WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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WPCNR WATCH ON THE RIVER.  By John F. Bailey. November 13, 2012:

Caren Halbfinger, spokesperson for the Westchester County Department of Health furnished WPCNR details on the damage Hurricane Sandy did to the Yonkers Ludlow Sewage Plant October 29.  According to her estimates, 1.4 billion gallons of raw sewage, miminally treated by chlorine only, has been diverted into the Hudson River due to the plant being shut down the last 15 days from Sandy damage.

Ms. Halbfinger said she expected the plant to be repaired and functioning in 7 days.

Here is what she has told us so far:

1.     WPCNR:  What caused the Yonkers sewage plant to discharge the raw sewage into the Hudson?

Halbfinger: The equipment was shut down to prevent an explosion and fire that could be caused by water hitting high voltage lines. In addition, the storm surge washed the Hudson into the basement of the plant, where much of the pumps and electrical equipment are located. All of the motors had to be taken apart, cleaned and repaired and parts had to be replaced, along with electrical controls. The whole plant had to be pumped out washed and disinfected and treated to prevent mold. All the insulation on the pipes had to be removed, the pipes had to be cleaned and the pipes will be reinsulated.

WPCNR: When is it expected to be fixed? 

Halbfinger:  Secondary treatment is expected in the next few days, but it will take at least a week for this biological process to start providing treatment.

 WPCNR: What was the delay in getting it fixed? What caused the delay?

Halbfinger: We’re making steady progress, but the sheer size and scope of the work involved has been a tremendous undertaking by the Department of Environmental Facilities. The plant is about a half-mile long, and for most of this length, the basement was filled with water that had to be pumped out. 

Then the basement had to be dried out. All of the pipes had to have their insulation removed, the salt water had to be washed from the pipe and then new insulation will be installed.

We had 250 motors that had to be removed, repaired and reinstalled. It all takes time. Two 5,000 gallon tanks of polymer ruptured in the basement and that had to be cleaned up. It took time to get the needed parts and to make the repairs. And we’re in good company. Sewage treatment plants throughout the tri-state area have all been faced with similar problems.

WPCNR: How many gallons of effluent were discharged for 15 days into the Hudson?  

Halbfinger: We do not know the volume because the equipment that measures this was knocked out by the storm. However, we estimate that 120 million gallons was released the day of the storm, 100 million the day after, and 80 million gallons of partially treated sewage have been released daily since then.

 WPCNR: Was effluent treated?

Halbfinger: Yes, from the time of the shutdown during the storm, the discharge was screened and treated with chlorine. This is called partial treatment. We are slowly getting back to normal. Since November 3, some of the settling tanks are back in business, and we have been removing sludge and organics from the waste water and trucking it away for disposal, as we did before the storm. This is called primary treatment.

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WPCNR WATCH ON THE HUDSON. By John F. Bailey November 13. 2012:

An unknown quantity of gallons of raw sewage still gushes non-stop into the Hudson River hour by hour from the Yonkers sewage treatment plant, the  Westchester County Department of  Health confirmed to WPCNR this afternoon.

Caren Halbfinger, Director of  Public Information and Communication confirmed the Yonkers plant is undergoing repairs but the discharge of  undertimined scope has not been stopped had had no timetable at this time when it would be stopped and repairs made. 

She said the damage to the Yonkers plant was as a result of  Hurricane Sandy but did not have details of the damage at this time and why it has taken 15 days to conduct repairs and the reason(s) for the delay.

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WPCNR THE POWER NEWS. UPDATED November 13, 2012 3:45 P.M.:

Con Edison reports 4 White Plains customers remain without power, part of the 252 Westchester County residents remaing electricity deprived.  Approximately 725 White Plains customers were restored between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday afternoon..

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WPCNR THE POWER NEWS.By John F. Bailey. November 9, 2012:

Con Edison trimmed the number of White Plains citizens without power to 624 as of 7 A.M. this morning. The utility lowered those customers without electricity in Westchester County to 17,319 trimming those without from 28,000 over night. The company was on pace to complete power restoration by Saturday, their original estimate last week.

Kevin Burke, Chief Executive Officer of Con Edison, appeared at a news conference introducing a FEMA information operation at the Westchester County Center Thursday afternoon organized by County Executive Rob Astorino and “faced the music.”

The occasion was to introduce the information center that officially opens at 8 A.M. this morning that will be staffed with FEMA representatives to start the claims process, answer and gather information from victims of Hurricane Sandy in Westchester, set up inspections of the victims’ properties and advise them of what they needed in documentation. Victims suffering losses from Hurricane Sandy do not need an appointment and if you can get to the County Center you can walk right in and get your claims rolling.

WPCNR in the news conference, asked Burke why restoration teams in a city or town were not continuous– that is  Cut and Clear Teamx, debris removal teams and a power restore team appearing in sequence. WPCNR observed one debris removal team arrive in a White Plains location only to be pulled off because a Cut and Clear Team was not available, delaying restoration at that specific location they had started in White Plains. Had a Cut and Clear team been available the operation would have taken two hours not nine.

Burke did not comment on the operations procedure as to why Cut and Clear teams would not proceed to each downed wire in a location one-by-one, depower, then  the same or different team return after clean-up crews had cleared the roads, immediately following with a reconnect. Twelve White Plains teams did not arrive until late last Friday. If fragmented restorations such as these occurred in other cities it would appear to stretch out power restorations unnecessarily due to excessive wait time for specialists.

Burke told WPCNR the local restorations were delayed because of the Westchester County priority of restoring hospitals, nursing homes, schools and polling places first. WPCNR questions on the degree of dedicated crews  dedication to certain cities and towns restorations, are still awaiting answers from Con Edison Media Relations.

Burke was pressed by Congresswoman Nita Lowey. She asked him ten days after the restoration started “what do you need at this point,” seeming to indicate she would get the federal government involved.  Burke replied the company had enough crews brought in to restore the County.

Pressured by a reporter on when Con Edison had officially called crews in from out-of-state, Burke said the crews could not come right away because crews had to be “released” by utilities in those out-of-state locations. Pressed as to when Con Ed officially started the back-up out-of-state utilities on their way,  Burke said he did not remember when Consolidated Edison had notified the out of state crews to send help (to Westchester).

Asked by another reporter how he Burke was doing on having his residence restored, Burke said he had power in one residence, but he did not know whether he had power in his two other homes in Connecticut.

County Executive Rob Astorino said there would be a thorough review of Consolidated Edison performance in handling the disaster, and what was needed was clearly better communciation with communities by Consolidated Edison  and on-site liaisons with each community government. WPCNR found in White Plains that  at least two out-of-state crews in White Plains lost hours of restoration time due to Con Ed not having liaisons meeting them on time to tell them what their assignment in the city was to be (this after 9 days of operations).

Town Supervisor of Greenburgh, Paul Feiner, who has loudly criticised Con Ed response the last 9 days was not at the news conference to speak to Mr. Burke. Feiner told WPCNR he had not been made aware of the news conference by Westchester County nor was he invited, “I was busy responding to hundreds of e mails and phone calls about outages from outraged con ed customers.”

WPCNR did not observe White Plains Mayor Thomas Roach at the news conference either,though Mr.Roach announced the 3 P.M. opening of the FEMA operation in his Thursday afternoon Storm Recovery Update at 1:30 P.M. WPCNR questions of the Mayor’s Office as to whether the Mayor attended, or had an aid attend to observe have not been responded  to as of this report. The Mayor has been critical of lthe pace of Con Ed operations in the city, and it was an opportunity to speak with Mr. Burke directly about the problems, as many County Legislators did.

Thomas Abinanti, one County Legislator, was blunt in talking to the press, he called Con Edison’s response to the Westchester outage, “Unprecedented mismanagement,” and told all media who would listen and County Executive Astorino directly he was suing to remove Con Edison as the county utility. Abinanti has been without power for 12 days.

Nita Lowey, was asked by WPCNR if she felt a national disaster utility standing force should be formed by the Federal Government, a military like organization. Lowey said such a force might have possibilities,  but was non-committal on the matter, saying the state had the national guard (which does not make utility repairs) but WPCNR hopes to get a more definitive statement from her today. 

Here are the Con Ed Outage Figures as of 7:15:

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