Letters to the Editor: PSEG Poles 04.28.16

To Strengthen Poles

East Hampton

April 25, 2016 

Dear David, 

Kudos to Joanne Pilgrim on her excellent reporting, “PSEG to Strengthen Poles Throughout Town.” As East Hampton town’s energy sustainability committee and its Department of Natural Resources work to become the first New York State town to meet 100 percent of our community’s electricity needs with renewable energy sources by 2020, PSEG is planning to make its electrical grid more resilient to extreme weather events and better prepared for a projected energy demand after 2018. 

According to PSEG, this new effort is a “maintenance project,” financed with FEMA funds. The new resilient poles “will be two to three inches wider and three to five inches taller than the ones they replace, and will be seated deeper into the ground for strength.” The new poles will be coated with penta, a chemical banned around the world, but still available in New York State for use by utility companies. This toxic chemical as it spreads through local front yards will be leaching even closer to our water tables. 

As the town is well aware from past experience, the utility company that distributes our power does not require approval from the town on any project. “This is a good deal for your constituents,” the PSEG director of external affairs told the town board during its presentation last week. However, it was clear from the Star article that PSEG will not consider any alternative options to the “maintenance” plan presented at the board meeting. Outside of making the electrical grid more resilient, PSEG has not demonstrated any real interest in working with the town as it strives to meet its commitment to 100-percent renewable energy by 2020.

In our town, there is a growing awareness of the climate change impact on this coastal community. As oceans worldwide continue to rise from melting glaciers and ice packs, erosion becomes more stressful to our challenged coastline. Anyone who walked our beaches this winter witnessed evidence of this. In addressing the continued rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, New York State has developed a transformative strategy, “Reforming the Energy Vision,” to make sure clean and resilient locally produced energy is available for all New Yorkers. While East Hampton continues its effort to develop local clean energy initiatives, including solar and a varied agenda of energy efficiencies and load-management programs, to meet our 2020 goal, LIPA continues to keep our most generous renewable resource, wind as we know it through the Deepwater wind proposal, out of reach. 

On Earth Day, as Secretary of State John Kerry, with his 2-year-old granddaughter on his lap, signed the landmark Paris Agreement challenging the climate crisis, PSEG-LI alerted the Town of East Hampton it is business as usual, nothing “transformational.” East Hampton will be delivered of a new resilient electrical grid by 2018-19 ready to meet the PSEG-projected demand for more electrical power to meet peak demand, just during the summer months. 

On Earth Day Governor Cuomo emailed state residents: “New York is leading the nation in combating climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, from securing a coal-free New York by 2020 and launching a clean energy standard. These signature investments will grow the economy and create a cleaner, greener, and healthier state for all.”

One cannot help but question LIPA and PSEG-LI on why Long Island, specifically the South Fork, is so out of step with the rest of New York State.

LINDA JAMES

Amagansett Substation

Amagansett

April 25, 2016

Dear David,

The long PSEG article last week in The East Hampton Star didn’t mention the Amagansett substation until the last two paragraphs, so when I got to the end of the article I was stunned. The Star reported that PSEG “has promised to install landscaping to shield the site, which is enclosed by a chain-link fence.” However, “ ‘we’re past the planting season,’ Mr. Hahn [of PSEG] said.”

 I met several candidates at an East Hampton Group for Good Government meet-and-greet session last year. I asked each only one question. What was going to be done about the PSEG site in Amagansett? I was assured by each candidate that the PSEG site would be landscaped this spring. One of the candidates (who, yes, I voted for because of her answer) remarked that she had even seen the landscape plan; it was beautiful, and she said with conviction that it would be completed as soon as planting could be done.

Now PSEG simply says “we’re past the planting season.” How could PSEG be allowed to say that? Why do they think it is past the planting season? Was anybody watching them or the calendar?

The town erred in allowing this site to be developed there, and now the town is erring in not enforcing promises.

To the west of the site is a lovely small village with real atmosphere. To the east of that site is the “Mile of Trees” with a plaque on either end memorializing someone’s wonderful effort to beautify Amagansett. Then in the middle is the awful industrial-looking site, with barbed wire atop the hideous chain-link fence surrounding slabs of concrete and junk. Every weekday, there are a dozen or more trucks, cars, and pieces of machinery parked outside the fence on all four sides and on the other side of Old Stone Highway. Sand from the site is washing out onto Old Stone Highway.

Beautiful Amagansett? Drive by the substation and think again. It is a messy industrial site. Is the town ignorant, helpless, or grossly negligent to do anything about it? Or is PSEG simply more powerful than the Town of East Hampton and its elected officials?

MARY TALLEY

An Odd Marketing Plan

Amagansett

April 23, 2016

Dear David, 

I don’t know about you, but I see the risk of poisoning the customer as an odd marketing plan.

PSEG-LI proposes to replace utility poles with taller, thicker ones, upon which poison will be slopped. This particular poison, penta, has been widely banned. But East Hampton Town lives mustn’t count for much. 

There is a poison-free composite material pole option, but PSEG-LI would like to save money. Flint, Mich., anyone?

If it were my world, I’d have PSEG execs licking the penta-coated poles. Monitored by East Hampton residents, who would have no problem whatsoever with the small sacrifice. 

All good things, 

DIANA WALKER