Tensions Mount over Electric Poles, Objectors’ President Faces Council

STONE HARBOR – Atlantic City Electric’s $70-million project to upgrade power transmission for Seven Mile Island continues to progress while a group of Stone Harbor residents try to “change the course of the project.”
At the center of the controversy is the intention on the part of Atlantic City Electric to use galvanized steel poles for transmission wires, poles with significantly greater height and circumference than traditional wooden poles that support wires across the island.
A new, non-profit, Property Owners Against Peermont (POAP), has been formed by angry owners with the express purpose of forcing the utility to move the transmission lines underground for the 17 blocks that they must traverse in Stone Harbor.
No similar outrage has surfaced in Avalon where the new poles have started to be installed.
The arena for expressions of outrage and pleas for assistance has been Stone Harbor Borough Council meetings. 
Again Dec. 1, Richard Palko, president of the POAP, read a statement that urged council to be more aggressive in helping to alter the project. Palko alternated between calls to work “arm-and-arm” with the council and accusatory statements claiming council members had known about the project for a long time and failed to inform residents.
Palko’s comments sparked a heated exchange with several members of council, all of whom argued that, while council knew that a new project was planned to bring added power to the borough, no one was aware of the specifics until early summer.
Council members claimed that at that time they began working in earnest on the problem.
Mayor Suzanne Walters told Palko his accusations were “just plain wrong.”
In the end, following a closed session, council passed a resolution to have its legal counsel meet with the POAP attorney on potential cooperative efforts.
The move comes one meeting after council adopted a resolution calling on the state Board of Public Utilities to intervene and force the utility to provide information that property owners have been requesting since the full dimensions of the project came to light.
Atlantic City Electric has maintained that the current island infrastructure is no longer sufficient to meet the growing power demand. It has said that capacity problems could become apparent as early as next summer season.
The utility has also maintained that the old infrastructure, in many places nearing 50 years old, is in desperate need of refurbishment. 
A new substation is being built at 60th Street in Avalon specifically designed to handle the new power lines, and the former Stone Harbor substation has been decommissioned.
Atlantic City Electric has also indicated there is a need to add greater resiliency and redundancy to the present infrastructure, especially in light of damage caused to the wooden pole system during recent major storms like Sandy.
POAP maintains that its members are not against the project. They only oppose the plan to use overhead transmission wires with the utility’s standard steel poles.
The effort is to get the utility to put that part of the infrastructure underground. The new poles, POAP maintains, will damage the borough’s character and negatively impact property values.
Property owners have also expressed concern that the methods used to install the much larger poles will create vibrations that could damage older homes.
The utility has resisted efforts to redesign its distribution system claiming that the underground option is more costly and harder to maintain. How much more costly is one of the issues at the heart of the controversy.
Data on the added costs has been hard to obtain from the utility. What numbers people have heard at various meetings have varied significantly.
One resident at the meeting said if “Atlantic City Electric told me tomorrow was Wednesday, I would doubt it.”
For some borough property owners a serious credibility gap has grown up around the utility’s statements adding to the problem. Many feel the project’s urgency, with the utility saying they may have capacity problems as early as next summer, has never been demonstrated.
Part of the utility’s plan calls for bringing transmission lines under the bay from the Court House substation.
The utility has not been clear on whether or not it has obtained the necessary permits from the Army Corps of Engineers. What is clear is that that part of the project has not yet begun.
With the delay in the under-bay work, the resistance in the borough and the already accomplished closing of the old substation, the project is taking on a desperation character.
If new voltage lines capable of working with the new substation are not in place by the high-demand summer season, some fallback plan will be needed. 
What has been discussed is the use of two large generators housed at the old substation. There has been so little discussion of the backup plan that details of how this would work are not at all clear.
POAP has been soliciting property owners for funds to finance legal action against the electric company. As of the recent council meeting the target level needed for the firm’s retainer had not yet been reached.
A partial victory for homeowners on 95th Street came with the promise by Atlantic City Electric to bury the transmission lines up to the mid-200 block after they come up from the bay. Borough Administrator Jill Gougher, said that the added cost for that concession was projected at $102,000.
Grasping at that figure, some homeowners have estimated that the additional cost to bury the lines for the full 18 blocks in Stone Harbor would be around $2 million.
“Chicken feed,” said one. They want the borough to pay the additional costs. 
The utility has stated that the simple multiplication of the 95th Street number does not cover all the cost associated with a move to underground transmission, but that puts everyone back at the start point of wanting the company to identify alternative project costs which the utility has not yet done.
Walters said that she had not yet heard back from the BPU but that she felt that was due to the intervening holidays.
The resolution sent to the BPU focused on getting data and information from Atlantic City Electric, not on altering the project’s plans. While the borough waits for the information and the property owners continue to express concern about altering the company’s plans, Palko says “the poles march closer to the island.”
The controversy shows no signs of abating and yet the urgency for some kind of solution increases daily.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.