Letters to the Editor
Power outages continue to haunt Peninsula residents as the City and Edison appear to idly sit by
Lido had a power outage last week and it got everyone’s attention. A small area on the Peninsula has 1-2 outages EVERY month for years and what do we hear? Crickets...even here in Stu News, our area was a parenthetical comment to what happened to Lido. Those of us living on Island Ave., parts of Bay Ave., and parts of Buena Vista experience continuing power outages and have for years. Most recently in less than a week, we had three, with the longest lasting 12 hours, and this is not unusual.
We residents have written letters to the city and Edison. We have circulated petitions. We have called. We have reported every outage on the Edison website. We had Dave Webb, director of (City of Newport Beach) Public Works, come to speak to us. We made sure council candidates understood this issue before the election. We have reported the outages in real time to the mayor and the entire city council, Public Works and Edison. We have included our District 1 Councilman (Joe) Stapleton in our many, many emails.
And what has all this gotten us?
The city says it is Edison, and the Edison repair crews say it is the city.
And we continue to hear, “We are looking into it.”
And still, we sit in the dark far too often!
Food and medicines spoil in refrigerators. The power surges wreak havoc on electronics. Budgets are stretched buying battery-operated devices and generators. Wages are lost by people working from home. Edison routinely denies claims for damages.
The map online for these recurring incidents is no help in knowing the actual 150 or so houses impacted. Neither the city nor Edison will provide me with the actual blocks affected so I can personally speak to each resident.
Together we must develop a plan to resolve this because the few squeaky wheels have not gotten the attention of whoever can get this fixed. This wobbly senior citizen has been expected to go up and down streets in the dark to figure out who is without power, and while I have met some fabulous neighbors as a result, this is an inexact method to get the information both the city and Edison already have.
We have heard the city is having a meeting with Edison to discuss this. I have asked Dave Webb to include me and other neighbors in this meeting, but there have been no invitations to date.
If you are a neighbor suffering these outages, let me know! Stop by, stick a note in our mailbox, or send me a note to P.O Box 952, Newport Beach, Calif. 92661.
Kathy Frazer
Newport Beach