Rick Green
6:27 p.m. EDT, November 5, 2011

Connecticut Light & Power did one thing very well last week: the company turned many of its customers into angry crusaders for regulatory reform.

Could it really be possible that a big power company is this clumsy at communicating with the very people who must buy its product?

Here's a revealing story.

In West Hartford this week, when the electric company was refusing to tell town leaders what streets its crews were going to be working on, officials came up with their own improvised solution. Municipal leaders sent town police over to CL&P's staging area at Westfarms mall in the evening to ask the crews themselves where they would be heading to work the next day.

This isn't neurotic small town bureaucrats overreacting. This information is critical during an emergency, when fire and rescue personnel must know what streets are passable. Already, one elderly West Hartford woman without power died in a fire at her home this week.

So what did CL&P do when they found out West Hartford police were tracking down where crews were going to work?

They told their workers not to talk to the cops. Now there's a company that cares.

"We couldn't do a thing. We were fighting for six days. You couldn't get anything from them,'' said West Hartford Mayor Scott Slifka.

On Saturday afternoon, Slifka was trying to explain to a room of about 100 residents why nearly 70 percent of the town was still without power. "CL&P is hearing a lot about how it failed to communicate,'' he said.

Slifka's frustration about horrible communication is the same that I've heard in towns from Vernon to Simsbury to Hartland. CL&P Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Butler stood before the cameras this week declaring that more crews were on the job, when they weren't (at least according to town officials). Butler blamed unexpected weather for his company's sluggish response, drawing howls from meteorologists. He blandly declared one day that there "have been issues."

The issues continue.

"We've just got to get better at communication,'' Butler said Saturday morning, before again reminding us that the storm was "an historic event."

This was on a day when Gov. Malloy declared that CL&P had "missed their own target" for restoring more service by Saturday morning. The governor is so unimpressed with CL&P's ability to communicate that he no longer bothers to remain in the room when Butler steps to the podium to speak at daily press briefings.

Communication "has been a disaster,'' said Simsbury First Selectman Mary Glassman Saturday afternoon.

"They'd tell us there are four crews in town and we'd say where are they,'' she said. "And then [CL&P] would say 'we don't know.'"

With platitudes and poor communication from CL&P, municipal officials such as Slifka are left try to explain it all to angry residents at emergency centers, on street corners and in late night phone calls.

"How are we going to hold CL&P accountable?'' Monica Papas, a West Hartford resident, asked Slifka during his question and answer session. "They have not delivered. How do we hold them accountable?"

Slifka explained to her that "the incompetence" he has witnessed this week "was shocking." He told her the story of CL&P executives telling its crews not to talk with local police. "I hope some heads will roll at CL&P. … There was a complete breakdown."

The good news is that on Saturday, nearly a full week after the storm, CL&P finally began sharing more information with towns. Slifka and Glassman said at least they can tell residents without power that there's a plan. Thousands of line and tree crews, combined with 500 members of the National Guard and local public works departments, were expected to make significant progress through the weekend.

But by stonewalling and inexplicably not sharing information for much of the week, CL&P can only blame itself as everyone, from mayors to sweet old ladies at the senior center, pile on.

"They have completely underestimated our population,'' said Shari Cantor, a West Hartford town council member who appeared with Slifka at the senior center on Saturday. "People are furious."

We have deregulated electricity in Texas (as a matter of fact, it's about time for me to renew my contract or change companies) and it carries its own problems - most notably that there's an immense number of electricity offers to pick from and wading through them is quite a chore.

That still doesn't change the natural monopoly the local utility that actually owns (and maintains) the wires has, though. I'm honestly not entirely sure how to go about it otherwise, though.

No, but it does mean that the electicity-providing companies and the money they presumably pay that wire-maintaining company have leverage on them to get their *** in gear.

"Hey, while you aren't getting the wires fixed, our customers get no power and we don't get paid. That means YOU don't get paid, understand?"

Hannibal, would you say that having 70% of power customers still with no service in an entire town a week after a storm is acceptable? Normal? How about similar statistics for dozens of towns?.

It sounds like these guys are screwing the pooch though, in a bad way.

Well, no two storms are alike. The only thing you can do really is monitor them to see how they are moving.

For example, during hurricane Irene, Baltimore Gas and Electric had a bazillion people on call. They tried to hire 200 people from my company alone to "babysit" downed powerlines. In other words, sit in your car and make sure nobody walks by and injures themselves. That way, BG&E people wouldn't be tied up doing this, and could focus on repairs. I think they had a pretty solid army out, and still got heavily criticized.

It sounds like these guys are screwing the pooch though, in a bad way.

It sounds like these guys are screwing the pooch though, in a bad way.

Hannibal, would you say that having 70% of power customers still with no service in an entire town a week after a storm is acceptable? Normal? How about similar statistics for dozens of towns?

It was literally Wednesday before anything got restored (and that was the business stretch, still nothing residential at that point) in one town that I know of. The storm was on Saturday. Yet, there had purportedly been crews working in that town "since Sunday."

That's why the local pols are getting antsy. There's work allegedly being done, but nothing to show for it for days. And the work that's being done is clearly not enough.

Perhaps I'm a bit hasty in saying it's making national news. It's not dominating CNN or Fox News, but it is showing up in places as far-flung as Utah, from my internet searches.

Are you implying that there is a good way to screw the pooch, or is that just a misplaced comma?

Are you implying that there is a good way to screw the pooch, or is that just a misplaced comma?

Oh, I very much agree that this is a town leader trying to put pressure on the power company via court of public opinion.

The question is, is it warranted? Apparently, they did a pretty poor job with their Irene response, too.

And I remember the power going out pretty frequently when I lived there (though not for that long), so it seems like they could use some improved redundancy or other infrastructural upgrades to get closer to modern reliability expectations...

You know, we can always count on you to leap to the defense of the power company. You shouldn't be such a jackbooted electricitarian.