bernards Police Sgt. Mike Shimsky, Emergency Management Coordinator in Bernards Township, said the police department had handled several hundred calls from residents and had officers working around the clock with township officials and representatives from JCP&L from the time the storm hit, until the last residents had their power restored nine days later.

That delay in power restoration was just two months after an outage that lasted about a week for some residents as a result of Hurricane Irene at the end of August.

Malay said PSE&G apparently has its restoration process more under control than JCP&L, which he said has been cutting back service crews in New Jersey.

The response to this year's storms was "very inefficient," Malay said.

Even after JCP&L called in backup crews from other states, "We had dozens of stories of crews sitting around waiting for orders, waiting for the right equipment," Malay said.

He said he does not fault crews who came from places like Alabama and Ohio, and then worked 16-hour shifts. "Those guys work very hard."

He said the issue seems to be with a lack of coordination, supervision and strategy.

Malay also faulted PSE&G for what he said is an inexcusable lack of communication about when people could expect power back, a lack of comments and the lack of control in bringing about repairs.

Neighboring Warren Township had announced earlier in November it would join Robbinsville before the BPU in an official complaint about the power company's "poor response" to both Hurricane Irene and the October snowstorm.

Robbinsville had filed a petition on Nov. 1 seeking $95,000 in compensation for expenses incurred by the township during Hurricane Irene, when the township was without power for five days, as well as revocation of JCP&L's franchise for the township.

Warren Township Administrator Mark Krane said Warren, in its petition, was not necessarily seeking the same resolution as Robbinsville.

"Our primary objective is to deal with the systematic issues and the methodology of how (the power outage) was handled," he said. "This will give us some time to put our issues on the plate and we'll decide if we want to change our petition later."

"I will tell you that because of our location, our residents feel like they're last in," he said, pointing out Warren is at the southern edge of a large area served by JCP&L.