Spokesman: NYPA won’t conduct investigation into Greenport outages
The New York Power Authority said Thursday it would not be conducting its own investigation into the recent equipment failures at the Greenport electric plant, which caused a village-wide power outage last month and subsequent smaller outages.A spokesman with NYPA — a public benefit corporation and regulating authority — said the organization is relying on information gathered from Village of Greenport’s internal investigation of the system failure and has not been looking into the circumstances regarding the August outages.
“It is the village’s equipment obviously that failed,” the spokesman said. “We are in communication with them trying to learn the results of what they find.”
An email from a NYPA employee to a village resident dated Sept. 3 stated: “We (NYPA) are currently in the process of investigating the issue.”
On Thursday, however, the spokesman said the term “investigating” was misused in that email.
The village was responsible to provide any updates on the cause of the outages to the public, the spokesman said.
During the Village Board’s last meeting on Aug. 25, residents complained that officials came up short on delivering information to the public in the wake of the village-wide power outage on Aug. 21.
Residents also voiced concerns that the village would be conducting an internal investigation of the outages and requested a third party step in to determine the cause.
Many said they are suspicious of the handling of the plant considering the numerous delays with the village’s multi-million dollar upgrades to the facility, including one setback that led to a $108,000 penalty fine from NYPA that was later passed onto the bill payers without notice.
“Was it an accident or negligence?” asked Greenporter Hotel owner Deborah Rivera Pittorino during the meeting, adding that the outage damaged parts of her business’s electric system.
The village-wide blackout was followed by a second non-related power outage at Driftwood Cove apartment complex on Aug. 29.
Village officials continue to say neither incident was related to the project to upgrade the power plant.
