Peermont Phase 2 Project Explained, Owners Learn of Upcoming Impacts

STONE HARBOR – The Stone Harbor Theater served as a community meeting place Oct. 10 as Atlantic City Electric (ACE) invited interested borough residents to hear about what it is calling Phase II of the Peermont Family Projects. 
Over 70 attended, many expressed anger and frustration with the utility.
Phase I of the project consisted of constructing a substation at 60th Street in Avalon and feeding that substation with new higher voltage transmission lines. 
The project, according to the utility’s engineers, was aimed at boosting the power capacity available to Seven Mile Island and enhancing its reliability and resiliency.
That phase of the project brought onto the island galvanized steel poles that have been the source of endless controversy in the borough. The poles are part of the utility’s standard for transmission lines and were necessary on the island, representatives said, because of the location of the substation in the middle of the island instead of at an entry point.
Only recently did the utility let the borough and its residents know that what they are now calling phase 1 was not the entire project.
Phase II, which they hope to begin in January 2017, will install distribution feeder lines that Daniel Woods, the ACE project director, said, would take advantage of the capabilities of the new substation to allow for multiple feeds.
The concept is to increase feeder distribution lines from the current single feed to three lines. That will, ACE claims, reduce the number of customers adversely impacted by power outages.
“It segments the customer load,” said Woods, “and improves reliability.” Woods also said the new feeder distribution system provides greater operational flexibility when ACE maintains or troubleshoots the system.
The crowd that showed up for the community briefing included many who were frustrated and even angry with the utility.
On the heels of the introduction of the 70-foot steel poles as part of the transmission system, many felt blindsided that another phase of the project was soon to be underway. It will substitute new infrastructure and new wooden poles, on average five to seven feet taller than existing poles, along the path currently supporting the single line distribution feeder system.
One of the streets to be traversed by the new feeder system, 83rd Street between Second and First avenues, has been working with the utility for a couple of years to get distribution wires placed underground. Residents say they were never told of this upcoming phase until it was announced in September at a borough council meeting. 
Many complained at the meeting that ACE never gave them an opportunity to collaboratively work with the utility to accomplish both goals at the same time.
Woods, and Ronnie Town, ACE public affairs manager, repeatedly explained that the utility views its own internal project separately from customer-initiated projects. 
They claimed the infrastructure work on the island was necessary and needs to be completed promptly. Woods said that such an infrastructure project cannot be held up for a customer initiated project that “may or may not happen.”
Woods said the plan for the Peermont effort began to be developed about six years ago. 
“The infrastructure was aging, and capacity was struggling to keep up with demand,” he said. ‘It was determined that we needed to upgrade,” he added.
According to Woods, the borough was brought into the discussion in 2013 with an overview of the upcoming project.
It was the first time anyone from the utility openly said that early briefings of the borough included the fact that steel poles would be used. Whether or not the size of the steel poles was apparent then is unclear.
Controversy over what the borough knew and when it knew it, along with specifically who on borough council participated, became a heated issue during the June Republican primary election.
What puts the borough residents and the utility at odds is ACE’s standard installation for its infrastructure, which is, unless dictated otherwise by engineering considerations, above ground with poles and overhead wires.
Many in the borough argue that the project that replaced undesirable wooden poles with the hated steel poles has not just affected the aesthetics of the resort community, but has lowered property values, “taking real money out of our pockets,” one resident said.
In March, the borough reached an agreement with the utility and paid the utility to develop a cost for burying the transmission system and removing the steel poles.
That agreement was reached before the borough knew there would be a phase 2. Any effort to bury the phase I transmission system would be at the borough’s expense – essentially a customer-initiated project at customer expense.
That phase, Woods said, including the new substation, cost around $90 million from design through construction.
One resident said that the proposal given to the 83rd Street group seeking to bury their distribution infrastructure was $360,000 for the one block.
That is what the residents would have to pay. Now that the new distribution feeder lines are planned for that block, Woods said, when asked after the meeting, that the cost would probably increase. “The new feeder is three lines.  It will cost more to bury three lines than the current one line,” included in that proposal to the neighborhood.
At the meeting, Woods said that the utility would be presenting the cost figures to the borough at a meeting scheduled for Oct. 21.
Many in the public seemed to believe that would be the cost of reversing the Phase I effort except for the new substation.
Not so, Woods said when asked after the meeting. The cost figure coming to the borough Oct. 21 will only be the cost of having ACE engineers design an underground placement for the transmission lines and associated equipment.
That design would then have to go to bid before the borough would know the full cost of burying the transmission system.
On the heels of a $90 million investment in infrastructure, with a phase II likely to add another $2.3 million to that total, ACE is also being paid by the borough to submit a cost for designing the reversal of what it just installed as above ground transmission lines.
Residents on an individual block of 83rd Street are looking at the cost of burying their distribution lines as the new feeder system will increase the expense.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.