The Body Electric

Back above ground, Rae Zimmerman, director of NYU’s Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems, says she only hopes that New York City will be able to avoid future infrastructure calamities. “The environment below the ground is hostile,” she says, adding that Con Ed and the city should focus on high-risk areas, investigating and repairing systems that are heavily-trafficked and near steam lines. “The areas where destruction would be massive if there were breakages should be given highest priority.”

But not everyone agrees. Gianaris believes most of Con Ed’s problems can be traced back to the PSC, which he views as a failed guardian of the people of New York. Immediately after the 2006 Queens blackout, Gianaris formed a task force to investigate the utility’s procedures and the regulating power of the PSC. He worked with several local experts, including Zimmerman, New York politicians, and a former PSC commissioner.

He ultimately concluded that the PSC was an “accomplice” to what he calls the “crimes” of Con Ed. “Over the last decade, the PSC’s regulation has been deplorable,” he says, his words laced with anger and frustration. “They’ve been asleep at the switch.”

In a comprehensive report on the findings of his task force, one of the biggest problems that Gianaris flagged was the PSC’s guiding philosophy. He believes that it evaluates Con Ed too generally, without inquiry into the details of its budgets and allocation of efforts, because it is driven by the philosophy that competition serves as the best driving force behind the performance of public utilities.

The craze for utility deregulation emerged in the early 1990s and led to radical changes in the oversight the electric power industry, in New York and across the nation. Advocates in Washington hoped to incite more competition among electricity companies and sought policies to ease new utilities into the market. This trickled down to Albany, and the PSC transformed regulation practices, opting for a more relaxed approach driven by setting and enforcing performance targets, rather than through strict policing. The PSC allowed Con Ed much greater flexibility in its budgeting—including the power to cut costs and keep savings as profit, in the hopes that such incentives and market competition would keep the company performing at its best.

But Con Ed’s competition in New York is nearly nonexistent. Con Ed representative McGee couldn’t name a single competitive company. This lack of competition has incited Gianaris to call Con Ed a corporate monopoly.

The assemblyman also insists that the standards used by the PSC to measure the system’s safety and reliability aren’t strong enough, and the penalties too weak to encourage change. When Con Ed doesn’t meet performance targets—most recently, this happened in 2002, a year of numerous service interruptions and excessive response times—the utility is not hit with penalties right away. Rather, they are put off until future negotiations occur several years later. The penalty from 2002, for example, didn’t go into effect until 2005, when the company credited $7.5 million over three years to ratepayers. Gianaris contends Con Ed’s management and executives need to feel the effects of their poor practices in the following quarterly earnings reports – not three years later.

Gianaris adds that a penalty of $7.5 million over three years is laughable in the context of the annual profits of the corporation. Under present conditions, it’s cheaper for Con Ed to fail standards and pay the penalty than to fund proper maintenance oversight. The Assemblyman doesn’t think that reflects too well on the PSC.

Federal regulators don’t appear to be taken any more seriously by Con Ed, or its state overseer.

“Cast-iron pipes are actually very reliable,” said Con Ed representative McGee. “There’s nothing inherently dangerous. There’s some cast-iron pipe replacement that’s underway, but it’s not really priority.”

Likewise, PSC representative Anne Dalton said that Con Ed has a program in place, and that this is all that is technically required. “I have an old car,” she said. “It’s not in great shape, but it runs.”

Such sentiments have incited Gianaris to take matters into his own hands. He has proposed the creation of a third-party infrastructure committee comprised of experts who will evaluate the conditions and management of New York City’s infrastructure, from roads and bridges to underground energy systems. In addition, he has written bills that would require the PSC to annually review and audit Con Ed, instead of once every five years. “This is my thing,” he said, summing up his efforts while in office. Reforming Con Ed has been his drive and most significant contribution to New York City.

Now he’s finding more support from fellow New York politicians like Councilmember Gioia and New York State Senator Martin Golden, who joined the fight after the summer steam disaster of last year. Despite the incident captured on The Daily Show, no hard feelings linger between Gianaris and Bloomberg, who has made energy and infrastructure reform a focus of his PlaNYC 2030 strategy for future growth of New York City.

“Worst case scenario,” Gianaris said, “is we do nothing. Month after month there are more disasters, and people are dying. And it’s already happening. What worse-case scenario can you imagine?”

The worst could, in fact, still be on its way. Time and time again the sizzling heat of summer in New York City has created the perfect conditions for energy catastrophes.

“Summer is the most dangerous time for the system,” noted Con Ed representative McGee, “because that’s when hot cables tend to burn up and transformers run very hot.”

His colleague, Chris Olert, disagreed. Summers aren’t “the most dangerous time.” Rather, it’s the most “precarious” time.

The summer of 2008 passed without major incident. But it’s only a matter of time before deferred maintenance and impossibly convoluted systems again conspire to explode, collapse, shock, and fizzle out.

Con Ed will likely face no disciplinary consequences from either the steam explosion or the Queens blackout. The city’s population continues to grow, and while Con Ed funnels funds into construction projects in an attempt to meet the rising demand, maintenance efforts suffer. Workers like Russano continue to field problems as they occur but can do little else than take cues from management. And New Yorkers forget. They’ve read today’s stories and forgotten those of yesterday. So it’s life as usual beneath the ground. Until the next death, collapse, or explosion.