Palatine residents vent to ComEd about power outages
With a litany of complaints ranging from dangerous downed power lines that kept families inside for several days to inexplicable outages despite sunny skies, about 30 Palatine residents attended Monday’s village council meeting to vent their frustrations to ComEd.
“I think for the amount of money that we are laying out, the increases you all are looking for, the profits you’re taking in, it’s time for ComEd to step up,” Hidden Cove subdivision resident Debbie Troina said.
Representatives of the utility company agreed to discuss its response to summer storms, reliability issues and recent efforts to improve service at the request of the village council.
They said it was “a summer like no other” in terms of the record number of the service interruptions in northern Illinois. Between June and August, 2.4 million customers experienced an outage compared to 1.4 million in summer 2007 and 1.2 million in 2008 and 2010. All other years saw fewer than 1 million total customers without power.
After the July 11 storm, which had up to 85 mph wind gusts and caused more than 900,000 customers to lose power, including about 10,000 in Palatine, ComEd has replaced or repaired 77 miles of wires and cables, 700 poles and 1,000 transformers.
ComEd specifically addressed about 10 chronic problem spots in the village and the work being done by May 2012 in hopes of fixing them. In the area northwest of Quentin Road and Northwest Highway, for instance, the company plans to add fuses and trim trees that are at risk of contacting a power line, Drew Zmolek, reliability manager for ComEd’s north region, said.
The remedies placated some residents, but others still criticized ComEd for a lack of communication, poor customer service and slow response time.
“In the 30 years I’ve lived here, this is the worst service I’ve ever had,” Kathy Amatulli said.
Village Manager Reid Ottesen said there’s been significant improvement in communication with ComEd at the municipal level. For example, Palatine only last month learned that ComEd maintains a list of dead or dying trees that could impact power lines. Officials now are verifying the list, and the council could take future action requiring residents to remove ones considered hazardous.
ComEd’s James Dubek also said the company continues to take away lessons from the summer outages, such as needing to improve coordination with communities and looking at whether higher priority should be given to restoring power to customers with special needs.
ComEd representatives also spoke in support of the rate-hike bill vetoed last month by Gov. Pat Quinn, which they said would fund a “smart electric grid” to overhaul an antiquated infrastructure.
Vent: ComEd representative says company still learning from summer outages