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RAGE Response to Desperate Holmdel Accusations

Kin Gee
Sep 27
7 min read

The Holmdel Township Committee is pointing the finger at a grassroots residents group for the installation of multi-million dollar monopoles, but their accusation is inaccurate, unproven, and legally impossible. Here is the thorough timeline of facts.

 

May 2016: JCP&L put forth a proposal to install a brand-new 10-mile-long high voltage transmission line above the New Jersey Transit railroad tracks, through the towns of Holmdel, Middletown, Hazlet, Aberdeen, and Red Bank, to fix a “P7” technical code violation. They called it the Monmouth County Reliability Project (MCRP), project code B1690. The transmission line was unprecedented in proposed location, scale, and proximity to people’s homes -- never before in the United States had a transmission line been constructed above commuter railroad tracks like this. The public became aware when certified letters started arriving at the homes of all residents living within 200 feet of the proposed new poles. Public opposition built quickly.

 

September-October, 2016: The Township Committees of Holmdel, Middletown, Hazlet, and Aberdeen joined forces and hired representation to oppose the project as official intervenors in the legal proceedings. Separately, RAGE (Residents Against Giant Electric), the residents' grassroots group that formed in the weeks following JCP&L's public notification of the project, also fundraised, hired legal representation, and joined the case as an intervenor, fighting alongside the towns.

 

April - July, 2017: Evidentiary hearings took place in the NJ Office of Administrative Law over the course of 9 days, and included testimony from over 15 expert witnesses. As part of the proceedings, RAGE’s electrical expert Jeffrey Palermo testified that there were ways to address the technical violation that did not require a giant new transmission line. The judge asked for an example. Palermo provided one -- updating 34.5kV lines and adding two STATCOM voltage regulators -- and provided power study backup to prove it would work. 

 

March 2018: Administrative Law Judge Gail Cookson released her 180-page decision, finding that JCP&L’s proposed transmission line to fix the technical violation was immense overkill (“the electrical equivalent of using an elephant gun to kill a gnat”) and that JCP&L had been misleading and dishonest in its attempt to push the project through. Local elected officials agreed, including NJ-4 US House representative Chris Smith. "It is a sweeping repudiation of JCP&L's whole rationale," Smith said of the decision. "The die has been cast. They would be fools, foolish and fools, to proceed with this … very ill-thought-out proposal." (Asbury Park Press, 3/8/26) Regarding RAGE’s efforts, NJ Senator Declan O’Scanlon commented, “This is truly a shining example of a grassroots movement impacting government and our community – and resulting in a just and fair decision.” (Two River Times, 3/20/18.)

 

June 2018: the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) voted unanimously to uphold and adopt the judge’s decision. JCP&L’s petition for the MCRP, Project B1690, was officially denied.

 

After MCRP Was Denied

 

May 2019: Nearly one year after the MCRP project was denied, through Congressman Frank Pallone, RAGE leaders were asked to “come out of retirement” to attend a single meeting at JCP&L's BellWorks offices on May 28, 2019. No township officials from any of the towns that were legal intervenors in the MCRP legal proceedings attended the meeting. (RAGE does not know if they were invited to this or any other meetings with JCP&L.)

 

At that meeting, JCP&L President Jim Fakult, JCP&L Government Affairs liaison Kieran Tintle, First Energy Transmission Operations Manager Larre Hozempa, and five other JCP&L/First Energy employees presented 4 alternative fixes for the still-existing P7 technical violation, and asked RAGE to weigh in. 

 

Of the 4 alternative fixes presented, Option 3 contained some similarities to what RAGE’s expert Jeffrey Palermo had offered in court (two STATCOM voltage regulators), but JCP&L said they would not pursue that one. JCP&L asked for RAGE’s feedback. RAGE asked for a copy of the presentation so Palermo could review and comment on the proposed alternatives. JCP&L said no. 

 

RAGE left the meeting, re-entered “RAGE retirement,” and had no further contact with JCP&L ever again.

 

August 2019: On August 8, 2019, JCP&L submitted their “MCRP alternative” project to regional grid operator PJM’s Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee. Important: their proposal was not one of the 4 options presented during the May 29 meeting with RAGE. It was a new 5th option that involved re-circuiting existing poles throughout Monmouth County, including in Holmdel (Project Code B1690.3). (See page 23 here.) 

 

Current JCP&L Project

 

February 2026: Six and a half years later, seemingly out of nowhere, towering laminate and steel monopoles start replacing short wooden poles in Holmdel. Residents sound the alarm to township officials and are pointed to a First Energy press release for Project JC-103609, an "Infrastructure Upgrade” that is part of a larger JCP&L initiative called Energize 365. Its stated goal: "upgrading many of our existing facilities with advanced equipment and technologies that will reinforce the power grid and help prevent or reduce the duration of customer outages. The project represents an approximately $30 million investment to replace 10 miles of an existing electric line to replace aged infrastructure and accommodate a second circuit for reliability."  

 

While this new project seems to share the route and some characteristics of that “Option #5” project B1690.3 that JCP&L proposed to PJM in August 2019, the scope of this new 2026 project is much broader -- including installing new larger structures and equipment -- and has a different Project Code (JC-103609) and a different name. (See JCP&L project fact sheet here.)

 

Also worth noting is that unlike in 2016, this time residents whose properties are within 200' of these newly-installed JC-103609 oversized poles and lines -- who JCP&L has a legal obligation to inform via certified mail -- report getting no official notice of the project. 

 

So where did this project come from? And why didn’t anybody know about it?

 

Holmdel Township Knew About the Current Utility Poles Since 2023

 

Like the general public, nobody from RAGE knew about Project JC-103609 until after construction began in early 2026. But it appears Holmdel Township knew sooner:

 

 

  • Holmdel Mayor toured the new pole locations in 2025. At the 9/22/26 Township Committee meeting, Brian Foster acknowledged that he toured pole locations with JCP&L sometime in 2025, when he was mayor. 

 

In spring of 2026, as the new giant poles kept going in, the public started to piece together that Holmdel Township knew about this project for almost 3 years and did nothing -- and Mayor Rocco Impreveduto attempted to deflect eyes on Holmdel by blaming RAGE.

 

Holmdel Township, the Holmdel Republican Party, and the Holmdel Republican Club are continuing to push the absolutely untrue narrative that RAGE “approved” the new giant Project JC-103609 monopoles being installed throughout Holmdel via a concerning, somewhat unhinged stretch of public comments, press releases, and Facebook posts, including creating AI caricatures of RAGE volunteers and publicly defaming them.  

 

To be absolutely clear: as described in detail above, RAGE did not “approve” any JCP&L project, ever. After the BPU sided with us and shot down the JCP&L’s transmission proposal, we were asked to be shown alternative fixes by JCP&L. JCP&L refused to share them with our electric expert, and we did not comment. Of the options they presented, none matched the one our expert proposed in court, and the closest one (Option 3) was dismissed by JCP&L. Option 5, the one they ended up proposing to PJM in 2019, was not even presented at the meeting we attended. And we definitely did not see the much more invasive Project JC-103609 that is currently being constructed, which JCP&L brought to Holmdel in 2023. 

 

While we can provide this information to defend ourselves, even responding to the accusation that we somehow allowed or invited this new project to happen at all is ludicrous at its core because, of course, a grassroots group does not have any legal approval rights or negotiation power regarding utility projects. (We wish we did. We could have saved RAGE donors and the towns almost a million dollars back in 2017.) The insinuation that we somehow “traded” (?) the MCRP for this current project is equally absurd, and reflects how little the current mayor understands the 2016-2018 fight against JCP&L. 

 

We are proud to have fought alongside Holmdel and all 5 towns to protect our communities in 2016-2018. We learned a lot. Had Holmdel Township come to us in 2023-2025 when JCP&L approached them with Project JC-103609, we would have provided history and input to help them fight that too. They did not.

 

Instead, Holmdel Township officials are now spending their energy attacking a citizens’ group that was their ally, instead of the utility installing these towering eyesores in their town. Why?

 

Why aren’t they instead fuming that JCP&L did not include them in that May 2019 meeting? 

 

Why aren’t they instead demanding JCP&L provide certified mail receipts to prove Holmdel residents were notified of Project JC-103609 as required by law? 

 

Why did they shield JCP&L from direct questioning from the public on September 22?

 

Why are they not screaming at JCP&L, “You didn’t tell us this was coming!”

 

Why? Because JCP&L DID tell Holmdel this project was coming, and Holmdel didn’t do anything to stop it.

 

JCP&L probably didn’t provide all the details, so Holmdel may not have realized how incredibly large-scale it was, or how terrible it would look once completed…but Holmdel knows JCP&L can prove Holmdel was aware, in some capacity, for 3 years before the first pole went in.

 

And when Township officials saw how bad it was, rather than owning that mistake and trying to work with JCP&L to change the project, the mayor looked for a scapegoat.

 

RAGE will not be that scapegoat. We stand with the people of Holmdel in opposing Project JC-103609, and we urge them to keep demanding accountability and transparency from their Township Committee and from JCP&L. Holmdel residents deserve better.

 


LINKS:

 

 

Two River Times, 3/20/2108: “Judge Zaps $111M High Voltage Power Line Project”:

 

Asbury Park Press, 3/8/2018, “JCP&L controversial Monmouth power line zapped by judge”: https://www.app.com/story/money/business/consumer/2018/03/08/judge-jcpl-power-line-monmouth-county-reliability-project-decision/408001002/

 

Slides from the 8/8/2019 meeting of the PJM Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee (TEAC): https://www.pjm.com/-/media/DotCom/committees-groups/committees/teac/20190808/20190808-reliability-analysis-update.pdf

 

 

 

 
 
 

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