Chesterton Tribune

 

 

NIPSCO tree trimming should improve Morningside electric service reliability

Back To Front Page

 

By KEVIN NEVERS

Power outages are hardly a rare phenomenon in Duneland but evidently folks who live in the Morningside subdivision--on that odd peninsula of Chesterton that juts into Porter north of I-94, east of Waverly Road, and south of East Oakhill Road--find themselves in the dark pretty darn often.

Some of them think so, at any rate, and have made their concerns known to NIPSCO. NIPSCO, for its part, is blaming the trees but also promising an imminent improvement in reliability.

At the Chesterton Town Council’s meeting Monday night, Town Manager Bernie Doyle shared an e-mail received earlier in the day from NIPSCO’s manager of public affairs, Rick Calinski, who appears to acknowledge that the Morningside folks may have a point.

The e-mail:

“NIPSCO has had some outreach from a few residents at Morningside subdivision in Chesterton regarding frequent power outages.

“We are starting some major tree trimming along the circuits that feed this area along with installing some new equipment that should also support dependability in this area. This should really help create a more reliable circuit in this area.

“I just wanted to make the town aware of this as you may have heard from a few residents as well.”

Doyle expressed his gratitude to Calinski for staying on top of the problem.

The Power Failure at the Treatment Plant

While on the subject of blackouts, Utility Superintendent Dave Ryan told the council that, as far as anyone can tell, it was a lightning strike that damaged the battery charger on the wastewater treatment plant’s backup generator.

The generator’s subsequent failure during a power outage on the night of July 24 led to the outflow of approximately 127,000 gallons of untreated wastewater into the Little Calumet River. It wasn’t a bypass, strictly speaking, nor a combined sewer overflow--both of which occur when a treatment plant’s capacity is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of wastewater--but rather a “dead-stick” incident in which the plant just stopped working as a system.

As it happens, 11 of the 20 rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries which were supposed to power the generator were later found to be dead and incapable of taking of a new charge, Ryan told the Chesterton Tribune after the meeting.

Ryan has accordingly junked all 20 NiCads and replaced them with a double bank of two heavy-duty wet-cell batteries each, the first bank tasked to running the generator as needed, the second bank to backing up the first.

Ryan noted that the blackout also made it impossible for the plant’s remote monitoring and control system--its SCADA--to notify personnel, because a computer is like any other device: it won’t work without juice. “We didn’t get a SCADA warning because there was no power,” he said.

The Art Fair

Meanwhile, Park Superintendent Bruce Mathias reported that the 58th annual Chesterton Art Fair, held this past Saturday and Sunday at Dogwood Park, “went absolutely wonderful.”

“I had not a single complaint,” Mathias told the council. “It went as smoothly as it could possibly go.”

“It was a good move,” noted Member Jim Ton, R-1st, to bring the Chesterton Art Fair back to Chesterton, after so many years being hosted by Hawthorne Park. “And you facilitated the move very well,” he told Mathias.

Good Job, Schnadenberg

Member Lloyd “Buck” Kittredge took a moment at the end of the meeting to thank Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg for fixing a small “divot” left in the roadway following the Norfolk Southern’s repair of the at-grade crossing on South Calumet Road.

Schnadenberg responded quickly after being alerted and improvised creatively, by securing some spare material and using it to fill the divot, Kittredge said.

 

 

Posted 8/10/2016

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

Search This Site:

Custom Search