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Report: Con Ed Upgrade May Mean Jacked Up Prices

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Jan 18, 2007 7:51 pm US/Eastern

Report: Con Ed Upgrade May Mean Jacked Up Prices

Residents Furious, Politicians Screaming For Blood

See Also: Con Ed On It? Not From What We Saw (July 2006)

Timeline Of The 2006 Queens Blackout
by Marcia Kramer
QUEENS (CBS) ― It's been six months since the blackout in Queens and people here are still so angry they want Con Ed to pay. They want heavy fines and new management. Imagine their surprise to learn the utility wants to pass a lot of the cost on to them.

"Con Ed? Sure I blame Con Edison. There supposed to fix it, do something about it," one resident said.

Sure, Con Ed is supposed to fix what went wrong last summer, causing 174,000 sweltering people to suffer without power for up to nine days. But, buried in a blistering new report on the power outage is the fact that Con Ed intends to pass a large percentage of their costs on to the consumer.

That's right -- you guys ... the people that were hurt.

"They can't leave us out in the cold like this," another resident said. "It's horrible and they're playing with people's lives."

The state Public Service Commission's blistering new report on the mega-outage said Con Ed has spent $120 million so far in trying to fix the system.

*$54 million went to operations and maintenance

*48 million for capital costs

It looks like the company will try to pass those $102 million in costs on to their customers.

Local politicians are so angry they're calling for the resignation of Con Ed chief Kevin Burke.

"Whether the man is qualified for the job or not, he showed in this crisis he was not prepared to lead," Councilman Eric Gioia said.

Added Councilman Peter Vallone: "Heads should role. Con Ed should pay and this neighborhood needs to be brought back to where it was."

On that issue, Mayor Bloomberg sang a totally different tune.

"If you want lousy electrical service you keep driving Con Ed, Burke out of the office and then you won't have as good people and they wont do as good a job," Bloomberg said.

"He's done a great job."

People in Queens don't buy that. What they want is justice, and justice means punishment for Con Ed.

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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