The Body Electric
Assemblyman Gianaris resolved to make Con Edison his cause. It’s easy to miss his office, which is tucked away above a flower shop on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens. A small sign above the tulips indicates he’s in there. Inside, boxes of office supplies sit like building blocks carelessly stacked, and two framed posters hang crookedly on the wall.
A bulletin board plastered with press releases and fan mail displays the enthusiasm he has inspired in his supporters. Scrawled in crayon, thank-you cards from Queens students are posted next to an announcement for an upcoming Greek Independence Day celebration, which Gianaris was scheduled to host. He is the first Greek-American to hold an elected position in New York City. Later on his way to lunch, donning a black leather jacket over conservative slacks and collared shirt, he asks, “Do you eat Greek?”
Unlike the reception area, Gianaris’ office is immaculate. The walls are lined with plaques, degrees (including one from Harvard Law) and pictures—all at perfect right angles. He sits behind his immense desk with hands folded casually as he describes the progression of his career. “I practiced law for a number of years,” he says. “I’d wake up with a feeling of drudgery. I work harder now – and I worked long hours then—but I love it. The opportunity to help people on a day-to-day basis is unmatched.”
He realized he wanted to pursue politics 20 years ago when he chaired a voter registration committee in New York for the Dukakis presidential campaign. Once he was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2000, Gianaris says, Con Ed immediately came on his radar as an issue. An enormous Con Ed facility operates just down the street from his Astoria office, and as Gianaris and other state legislators worked to enhance security of the utility’s gas pipes after 9/11 they found the agency uncommunicative and difficult to work with. Of course that wouldn’t be the end of his battle with the utility giant.
“I was shocked to find that there is no single thing that we can do to make them accountable,” says Gianaris. “They can perform as disastrously as possible, and there’s no mechanism to make them accountable.”
Gianaris began to use his position in the state assembly as a pulpit, a role he has played even more prominently following last year’s blackout. In the quiet hours of a Sunday morning in January, Gianaris stood in front of Con Ed’s Union Square headquarters and spoke out against the company he calls “an unaccountable monopoly.” Goading the corporate giant on its home turf, he stood alongside Queens City Councilmember Eric Gioia, while Con Ed workers glared at him with arms crossed.
Gianaris invoked the mounting toll Con Ed’s aging infrastructure is taking on New Yorkers—like Jodie Lane, who was electrocuted by stray voltage in 2004 while crossing an intersection in the East Village. In a subsequent investigation, the company found another 280 instances of stray voltage, occurring from improper cable insulation. That number has continued to increase since then.
“Con Edison’s track record now includes a number of deaths caused by its blackouts, electrocutions and explosions,” inveighed Gianaris. “Enough is enough.
“Until we insist on necessary reforms to Con Edison’s management structure,” Gianaris continued, “it will continue to prioritize its profits over the health and safety of New Yorkers.”
As Gianaris delivered his message in the shadow of the utility’s stern 24-story headquarters, immense cobalt-colored flags flapped in the breeze, displaying Con Ed’s insignia. The looming architecture only began to suggest Con Ed’s heavy hand. Not long after Astoria’s debacle, the utility had imposed a rate hike of 4.7 percent, even as it reported an increase in profits. In 2008 it hiked rates yet again.
Yet Con Ed still has not even caught up to the national standards proposed by federal safety experts over a decade ago. In 1991, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all gas operators across the country, in a “planned, timely manner,” replace cast-iron pipes that may threaten public safety. Con Ed specifically was advised by several national safety boards to swap out its cast-iron pipes by 2015. But the company is making slow progress, and at the current rate of replacement, the switch won’t be complete until 2070 – a full 55 years behind schedule. Even Con Ed agrees that the 2,500 miles of underground piping, laid during the construction of modern New York, are outdated and dangerous—vulnerable to corrosion, water damage, leaks and blasts like the one in Midtown last July.
According to The New York Times, New York City has experienced at least 17 steam pipe bursts in the past 20 years. Most notably, a 1989 pipe explosion near Gramercy Park killed three people and cost the city millions of dollars in damage. A similar incident in 2000 occurred near NYU’s Bobst Library, next to Washington Square Park, leaving in its wake a 15-foot crater and air laced with toxic asbestos. Many of the pipes installed decades ago are wrapped in asbestos, and after positive tests of the hazardous insulator were found in last year’s steam blast, Con Ed had to scurry to purge the site.
Only months after the steam disaster, a gas accident rocked Sunnyside, the neighborhood adjacent to Astoria and also, as it happened, in Gianaris’ district. Kunta Oza, 69, was killed inside her home on Thanksgiving Day last year, when a gas explosion erupted in her basement. Gianaris rushed to the scene to find Con Ed already there, and he quickly expressed suspicions that the utility had mishandled the situation. The neighborhood had reeked of natural gas that day, prompting several concerned residents to report the odor to the Fire Department and Con Ed. Some even evacuated their homes in fear. Con Ed workers eventually tracked the leak to a busted gas main and excused firefighters from the scene, saying it was under control. While utility workers worked to fix the problem, the fatal blast took Oza’s life.
Gianaris and Sunnyside City Councilmember Eric Gioia immediately called for an independent investigation, maintaining that Con Ed had not acted in the best interests of the residents. The Fire Department and the utility both said they had followed standard procedures.
