Posted on 08/17/2003 2:44:02 PM PDT by sarcasm
ASHINGTON, Aug. 17 — With electric service restored today to nearly all the broad eastern region of the United States and Canada blacked out on Thursday and Friday, officials cautioned that Monday could bring new problems as millions of workers return to their jobs and renew normal demands on the power grid.
"We're not out of the woods," the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Pat Wood, said on NBC television.
The authorities were still urging residents in the affected region — which included nearly 50 million people, though not all had lost electric power — to conserve energy and, in some cases, to boil their drinking water.
President Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada, whose relations were badly strained by the Iraq war, spoke by telephone and agreed to appoint a task force to investigate the blackout.
American politicians of both parties traded blame for the crisis, each saying the other side had dragged its feet in addressing a problem warned of for years, and they showed few signs of political will to compromise.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the Bush administration was not ready to impose national rules on electric utilities but would consider "better regional governance" of power systems. Above all, he said, the administration favors creating new incentives for investing in the upgrading of transmission lines and the bolstering of energy production. Mr. Abraham also called for Congress to approve the administration's entire energy package to provide a global fix.
Democrats said the blackout underscored the need for new national standards. They called for urgent legislative action and said prospects for passage would be enhanced if the administration dropped its demand to drill for oil in protected parts of Alaska, and other contested proposals.
In Canada, officials were more focused on what they would face as demand for electricity surged with the labor force's return to work. Ontario's premier, Ernie Eves, said that Monday would be a "big, big test," with no "abundance of power." Mayor Bob Chiarelli of Ottawa said he might ask people to stay home from work.
In Toronto, Mayor Mel Lastman said that the city's subways, which typically carry 700,000 passengers a day, would remain closed until the provincial government offered assurances that no rolling blackouts would affect the city. But Premier Eves said he could offer no such promises.
Ontario officials were considering asking industry, which consumes one-third of the energy used there, to limit production.
Air and rail travel throughout the affected region was nearly back to normal on Sunday, though some airlines were still working through backlogs of travelers stranded by the cancellation of more than 1,700 flights since the blackout struck Thursday afternoon. New York City subways resumed service on Saturday.
The source of the power failure was under intense investigation.
The FirstEnergy Corporation, the utility that owns three of the five high-voltage lines in northern Ohio that figure prominently in the inquiry, said that it was unsure why an audible alarm system had failed to alert operators to the crisis developing on Thursday.
Federal officials ruled out terror attack as a cause of the blackouts, and Michehl Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, said today that it appeared "99 percent sure" that computer hackers had played no role.
Nonetheless, his group, the primary electrical-system transmission monitor, was meeting today with officials of the Homeland Security Department to review the matter.
Engineers, mathematicians and computer specialists were also beginning to comb through vast amounts of electronic data in an effort to reconstruct just how power failures near Cleveland had overwhelmed the barriers meant to isolate and confine them to their immediate region. Human error has not been ruled out, officials said.
Although life had largely returned to normal in New York City and its environs by Friday evening, when power was restored there, people in Cleveland, Detroit and elsewhere in Michigan, where Gov. Jennifer Granholm had declared a state of emergency, were still being advised today to boil water for drinking, as pumping and purification plants returned slowly to service.
Buth there were signs of a return to the routines of ordinary life, even in places most affected by the blackout: in Detroit, the Michigan State Fair was open in Detroit, and in Cleveland, the major league baseball team, the Indians were playing the visiting Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
There was also the inevitable political back and forth. Energy Secretary Abraham said today that the United States was "a superpower with a third world grid," and suggested that Democrats had blocked Republican efforts to upgrade the power system.
Many Republicans favor greater inducements for private investment in the power system, while some Democrats want federal regulators to be given greater authority to push through transmission-line upgrades that have been blocked by local or regional authorities.
As the finger-pointing intensified, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House Republican leader, blamed Democrats for resisting administration energy proposals first put forth in May 2001.
"The Democrats in the House and the Senate have stopped us so far from doing anything," he said. He also blamed utility companies that sought protection from competition and environmentalists who, he said tartly, would oppose any construction anywhere.
But Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat and an energy secretary himself in the Clinton administration, said the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress needed to formulate new energy legislation more closely focused on the immediate problem. To ensure passage, he said, lawmakers should "strip out those provisions that are controversial," including for oil drilling in Alaska.
Without the Alaska drilling provision, agreed Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and an Energy Committee member, energy legislation "would zip through."
But Mr. Abraham said that breaking apart the Bush energy package would be "a huge mistake." The administration wanted "a bill that accomplishes as many of our objectives as possible" and "the ability to drill for more oil in America, including the Arctic reserve."
Regarding the nation's power system — actually three unconnected grids that encompass the country as well as reach across its borders — Mr. Abraham said the administration favored not only "mandatory reliability standards" but also incentives for private investment.
Governor Richardson also called for "mandatory reliability standards," saying that utilities now "can overload without penalty."
With several billion dollars needed for system upgrades, Mr. Abraham conceded that "ratepayers, obviously, will pay the bill, because they're the ones who benefit."
Acknowledging that the precise cause of the blackout remained undetermined, Mr. Abraham said that that did not weaken the argument for new investment and energy production.
"Regardless of whether the problem was related to the transmission operations, we need more transmission capability," Mr. Abraham said on Fox. Absent such improvements, "we're going to have more problems."
Representative John Dingell of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the Energy Committee, said that quick legislative action was needed. He called on the administration to put aside its larger energy goals so that the immediate problems that caused the blackout could be remedied.
"Right now we have a crisis," one that "could be back at any time," he said on Fox television. "Let's address the emergency."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.