Rhode Island Utility News: Improving Emergency Response Time

Here at Keough + Sweeney, our areas of concentration include divorce, child support, dui/oui, and utility law. As a follow up to our blog last month regarding the National Grid gas emergency that affected Newport and other parts of Aquidneck Island, we were interested to see that the Rhode Island Lieutenant Governor Daniel McKee is proposing new legislation that could improve the emergency response time of utility companies. This legislation is modeled after a Massachusetts law and the bill includes guidelines for performance standards for the utility companies to follow. Any fines paid for not meeting these standards would then be credited to ratepayers.

This will no doubt be a welcome thing for those who experienced this gas outage during one of the coldest weeks of the season here in New England. While it is never convenient to lose any utilities, it is especially hard during weather extremes. We will keep a close watch on this to see if the bill is passed.