Last month our region was slammed by back to back snow storms that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people. All of the investor-owned utilities that operate in New York were impacted to one degree or another. Customers of Orange and Rockland Utilities and Central Hudson Gas and Electric were hit particularly hard. Many households and businesses were forced to go without power for over a week. The utilities worked around the clock in treacherous conditions, brought in hundreds of crews from out of state and spent what will likely be, when all is accounted for, millions of dollars to restore power and provide emergency shelter and supplies.

As Chair of the Assembly Energy Committee, it is my responsibility to hold the utilities and the regulatory bodies that oversee them accountable for their stewardship of the electric grid. I could simply throw up my hands and chalk up the outages to what was one of the worst storms in recent memory as a few have suggested, but that would not be fair to the brave men and women who risked their health and safety to get the power restored. Nor would it be fair to those households that struggled to keep warm and prevent their food from spoiling or the business that were hit hard by lost inventory and revenue do to closure.

The Energy Committee will be conducting hearings to examine all aspects of the outages, not for the purpose of criticizing the utilities, but rather to provide a forum to discuss what needs to be done to minimize the impact of future storms. These hearings will be conducted concurrently with a Public Service Commission review that was automatically triggered by long-standing regulation applied when the outages go on for more than three days. Legislative hearings have long been an effective tool to examine vexing problems and to develop appropriate responses. I considered waiting until the dust settled before calling for hearings as I did after the massive ice storm of December 2008, a similar event in terms of the size, duration of customer outages, and scope of the damage. In this instance, especially since many customers were dealing with the second prolonged winter outage in the last 15 months, I decided it was important to move forward while the experience was still fresh in everyone's minds.

In recent years, extreme weather events have become an increasingly common occurrence in our region. This a fact that we must come to grips with so we can be better prepared going forward. This necessary and helpful process will allow us to hear directly from the utility workers who risked their well being to get power restored. They will identify what worked and what could be improved to help them do their jobs more safely and effectively in the future. Who better to provide insight into whether different staffing levels, infrastructure investments and tree trimming activities could have lessened the impact of this fact of Northeast winter life?

Just as we did after the 2008 ice storm, we will ask representatives of the Public Service Commission, State Emergency Management Office, the utilities, their employees, the Red Cross and municipal leaders to join us in a substantive discussion about planning for and responding to stresses on our electric grid. They will present their informed perspective on the preparation and response to the outages. Additionally, those providing testimony will be asked to assess whether problems identified during the Assembly hearing and Public Service Commission review of the 2008 ice storm were addressed and if those changes had any positive impact in addressing this storm. The hearings will also provide policymakers and the public with an opportunity to explore the issues that continue to threaten the integrity of our electric grid, including whether our system for the transmission and distribution of electricity is still viable given modern society's dependence on constant availability of power.

Clearly, the severe weather events of last month presented immeasurable challenges to the brave men and women who worked tirelessly in the most adverse conditions, using all the available resources, to respond. We can hope that we never find ourselves in this situation again, but when we do, let's make sure the investments in infrastructure and maintenance have been made, that utility crews and call centers are appropriately staffed, and emergency response coordination and communication is the very best we can offer.