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Following outages that impacted thousands statewide, New York legislators have announced that they will be grilling Con Ed officials after hearing the impact of area constituents.
“Members from both houses have called for a hearing after meeting with constituents impacted by the rolling blackouts,” Sen. Leroy Comrie, Sen. Kevin Parker, and Assemblymembers Amy Paulin and Michael Cusick said in a statement.
“The hearing will examine Con Edison’s preparedness and response to the blackouts that have left tens of thousands of New Yorkers in the dark this summer as well as consider remedies to ensure system reliability in the future,” Westchester Assemblywoman Paulin added.
Con Ed said in a statement that more than 72,000 customers along 30 blocks from Times Square to the Upper West Side lost power shortly after 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, July 13. It took crews several hours until power was completely restored around midnight.
"Over the next several days and weeks, our engineers and planners will carefully examine the data and equipment performance relating to this event, and will share our findings with regulators and the public," Con Ed said in a statement on Sunday.
The cause of the weekend blackout in NYC remains under investigation by Con Edison.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been critical of Con Edison and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in the wake of the outages. The governor warned the utility company is not irreplaceable and will need to “deliver, or we’re going to have to find a different delivery mechanism.”
"You look in the Old Testament or the New Testament, it doesn't say anywhere Con Ed must be the utility company. They have a franchise,” Cuomo said. “They're licensed by the people of the city to do the job and my point to them was you have to do the job and this is not acceptable because there are certain situations that are just too dangerous and this is one of those situations that's too dangerous.”
Cuomo said that he is ordering an independent investigation on top of the internal investigation Con Edison is currently undergoing.
“Con Ed, they are nice people, I know Mr. (John) McAvoy, who runs Con Ed and we've done a lot of work together, but it's about the functionality at the end of the day and some situations you just can't tolerate,” Cuomo said. “You can't have a blackout in New York City. Let's be honest. We got very lucky the other night. When you have a blackout in a city like New York, you are one step away from chaos and mayhem. It just can’t happen.”
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