Dozens Of Long Island Homeowners Demanding Answers After Power Repeatedly Goes Out

WANTAGH, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Recurring power problems in a Long Island neighborhood have dozens of homeowners upset and demanding a solution.

CBS2's Jennifer McLogan reported Wantagh homeowners claim electricity in a two-square block area is repeatedly going out, while their bills are going up.

"Not good at all," said resident Dennis Menichino. "They want to raise the price, but don't give you service."

Menichino paid $3,000 for backup generators as he has dealt with 14 outages this year.

Menichino and 75 neighbors on the block complain only one side of the street has electricity, when their side goes out.

They claim PSEG Long Island crews are not coming out to deal with the situation.

"Terrible," said 87-year-old Josephine Dugan. "In fact, across the street from us, they had power, so I had to go stay over there."

Homeowner Lori Leistman said she has documented the outages and informed PSEG Long Island and the Public Service Commission.

"Mother's Day, a prime example. We were having company, power goes out four hours from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., so there went dinner," Leistman said.

PSEG Long Island said it is listening and reminded ratepayers that it inherited a whole host of problems as they are working steadily to replace power poles, using FEMA funds.

"We need to go in and do an extensive amount of tree-trimming to ensure consistent reliability of power, and, in fact, are starting tree-trimming work there as early as tomorrow," said PSEG Long Island spokesman Jeffrey Weir.

Homeowners, though, have their doubts.

"PSEG promises us once they trim the trees all our problems will go away," Leistman said. "Not one of these 75 houses believes that."

Carmine Turchi said, "We're not happy with their service and the bills seem to be going up. We don't mind paying if we get what we're paying for."

PSEG Long Island pledges that if tree-trimming does not solve the problems in Wantagh, it will investigate the grid, transformers and wires in the neighborhood.

This comes as PSEG Long Island power supply charges are going up an average of $10 a month, but the utility points out overall bills are still lower than they've been in the past two years.