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Jersey City Mayor Wants Substations Moved In Wake Of Sandy Outages

JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBSNewYork) - Parts of Jersey City are still without power over a week after superstorm Sandy struck and the mayor wants to do something to help prevent future outages.

WCBS 880's Levon Putney On The Story

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A big problem with getting power back on in Jersey City, according to Mayor Jerramiah Healy, was with flooded out substations in low lying areas like in the Marion section, the one west of Journal Square, and 63rd Street.

So, he has a suggestion for what PSE&G should look into.

"Moving them to higher ground... It might be able to avoid some of these problems, but I'm sure the PSE&G folks are working on that," Healy told WCBS 880 reporter Levon Putney.

He says 96 percent of Jersey City has power restored, leaving about 5,300 homes and businesses still in the dark.

"Mostly down the south end of the city," he said.

That includes parts of Greenville, Port Libertie, and Society Hill.

"People who were restored, then lost power again. So, it's been a long, tedious and frustrating process... for our citizens," he said.

LINK: Official Town-By-Town Restoration Plan

That's down towards Bayonne, which had the same outage issues.

Overall, Healy said residents have been relatively patient while cops and firefighters have been clocking a lot of overtime to keep folks safe.

Healy added he'll worry about the budget later.

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