Jolted, then Jilted

BARNSTABLE -- Pretty much everything you need to know about Kate Armstrong is contained in the following sentence.

As a postal worker, she gets up early most mornings in the Christmas season and answers every one of the letters local kids mailed off to the North Pole, signing them all, in perfect calligraphy, "Love, Santa."

There are other things as well. She regularly bakes brownies for customers at the Cotuit Post Office. She has raised two successful daughters. She takes tremendous pride in her house on Oak Street.

In other words, she's the kind of woman you wouldn't expect to find at the center of a battle between two business titans. Yet, that's exactly where she is.

On one side is David Mugar, philanthropist and local feather-ruffler, best known for his longtime sponsorship of Boston's July Fourth festivities. On the other is Thomas J. May, chief executive of NStar.

The saga began a couple of years ago, when Armstrong felt a jolt as she turned the water off in her outdoor shower. "Nothing that would blow you off your feet," she said recently, "but a shock."

She called her electrician. The electrician called NStar. The power was shut off to the house, yet the pipes still registered high levels of electricity. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out it probably had something to do with NStar's recent expansion of a substation up the street.

NStar workers told Armstrong to put down a rubber mat. That accomplished nothing. Then they installed grounding rods on her property. The shocks continued and spread to other spigots.

NStar installed new wiring around the neighborhood, but to no avail. Then, NStar asked to dig up Armstrong's yard and install a copper blanket around her foundation.

Enter Mugar. He knew Armstrong from his visits to the small post office, and when he heard of her problem he asked realtor Bob Kinlin how it would affect the value of her property. The answer wasn't good.

"It would impact the value tremendously," Kinlin told me, adding that any reputable agent would feel obliged to reveal the problem to potential buyers, even if it is contained.

So Mugar offered a proposal. "I want NStar to buy Kate's house," he said, walking around her yard one day last week. "We're told it's basically worthless."

He asked NStar officials to pay Armstrong $450,000 for her property, $100,000 for lawyers, and $100,000 for a health plan to address any long-term effects of the current .

NStar has adamantly refused. On the phone this week, NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen described the electrical currents as an "inconvenience, not a public safety issue." And she said that if NStar workers were allowed inside to install a $1 section of plastic pipe, it might fix the problem.

Just like the mat, the grounding rods, and the wiring fixed the problem?

"Spending ratepayer money to buy the house, we don't think that's the prudent thing to do," Allen said.

Wait a minute. Mugar's obviously shooting for the moon, but a homeowner gets shocked on her property, a respected realtor says her house has plummeted in value, and this is an inconvenience?

And prudent? The last proxy statement listed Tom May's salary and bonus for 2005 as $2.2 million, plus another $7 million in deferred stock, plus options of $548,000. That's a lot of prudence.

Last time May made headlines, dogs were being electrocuted on city streets, and before that NStar was threatening to shut off lights at a homeless shelter. I have no doubt that May is the great guy that half the world says he is, I've just been unable to confirm it. He declined my request for an interview.

Meantime, Mugar is threatening to hire Armstrong the best lawyers and investigators his money can buy. Right now, it's a standoff.

So herein a proposal: Why doesn't Tom May personally buy the house for $400,000? By my calculation, that's about two week's income, which may be the real shock here.

By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist January 12, 2007
He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com.

Mike Holt's Comments to the News article: I get involved in Stray Voltage cases all of the time and when it's the utility fault, my experience is that electric utilities in rural areas understand this issue and they are more than willing to work with the customer to solve the problem (typically all they need to do is fix the failure of their neutral or install a primary to neutral blocker).

However, my experience with larger Utilities like Consolidated Edison in New York City, Florida Power Corporation and Florida Power and Light in Florida just blow off the customer by telling them that it’s the customer’s problem. Often some new 'bright' engineer from college, who is probably not an electrical engineer and who has no clue what the issue is, will suggest that the customer install some special grounding system to 'remove' the problem...

I hope one day the legal community will help some of these electric utilities see that it's really cost effective for them to solve the problem (if they are causing it). I'm sorry if I come across a little strong on this topic, but I have first hand knowledge how some utilities respond to stray voltage issues that they create.

In 2006, I resigned from the Jodie Lane Stray Voltage Foundation created by ConEd because of the death of Jodie Lane in 2004 (http://www.thevillager.com/villager_83/conedsettles11thst.html, http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/42705, http://www.mikeholt.com/mojonewsarchive/Safety-HTML/HTML/Utility-Will-Pay-Seven-Million-in-Electrocution-of-Woman~20041209.php) because ConEd would not remove dangerous stray voltage in a home in Westchester, NY. Imagine, I’m on a stray voltage foundation because of a death, I’m involved in a stray voltage case caused by ConEd and I can’t get ConEd to fix the problem. I just could not take it any longer… so I just resigned.

It’s sad that after one hundred years of electrical distribution in the USA, we have individuals (not to mention animals) getting shocked in their homes, and some utilities have no clue how to identify where the stray voltage originates from and/or how to solve the problems they cause. When they do know they cause the problem, I think they refuse to fix it because their legal department prevents them from admitting that they are responsible and/or the “bean counters” don’t think it’s cost effective. 

If would like more information about stray voltage, visit: http://www.mikeholt.com/technical.php?id=strayvoltage/technicalstrayvoltagenewslettersmenu