Who Are the Liars on the Lower East Side?

Just walking by, it doesn't seem that remarkable a sight. There's construction and repair work going on all over the city all the time, however sloppy.

This particular hole only becomes interesting when you find out that it's been there, open that way, for more than a year.

"This is what it looks like after they came to fix it," says local documentarian Clayton Patterson, who lives next door to the substation. The hole, and the mess, is directly in front of his apartment.

On July 6, 1999, during one of the hottest weeks on record, there was a blackout on the Lower East Side. Complicating matters was the fire that broke out in the Stanton substation's basement the following morning. This is where things become complicated, and the deeper trouble begins.

Though the NYFD appeared on the scene, they couldn't do anything. It was an electrical fire, and they had to wait until the power was shut off. As it turns out, they had to wait upward of two hours, as representatives from the MTA and Con Ed argued over whose responsibility the fire was. Meanwhile, thick, black smoke was billowing from the substation and hanging low over the neighborhood. Across the street, P.S. 20?which was in summer session at the time?was evacuated.

"We had all these firemen here, and they had to stand around all day and breathe this smoke?as well as the cops and everyone in the neighborhood," Patterson said. When MTA workers finally shut off the power, the foam truck showed up and the firemen went to work.

Then there was an explosion. The electrical disruptions and the fire blew out the manhole cover on Essex St., as well as manhole covers along Ave. A. Neighbors report that the Essex St. manhole explosion was accompanied by great clouds of white smoke.

This particular substation supplies electrical power for the D, B, F, J and M trains and is an integral part of the transit system's electrical infrastructure. Service on the F train was stopped and riders were evacuated from the trains.

It turns out that the fire had started in the transformers that were housed in the building's sub-basement. The transformers?which belonged to Con Ed, though they were housed in an MTA building?had been installed in the early 40s, and the electrical cables under the street had been installed a decade before that. As a result, it is very likely that the transformers contained PCBs, and that the cables were insulated with asbestos. And if that was indeed the case, then it's very likely that the smoke that billowed from the building was a toxic mix that filled the air of the neighborhood for much of the day. Though any long-term effects of PCB exposure are generally not noticed for several years, many residents reported waking up the next morning suffering from headaches, nausea, irritated nasal passages and a persistent metallic taste in their mouths.

In the weeks that followed the fire, residents and businesses in the area were left with intermittent power, or no power at all. Many stores and restaurants lost thousands of dollars' worth of equipment and merchandise. Refrigeration systems in many of the area restaurants burned out completely.

The battle began to brew over who should be held responsible. The MTA claims?to this day?that while it was their building, it was Con Ed's transformers that caused the fire. At the same time, Con Ed officials?also to this day?maintain that it was an MTA facility, and thus the MTA's responsibility.

On July 9, 10 and 11 of last year, according to Marcia Lemmon, who sits on Community Board 3 as well as on the board's Public Safety Committee, a van showed up outside the substation. A group of day workers wearing paper suits (hardly the protective gear you'd expect) got out and undertook the cleanup job. The company name painted on the side of the truck was not listed in the phone book, and the given phone number had been disconnected.

According to Patterson, who captured the whole scene on videotape, the workers dragged out several garbage bags of presumably toxic refuse, threw them in the back of the van, climbed inside and drove away. It was unclear who had hired them, or where they were disposing of the bags.

A few days later, Con Ed workers showed up wearing moon suits to finish the cleanup and remove the old transformers.

And though the huge dumpster parked outside of the substation was clearly marked with "Hazardous Waste" and "Asbestos" warnings, Lemmon contacted the EPA and discovered that neither Con Ed nor the MTA had reported the incident.

Though power was eventually restored (to a certain degree), and the site eventually cleaned up, it wasn't before local businesses lost thousands of dollars in stock and equipment. Since then, Lemmon has been leading the fight to get Con Ed to admit to their liability, come clean about any PCBs or asbestos that were dumped in the air and pay some restitution to the local residents and businesspeople who suffered because of it. To date, she has sent more than 150 e-mails and had meetings with several ranking officials.

Everything that has happened at that site has been exhaustively documented in photographs, videotapes and eyewitness accounts.

Last week, however, when I contacted Patricia Richardi at Con Ed to ask her what had happened and what was being done, she replied simply, "You should direct most of your questions to the Transit Authority, since the substation belongs to that agency."

I then contacted the MTA, and was told quite the opposite.

In neither case were any of my specific questions concerning the events and aftermath of July 7 answered.

Lemmon doesn't find that too surprising, given her own experience. "They all know it's happening," she said. And to prove it, she shared with me dozens of her e-mails, to and from not only Richardi, but also Ed Radtke, Eugene McGrath, Steve Bram and several other high-ranking Con Ed officials.

Last winter, a few restitution payments were made?up to $100 for residents (many of whom lost air conditioners and refrigerators as a result of power surges) and up to $2000 for businesses. Lemmon herself received a check for $49.21, to cover the food that spoiled in her refrigerator. She received nothing for the computer or air conditioner she lost.

Numerous officials, she told me, never followed through on their promises to contact the individuals affected by last summer's events?and to make greater restitution payments. Con Ed representatives told her that they would increase the payments if their engineers found that power surges or old wiring in the street had caused the trouble.

"This was never done," she said, "despite the fact that Con Ed had to recable Ludlow and other area streets because the electrical transmission wires contained there were from the 1930s... My position all along is that Con Ed lied from the start and will still lie by calling it a 'misunderstanding.'" Even with the payments, Con Ed maintains that it was the MTA's fault.

Con Ed, Ms. Lemmon argues, never intended to acknowledge the scope of the problem on the Lower East Side. She, and others, believe that this might well have something to do?at least in part?with the fact that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (who represents the area) accepted campaign money from the Con Ed employee PAC, and has therefore been silent on the issue. They also might want to deny the problem, Lemmon believes, "because it would make them look even worse, what with another blackout in a mostly Latino area of Manhattan."

While these battles continue between the neighborhood and Con Ed, and between Con Ed and the MTA (there are rumors of a pending lawsuit between the two giants over the incident, but I could find no hard evidence of this), there's still that big, year-old hole and all those exposed cables on Essex St., just asking for trouble.

"What happens is," Patterson told me, and other neighbors confirmed, "people come here at night to go to the Club Chaos, and they park down here... People back into [the hole], and they cut all the wires, and there's a big explosion." It's happened three times so far, most recently just two weeks ago. According to an unnamed Emergency Services officer, if you cut all four cables, a fuse goes off, a transformer in the substation takes over and the cut cables pose no danger (though it sometimes takes a while for a Con Ed repair truck to show up, fix the cables and leave them out in the street again).

"Here's what I see as being dangerous, though," Patterson continued. "Let's say a person backs into there, cuts three wires and pinches one. This is not science fiction?you're going to electrocute somebody."

It's not wild speculation on his part. In the mid-90s, a former neighborhood resident, Linda Hunsaker, told me that a similar situation existed on Chrystie St. Open manhole, wires sticking out, a few barricades thrown up around it. One night a homeless man fell into the hole and was indeed electrocuted.

"There is no reason to have it like that for a year. It's insanity. If you did that as an individual, they'd throw the book at you. If it's Con Ed, nobody cares," Patterson said.

As it stands now, the people in the neighborhood are still reporting not only fluctuating electricity, but, as we all know, Con Ed bills that have just risen 40 percent or more.