Con Edison: In Over Its Head?

By: Malisa Dutson, Rosa Mancia, Amanda Yuan


During last Wednesday’s inclement weather, a steam explosion in midtown Manhattan left one New Yorker dead, more than 30 injured and many, many more questioning Con Edison’s ability to protect the city from severe environmental conditions.

Severe weather conditions have caused many problems with New York City’s ancient infrastructure, problems which Con Edison is having a hard time dealing with.

Antagonism has been building against Con Edison ever since last year’s 10-day outage in Queens. Just the day before the steam pipe explosion, communities in Queens held a flashlight march demanding that Con Edison stop its impending rate hike- the most substantial in history- demanding a 17% rate hike for residents and 10.5% for business owners. “If Con Edison is doing a poor job, why should they get paid more?” said Rmil Amin.

Coincidently, the explosion in midtown the following day accentuated the protesters’ concerns. The explosion also revealed the flaws in New York City’s infrastructure as Mayor Bloomberg had stressed in a speech the previous evening.

“I don’t think we can prevent something even though we plan things. I hope they learn from this unfortunate incident and make the area around the pipes more secure,” said Angela Knight.