"As NStar clear-cuts trees near transmission lines, communities resist" by Evan Allen | Globe Correspondent, July 19, 2012
For more than 20 years, pine trees surrounded Ellen Sard’s Sudbury backyard. But in June her half-acre was transformed by crews clearing vegetation around high-voltage transmission lines for NStar.
In less than two hours, the pines she had planted were all chopped down.
“It was such a violation,” said Sard, who acknowledges that NStar has an easement on the property. Now, 22 stumps dot her backyard, and she has a clear view of the towering power lines.
Officials at NStar, which came under heavy criticism after widespread power outages last year, say clear-cutting around transmission lines is the only way to guarantee consistently reliable power. But communities are increasingly up in arms over the the utility’s integrated vegetation management program, launched in 2010. In Sudbury, tensions between tree cutters and residents ran so high that a police detail was called in to keep the peace....
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"Pulling the plug on nation’s security" by Juliette Kayyem, July 09, 2012
WELCOME BACK, D.C., it’s good to hear from you. By now, hopefully, you and your neighbors in the mid-Atlantic area are back online after last month’s violent storms left about 3 million people in the dark and, with downed power lines and fallen trees, delayed the restoration of power.
See: Fires, Floods, and Florida
The coverage has faded since.
Since then, to catch you up, Tom Cruise’s Oprah couch-jumping testament to love was put in a new light when Katie Holmes filed for divorce; CNN’s Anderson Cooper came out of the closet to a worldwide yawn; and the nation celebrated its independence from an unresponsive and monopolistic source of power (and it wasn’t the electric utilities).
At a time when we are enslaved by an unresponsive and monopolistic source of power, namely the private central banking cartel and it's agents of government. I'd say it's ironic; however, irony carries with it the connotation of humor and I find none there.
The ongoing power outages are an epic failure, however, not only for those who suffer in the heat but for the rest of the nation and the world looking on, aghast. That our capital is in the dark is akin to riots in London or debilitating strikes in Paris. It says something about a nation whose projection of strength is an essential part of its security strategy. There is little national power with no power in the nation’s capital.
Yes, it says we have SPENT FAR TOO MUCH on WALL STREET, WARS, and ISRAEL as our infrastructure crumbles and collapses.
There are a lot of excuses coming from Pepco and Old Dominion Power, the local utilities that distribute electricity to the Washington area. Deregulation in the industry was supposed to provide customers with more responsive service and lower prices. It has instead resulted in less oversight, allowing for degradation in equipment in the transmission and distribution networks, and fewer employees available to respond....
Yeah, can you tell I am F***ING TIRED of THOSE no matter WHO in AUTHORITY issues them?
Worst of all, however, is what the power outage says about our nation’s priorities when it comes to our own security. We tend to focus on threats rather than vulnerabilities. A nuclear Iran or a cyber-threatening China are much more sexy topics than aging infrastructure. We highlight the new-new thing without focusing on minimizing damage.
Related: The Two Worst Countries in the World
Maybe you want to make that three or four.
Cyber security is a perfect example. By 2017 the threat of cyber attacks — real, but also prone to exaggeration — will create a $120 billion security market.
And CUI BONO?
But the consequences of what we fear from a cyber enemy — the downing of public and private facilities, impacts on banking, finance, and transportation, and a massive disruption to the public — are exactly what has happened already, because we haven’t required more from the good old-fashioned power companies.
There is something so bitterly sad that the locale of this most recent outage is the District of Columbia, the center of the free world. Our infrastructure is the greatest security investment we can now make.
It is difficult to project power if the lights won’t go on.
The future ahead for most Americans as the bankruptcy of empire leads into power shortages and rationing -- like those people in far away lands whom we have invaded or bombed.
But don't worry; I'm sure the war machine that is protecting you and your freedom will be the last thing to be turned off.
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