Third time is not the charm: PSEG pitches substation again

PSEG was selling. But Shelter Island wasn’t buying.

Several power company officials were back on the Island at Tuesday’s Town Board work session renewing, for the third time, a pitch to build an electrical substation off South Ferry Road on the site of the old highway department barn. The property is town-owned and the board would have to vote to sell or lease it to the power company for the project to proceed.

This time PSEG officials laid out a plan to deploy extensive landscaping to screen homes from the site, add paved parking space for the adjoining Shelter Island Historical Society property, convert a small marsh into a scenic pond and construct a park with benches and a fire pit near the proposed electrical facility.

The ideas were met with skepticism and at times anger from residents packing the Town Hall meeting room, with two people telling the PSEG representatives they should be ashamed of themselves for returning with a discredited plan.

Vincent Frigeria, a PSEG spokesman, said that the New Jersey-based company, although exploring all options, has decided the substation proposal at the site is the best of the bunch. With electrical use on the Island growing 3 percent annually, it’s necessary to have a reliable back up source of power.

But the consensus in the room was firmly against a substation and just as firmly for another try at digging a tunnel to house a backup power cable running from Southold to Crescent Beach. This was tried in 2013 at the height of the summer season and eventually failed when the contractor couldn’t finish the project.

Several people Tuesday questioned the motives of the power company to build a substation rather than try to dig another tunnel for a cable, since the latter is more expensive.

John O’Connell, PSEG vice president of transmission and distribution, said a tunnel — which has been met with strong opposition from Southold residents — was still on the table, but many factors weighed against it.

Bob Parkinson, project manager for PSEG, who managed the last ill-fated attempt at an underwater cable, said the company had looked at multiple “drill options,” but “cost is obviously a concern, we’re not going to sugarcoat that.”

PSEG hasn’t been listening to the community, Councilman Ed Brown charged. Aesthetics are one thing, Mr. Brown said, but “visual isn’t the biggest issue, which is what you’re covering here. Giving us pavements, landscaping and a fire pit … talk about sugar coating.”

The real issues for the community are health, safety and home values for those near the proposed site, Mr. Brown added, echoing several residents at the meeting.

There are presently two distribution cables that bring power to the Island via underwater cables — a third distribution cable was knocked out by Hurricane Sandy — and another line, called a transmission cable, runs through the Island holding power that has not been converted to usable electricity by a substation to distribute.

PSEG maintains that there must always be two sources of power in case of an emergency. If one of the two distribution cables providing the Island with electricity is knocked out, a solution would be to have the transmission cable now running through, tapped into the proposed substation at the old highway barn and converted to electricity homes and businesses can use.

The two previous times this idea was floated, opposition was vocal and sustained by the community on issues of safety, noise and aesthetics. At Tuesday’s meeting, PSEG officials reiterated that the risk of a dangerous fire was minimal, noise was not an issue and they had addressed the aesthetic issues with their plans for a park and 25-foot high mature evergreens surrounding the proposed electrical facility.

The issue of PSEG saving money by building a substation instead of another tunnel dig was returned to several times. “The cost to you in your equation is pennies,” resident Marc Wein said. “The cost to us is the quality our lives.”

Mr. O’Connell said PSEG was looking at providing the Island with back up power from the perspectives of “cost, reliability and risk,” and a substation at the proposed site is the best solution. But he added that he and his colleagues were listening to the community. “We don’t disagree with your feelings,” he said.

Superintendent Jim Dougherty said the argument that the temporary inconveniences of another cable dig “was compelling,” whereas “we’re hearing from our friends and neighbors and your ratepayers that there seems to be a lot of evidence that the impact of a substation in that particular location would be permanent.”

Mr. Brown complimented the PSEG official for their presentation. “You’ll have my vote for a cable again,” Mr. Brown said. “But you don’t have my vote to sell our property to PSEG to run a substation. And you’ll need three votes here.”