Residents press council to address recurring outages on Cambridge and Cooper avenues

A group of residents told Brookhaven Borough Council that repeated power outages on Cambridge Road and nearby streets have continued and need additional intervention. The matter matters to residents because frequent outages affect safety, daily life and local businesses; speakers described outages they called “ongoing” and asked the borough to pursue secondary feeds or pole work with the utility. Resident Charles Leslie told council the outages on Cambridge, Marshall and Cooper “are an ongoing issue” and said he would contact the utility to explore adding poles and a backfeed line. “We’re looking at maybe 4 poles to bring a line in from Edgemont Avenue … so we get power. It’s out all the time,” Leslie said. Council members said they had met with PECO representatives and engineers. A council member said PECO tracks outages and is performing a vegetation-management project to remove trees that the utility identified as causing recent outages; that project is expected to be completed in a few months. The council member cautioned that the borough’s sector is served on a lower-voltage feed and that wiring and equipment differences mean transferring load between sectors is more complex than installing a short secondary feed. “PECO does have a project to upgrade their entire system to one unified voltage … but that’s a long-term project. For right now, trimming trees” is the near-term mitigation, a council member said. No formal municipal funding or repair motion was recorded. Council members instructed staff to continue coordination with PECO and to keep residents informed about scheduled vegetation work and any follow-up meetings with the utility.