Mayor Voices Concern In Letter To JCP&L Following Mass Chatham Outage

CHATHAM, NJ — More than four thousand Chatham residents were without power this month due to a substation failure during some of the hottest summer temperatures this year.

The mayor of Chatham Borough, Thaddeus Kobylarz, recently sent a letter to James V. Fakult, president of Jersey Central Power & Light Company (JCP&L), expressing his dissatisfaction with the power company's handling of the disaster.

Kobylarz emphasized that residents and businesses had to endure oppressive and potentially dangerous conditions during the incident, which occurred on a day when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees, and a significant number suffered tangible economic losses.

Anthony Pascarella, co-owner of Pascarella Brothers Delicatessen, detailed his specific grievances during the July 10 borough council meeting, stating that they lost all of their products in their refrigeration system overnight and were given no clear estimate of when power would be restored.

Kobylarz also stated that in the weeks since the incident, several residents have contacted the governing body to inquire what JCP&L intends to do about what occurred.

"We are appreciative that JCP&L provided a representative to attempt to explain what happened at the Borough Council meeting on Monday, July 10th, but your representative’s presentation failed to adequately address the situation," Kobylarz said.

On July 10, the power company dispatched Jacqueline Espinoza, JCP&L's manager of external affairs, to explain what caused the outage and the challenges in restoring power, which took nearly 30 hours to complete.

Espinoza explained that on July 5, line workers were in the substation when they recognized that something was not operating properly. The power company decided to advance with the first outage to avoid a larger and more widespread outage that would affect more equipment.

"What is clear is that there was no unusual circumstance outside of JCP&L’s control, such as bad weather or some other act of God that would have clearly absolved your business of responsibility for the failure," Kobylarz said. "Instead, you have provided a vague and unsatisfactory explanation along the lines that there was 'an electrical disturbance due to equipment failure.'"

The mayor states that JCP&L is claiming that the failure of their equipment and the subsequent power outage was not caused by their negligence.

The borough's main complaint is that when the equipment failed, JCP&L failed to communicate effectively with the borough and its residents and businesses transparently, instead promising power restoration in a timely manner and failing to provide timely updates when it became clear that it would take significant time to repair the system.

"This failure severely compounded the problem and demonstrates that your communications operation is currently incapable of dealing with emergency situations in a competent manner. Your tepid and unfeeling response to this incident has shattered our confidence that we have a reliable power system within the Borough and are being served by a company that has respect for its customers," Kobylarz said.

During the meeting with Espinoza, the council inquired as to what the power company intended to do to improve communication with the borough. Espinoza stated that she would relay the meeting's information to JCP&L representatives, who would meet to discuss how to avoid this happening again.

"We specifically made it clear to your representatives that we as a governing body wanted a formal, written explanation confirming whether or not you would take any steps whatsoever to mitigate the damage that your business failure has caused our community," Kobylarz said.

However, the mayor stated that they had only received a brief email from one of the power company representatives promising that such an explanation would be forthcoming.

Nothing more has been received as of this date.