(MINEOLA, N.Y.) - Earlier today, the Nassau County Legislature’s Superstorm Sandy Committee held a public hearing related to PSEG-LI’s response to Tropical Storm Isaias. Following the hearing, Legislator DeRiggi-Whitton (D-Glen Cove), the committee’s ranking member, issued the following statement:
“There is still no excuse for PSEG-LI’s mismanagement of the response to Tropical Storm Isaias and its continued failure to communicate with local government officials and customers.”
“During nearly two hours of testimony, PSEG-LI Chief Operating Officer Daniel Eichhorn failed or refused on numerous occasions to provide concrete answers to pointed questions about his agency’s failed response to Tropical Storm Isaias - and in at least one case appears to have misinformed the committee.”
“Although he claimed that PSEG-LI had no way of knowing what traffic signals were without power during the storm, later testimony by Deputy County Executive Brian Schneider revealed that the Department of Public Works provided a comprehensive list of critical post-storm needs - including the location of every traffic signal without power as identified by the County’s Traffic Management Center - to PSEG-LI by the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 4.”
“I was also dismayed that PSEG-LI officials admitted to not knowing the full extent of damage and outages when deploying crews. These diligent frontline workers - for whom we are all deeply grateful - deserved far better leadership and communication from management than what they had to contend with after Isaias.”
“Even though we pay some of the highest utility rates in the nation and have spent millions of dollars to harden our storm infrastructure in the eight years since Superstorm Sandy, the response to Isaias was still extremely poor - and Isaias was not the type of large storm that we were especially fearful of.”
“As many Nassau County families face continued economic hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic, I am at least thankful that PSEG-LI relented to pressure from County Executive Curran and our state representatives and agreed to reimburse customers for food and prescription medicine that spoiled during extended power outages.”
“I can only hope that that applying for relief is a more orderly, streamlined and user-friendly process than reporting power outages in the immediate aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias.”