LIPA aims to make power repairs permanent

The Long Island Power Authority, which days ago released all of the more than 3,500 outside repair crews in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene, is working to make permanent the thousands of repair jobs that restored power last week to more than 500,000 impacted customers.

LIPA has yet to release an estimated cost for the restoration effort, expected to be among its most expensive. It could be available next week, an official said.

Around 950 on-Island workers from National Grid and other local contractors are doing the remaining work in 16-hour shifts, LIPA chief Michael Hervey said. Next week, he said, crews will begin a "post-restoration survey" to determine how much more work is needed to put the system back to its pre-storm condition.

For that reason, Hervey said, it's too early to release the estimated cost of the storm, which could be among the most expensive in Long Island history given the total workforce of more than 7,500 who helped restore power.

Hurricane Earl, which resulted in no outages, cost Long Islanders $34 million, primarily to pay, house and feed 1,600 off-Island contractors called in advance of the storm. Last year's nor'easter, which knocked out power to 263,000, cost $68 million, although 75 percent of it was reimbursed by federal disaster relief funds.

More than 3,500 outside crews worked on Long Island for a week in response to Tropical Storm Irene. The Island is expected to be eligible for federal funds.

Hervey said it will take "at least a few weeks" to complete follow-up work on Irene. Already, he said, some 3,000 follow-up repair jobs are being worked on by local crews, and he expects the number of needed repairs to increase when survey work is finished next week.