Dropped the Ball?
- Kin Gee
- Aug 4
- 3 min read
Tuesday night's Holmdel Township Committee meeting with JCP&L about the big ugly utility poles was both disappointing and revealing.
First, the JCP&L representative was a last-minute substitute who could not address many of the concerns raised. Residents were told they'll have to wait until September for answers to some of the most pressing questions, when the project team is expected to attend.
In addition, defying his own recent “decorum” resolution, Mayor Rocco Impreveduto pointed fingers at others by once again trying to blame RAGE. The mayor’s most important job in this situation should indeed involve decorum: bringing integrity and transparency, and making sure residents, whom he is supposed to serve, get the answers they deserve.
Do JCP&L and the TC hope these grievances will lessen with time as they deflect and delay?
As a result, the biggest questions remain unanswered:
Why weren't Holmdel residents told just how massive these new utility poles would be?
During public comment, resident Kristin Celauro held up a sketch comparing the size of the new poles and asked whether there was any communication on how big these poles would be. There was no answer.
Another unanswered question concerns public notification. Which affected property owners were notified? How were they notified? When were they notified?
Had the mayor and TC truly been standing with residents, surely they would have communicated these questions to JCP&L, and someone would have been prepared to answer.
Months ago, Mayor Impreveduto said he would obtain JCP&L's notification records. To date, the Township has not produced the list of affected property owners, the method of notification, or the actual information that residents received. Instead, only general dates of purported communications have been cited without explaining what was communicated.
The Township Committee may not have jurisdiction over certain matters that affect our town, but it does have a responsibility to communicate with residents and help them understand what is coming to their community. By almost every measure, that did not happen.
JCP&L has been coordinating this project with Holmdel Township since 2023. Whether Township officials failed to understand the scope of the project, failed to ask the right questions, or simply failed to properly inform residents, the result appears to be the same: Holmdel Township Committee dropped the ball.
Holmdel Also Responsible for Stopping the 2016 JCP&L Project
When Mayor Impreveduto tried again to blame RAGE, it was pointed out that Holmdel Township itself was just as responsible for stopping the 2016 proposed project. In fact, as a member of the Joint Municipal Group, Holmdel was a party to the legal proceeding and fought on the same side as RAGE.
Here's what was left unsaid.
The 2016 proposed project was a 230-kV transmission line - essentially a third transmission line (the “Blue” in the picture) serving as a backup to an already reliable transmission system. Holmdel already has a primary and backup transmission line, both of which remained operational through major storms like Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Irene more than 99.99% of the time.
The outages residents experience are overwhelmingly caused by failures in the local distribution system (the “Green” in the picture) - the neighborhood poles, wires, and substations - not the high-voltage transmission lines. Building the 2016 proposed project would not have prevented those local outages.
In fact, at the meeting, the JCP&L representative emphasized that the current project replaces aging distribution infrastructure, much of it dating to the 1970s. In other words, those upgrades would have been necessary regardless of whether the 2016 transmission project had ever been built.
Read about Middletown Mayor Tony Perry’s explanation of Middletown Power outages in June 2024.
Stay tuned for the September Township Committee meeting when the JCP&L project team is scheduled to attend. It should be an interesting meeting.
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