Con Ed Settlement:

$7.9 Million Still To Come for Trees and Greening Projects (from the Joint Proposal, approved in 2008, in the state’s case against Con Ed for the July 2006 Queens power outage)

Ideas from Greening Western Queens visioning sessions will help guide funding

On March 20 and 27, 2010, two lively days of visioning for a more sustainable and green future were held in Western Queens for residents of Sunnyside, Astoria, Woodside and Long Island City. Ideas generated at these Greening Western Queens visioning sessions will help guide the funding that will be used for tree planting and other environmental projects in Western Queens communities that were affected by the July 2006 Con Edison power outage. North Star Fund is the Project Administrator, and is working with Western Queens Power for the People to ensure effective, strategic and timely grants for a greener Western Queens. For more information, visit Greening-queens .

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BACKGROUND:
$63 Million Joint Proposal
Approved in 2008 in the
state case vs. Con Ed
for Queens Power Outage.

Calls for:

• Con Ed to apologize in writing.
• $17 million in Con Ed stockholder funds to go to affected communities for refunds, trees and greening projects, and an impact study.
• Prevents Con Ed from passing on $46 million in outage costs to customers.

For the full text of the Joint Proposal and related news releases and statements, click here.

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About PFP

In July 2006, power was out for days in Sunnyside, Woodside, Astoria and Long Island City.

This meant no AC, no elevators, no refrigerators, no subway service, no wages for workers in closed businesses, no rest for weary utility workers, and worst of all:

No answers from Con Ed management!

No sign of the Mayor until the community demanded he come!

Power for the People launched a petition drive to say:

Enough is enough!

And to tell Con Ed and the City to:

• Pay us back for losses, expenses and lost wages!
  
  
• Tell us why this happened and will it happen again?

As part of our petition campaign we demanded:

1. Compensation for losses, expenses and lost wages from the outage (over and above Con Ed’s claim form for spoiled food)
   
   
2. Free power for the length of time the outage lasted and no charge for “brownout" power.
   
   
3. A Peoples’ Fact-finding Investigation into the power outage – its causes, its impact on our communities and plans to prevent future outages.
   
   
4. A first alert to the community as soon as power problems occur.
   
   
5. A community civilian review board of Con Ed emergency response.

Power for the People is also seeking an economic and public health impact study, done by a third party and paid for by Con Ed, to accurately quantify the damages and losses from the July 2006 Queens Power Outage.