If the next “storm of the century” were to hit us next fall, would we be ready?
Coming off of back-to-back periods that featured not just one, but multiple debilitating storms (Irene and the Halloween snowstorm in 2011, Sandy in the fall of 2012 and the February blizzard of 2013, dubbed Nemo) there is little evidence to suggest that Fairfield County is prepared for the upcoming hurricane season.
Just over six months ago, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stood before a crowd of reporters in Bridgeport and pledged to help the state”™s residents and businesses get back on their feet after Hurricane Sandy knocked out power for millions and wreaked havoc across the towns and cities bordering the Long Island Sound.
“We need to begin helping people get back in their homes. We need to be helping communities get restored. We need to make sure the infrastructure of this state is made whole,” Napolitano said. “We understand the urgency of the situation.”
But that sense of urgency should remain today.
In December, the Connecticut Department of Labor announced it had $610,000 in federal funds that were available to the state”™s towns and cities to assist with storm cleanup efforts.
The funds were intended to provide temporary jobs for out-of-work residents who had either never qualified for unemployment benefits or had exhausted them.
It”™s now been five months and zero municipalities have applied for a share of the funds. The state is now left in the exceedingly rare predicament of having federal dollars that it is unsure of how to spend.
Where is the urgency?
Last November, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Connecticut”™s two primary electric utilities ”“ Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) and United Illuminating (UI) Co. ”“ would face state-mandated performance reviews because more than 10 percent of each utility”™s customer base was out of power for more than two days after Sandy struck.
Since then, both utilities have asked the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority for permission to bump up electric rates to pay for storm-damaged infrastructure.
While consumers wait to hear whether their bills will increase, the parent company of each utility has rewarded shareholders with quarterly dividends.
And in the meantime, neither utility has been held accountable for its actions (or lack of action) in Sandy”™s wake.
Where is the urgency?
In January, Congress appropriated more than $60 billion toward disaster recovery efforts. Of that, $16 billion was set aside for the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
HUD, in turn, will release the $16 billion to storm-affected regions in three allotments. HUD released the first pool of funds, totaling $5.4 billion, in April, with Connecticut set to get about $72 million.
The Malloy administration then drafted a plan for distributing the federal dollars to areas with the greatest need. The draft required the approval of the Connecticut General Assembly, which it got May 7.
But again, where is the urgency?
We understand that these are complex matters, particularly when it comes to the distribution of federal funds that are limited to very specific uses. But the fact of the matter is, Atlantic hurricane season begins in less than a month and forecasters are projecting multiple major storms.
Bureaucracy is slow and predictable; Mother Nature is anything but. It”™s time for the state, residents and businesses to show some collective urgency.
