The man who will investigate Morristown’s exploding manholes knows a lot about Jersey Central Power & Light.
Patrick Downes, whose hiring by JCP&L as Morristown’s “special reliability master” was unanimously approved Thursday by the state Board of Public Utilities, played a similar advisory role after JCP&L power outages affected the Barrier Islands in 2003.
Five days of outages around the Fourth of July that year wrought havoc with resort towns. Pressure was brought to bear on JCP&L, which paid $2 million in claims to businesses and installed new power lines.
“We’ve worked with Pat in the past,” said JCP&L spokesman Ron Morano. “We’re committed to working with the BPU on this and we will fully cooperate with Pat Downes as we have in the past.”
The BPU is directing Patrick Downes, of PJ Downes Associates LLC, to submit progress reports about his Morristown findings every two weeks, with a final report due by Jan. 31, 2012.
He is authorized to review Morristown’s Aug. 31 manhole explosion that injured a Morris Township mother of two, and review all Morristown network incidents since 2000.
Although the BPU does not specifically direct the consultant to examine the still-unsolved May 2010 explosion that shut down the Morristown & Township Library, Thursday’s order appears to open the door for that by mandating access to “any additional data, reports or individuals that have conducted previous review and/or investigations into incidents or operation and maintenance of the Morristown network,” subject to certain confidentiality conditions.
The BPU order notes that JCP&L operates transformers in 50 vaults across downtown Morristown, and justifies the investigation by citing “a series of events and incidents [that] have occurred in recent years that have impacted reliability and in some cases cause damage to person and property. These incidents include damage to the Morristown library [emphasis added] and in the most recent case, personal injury to a member of the public.”
JCP&L and Public Service Electric & Gas have denied responsibility for the library explosion. Patrick Downes is a former vice president of delivery operations support for PSE&G.
“I’m really happy they picked an investigator,” said Morristown Mayor Tim Dougherty. “I think it’s a good one they picked, especially with the results he got in 2003” for the Barrier Islands.
The Mayor added that he was happy that the BPU and JCP&L were moving swiftly to resolve the manhole issues, but said it’s imperative that Patrick Downes also has access to all materials from the ongoing insurance company investigation of the library explosion.
“We need to have some closure,” said the Mayor. He said he plans to press the BPU and JCP&L to install special safety covers on manholes as an interim measure.
The problem came to a head in August, when a manhole explosion burned a Morris Township mother of two as she was driving her two young sons for ice cream. Another family narrowly escaped injury.
Two months earlier, an underground electrical fire sent thick black smoke billowing from sidewalk grates in front of a pharmacy on South Street.
Back in February, another manhole coughed smoke outside a business at the corner of Maple Avenue and Market Street.
Before that, at least three manhole incidents preceded a massive basement explosion–still unsolved–at the Morristown & Township Library in May 2010.
Last month, on the same day that Judy Stein-Lowenthal gave dramatic testimony about her fateful ice cream trip, the BPU directed JCP&L to hire a special reliability master, subject to board approval and reporting to the board, to evaluate the design, reliability and safety maintenance of Morristown’s underground electrical network.
“Presumably, that will give us the foundation for some action,” BPU President Lee Solomon said at the September meeting.
Last month the BPU president also came to Morristown and Morris Plains for meetings with mayors and the public regarding JCP&L’s response to Tropical Storm Irene.
In the wake of power outages that exceeded a week in some neighborhoods, the utility was excoriated for poor communications.
JCP&L officials conceded they could have done better, but they also noted that the scope of Irene surpassed any storms they had encountered before in New Jersey.
READ THE BPU INVESTIGATION ORDER
READ MORE ABOUT MORRISTOWN’S MANHOLE PROBLEM
