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June 25, 2015

PURA approves three Eversource CT closures

HBJ File Photo Eversource Energy President, CEO, and Chairman Tom May.

The state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority has issued a draft decision approving Eversource’s request to close facilities in Glastonbury, Newington and Waterbury.

But the agency ordered Eversource to delay the requested July 31 closure of its Simsbury work center until the company can provide more information regarding potential impacts on customer service and outage response times.

Eversource, formerly Northeast Utilities, said it won’t lay off any workers or reduce its personnel as a result of the closures, which were requested in January and are connected to the company’s review of its operations following its 2012 merger with Boston utility parent NStar. Rather employees will move to other Eversource facilities, the company said.

Attorney General George Jepsen and the Office of the Consumer Counsel, which had called on PURA to review the requested closures, pushed back against that claim, arguing that a previous round of seven facility closures resulted in the retirement of 26 workers, which they said Eversource never replaced.

As a part of its merger approval from the state in 2013, Eversource promised that any facility closures would not erode service quality, reliability or customer response.

Simsbury and Waterbury are both area work centers, which act as home bases for Eversource field crews.

The Simsbury location has limited road access and is in an area that suffers from traffic congestion, PURA said in its draft decision. The agency intends to wait until Eversource completes its study of the impacts of its previous seven closures before allowing the Simsbury closure.

The Glastonbury and Newington locations, which house transmission, a technical writing department and records storage center, do not provide any customer service functions.

Glastonbury will close at the end of the month, while Newington will close by year’s end. Waterbury is slated to close in a year.

PURA expects to issue its final decision on the matter next month.

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