Residents Won’t Quit Fight Against Power Line Project

STONE HARBOR – An angry group of residents continues to speak out at Stone Harbor Borough Council meetings resisting the $70-million Atlantic City Electric project to upgrade Seven Mile Island’s power grid.
The project, deemed essential by the utility, will cover a 17-mile area on the island converting from the current 23 kilovolt (kV) electrical grid to 69 kilovolt. A substation is being built at 61st street in Avalon to handle the load.
The electric utility states that the upgrade is necessary to meet growing demand for power. The utility also says that the new power distribution system will have greater resiliency in the face of storms and increased redundancy when compared to the current 50-year-old infrastructure.
In presentations in both Stone Harbor and Avalon, Atlantic City Electric representatives have also maintained that the increased power demands are such that the project to upgrade the system has an urgency to it which requires that it be completed before the start of the 2016 summer season, when island demand peaks.
Many residents of Stone Harbor do not believe what they are being told.
In past council meetings residents called the company’s veracity into question and demanded to see the data the company is using for its projections of usage. Ongoing discussions between residents and the utility have convinced some homeowners that the company is frequently changing its statements of cost and usage because the project’s urgency cannot be adequately defended by the numbers the utility has thus far failed to produce publically.
The issue around which much of the debate rages is the project’s reliance on new standards that it says force the use of new larger steel poles for distributing transmission lines to and from the new substation.
The poles are significantly larger in both circumference and height than the wooden poles that run along the island’s main thoroughfares.
Complaints involve both the aesthetics of the new poles and the requirements for their installation, requirements which many residents say run significant risks of causing damage to nearby homes from excessive vibrations in the installation process.
Residents want the utility to run transmission lines underground instead of on the metal poles. The existing wooden poles, in such a scenario, would remain for distribution of power to homes.
At its meeting Nov. 16, council passed a resolution calling on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, the entity which regulates ACE, to compel the utility “to provide adequate response to Stone Harbor residents’” questions related to the project.
The resolution states that residents have “for months” been asking questions concerning the project and that the utility has “at best, provided inconsistent answers.”
It also states that “ACE has grossly overestimated the cost of installing underground facilities in the 300 block of 95th Street in what could be construed as an attempt to shock the borough and residents.”
The area of 95th Street in question is where the transmission lines will emerge from under the bay to begin their journey to the new substation.
A neighborhood of older homes, the area is, according to residents, particularly vulnerable to damage caused by the methods required to install poles.
In a partial victory for homeowners, the borough said that ACE has verbally agreed to put transmission lines underground on 95th Street up to the mid-200 block where they will emerge to be transferred to the new pole system which is still envisioned as the method to be used for carrying the transmission lines along the island to the new substation and then out again along Avalon Boulevard.
Borough Administrator Jill Gougher confirmed that an agreement for 95th Street had been reached at an additional $102,000, which the borough will pay. She cautioned that residents cannot take that number for the distance involved and just multiply it out for the total project and arrive at a cost figure for running all transmission lines underground. It is that cost estimate that residents have been trying unsuccessfully to get from Atlantic City Electric.
Some residents have spoken at council meetings about organizing and hiring a law firm to stop the overhead transmission lines which drive the need for the new poles.
What impact council’s resolution or any potential legal action may have on the project is unclear, but the utility is moving ahead with its plans.
Construction of the substation continues, a substation that will not work with the existing 23kV system. The old Stone Harbor substation has been decommissioned and will not be available to play any role in a continuation of the current system. 
The galvanized steel poles are going up along Stone Harbor Boulevard as well as in parts of Avalon on the island itself.
This is a project that is ongoing with the partial installation of a transmission system not able to work with the transmission infrastructure still in place. How the utility would stop or significantly alter the project which is in motion is not clear.
Atlantic City Electric has a back-up plan if delays to the project cause it to miss its deadline of being in place for the peak usage season next summer. That plan calls for use of at least two large generators to help power the island at peak times.
The struggle between Atlantic City Electric and residents continues with no sign of abating.
For some residents it is a sign of what Frank Dallahan, a home owner on 95th Street, calls “ACE’s arrogance.”
Mayor Suzanne Walters indicated that council would send copies of its resolution to the governor and the borough’s local representatives requesting help with the BPU.
The resolution asks for answers to the residents’ questions, but it adds the demand that “if such answers are not immediately forthcoming, that the Board of Public Utilities should delay the project until such time as ACE has provided answers to all questions submitted to it by the residents.”
The borough added that the resolution should be considered a “formal complaint with regard to this project.” 
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.