By Mark Scott
Washington, DC – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is critical of the Republican leadership in the US Senate for its failure to act on legislation that would better protect the nation's electricity grid.
Saturday is the first anniversary of last summer's massive power blackout in the Northeast. It was an August 14th, 2003 that an untrimmed tree limb fell on a power line in Ohio, sparking a cascading effect that led to power outages affecting millions of people, including many in Western New York. In response, a special task force issued a report that calls for reliability standards for the nation's electricity transmission grid.
While New York has strict standards in place to protect its power supply, Clinton says that's not the case elsewhere.
"A state cannot protect itself," Clinton said. "The transmission grid is inter-connected, and it can be brought down by what happens outside of our jurisdiction."
Right now, national standards are voluntary. And as demonstrated by last year's blackout, Clinton says that's not good enough. She says utilities that fail to protect the nation's transmission grid need to be held accountable.
"There would be a system of oversight, so that we could have an early warning if a utility is not complying with the standards," Clinton said. "We could then require action to fix whatever the problems were, like trimming the trees."
Clinton also says there need to be financial penalties, arguing that in some cases that's the only way of getting someone's attention.