Western Massachusetts Electric Company/NSTAR is closing its service center in Greenfield, MA in less than a year. The company decided that the site was being under-utilized. They will move employees and trucks to the service center in Hadley. About 25 employees, 10 of which are line workers, will then be reporting to the Hadley service center on Route 9. The company owns the facility in Greenfield and only leases in Hadley, but the company insists that it will still be cheaper to move. NSTAR feels that by consolidating work centers they still can maintain the same customer service they presently have. They are far from it! The employees in the Greenfield service center live in Franklin County and are within 5 to 20 minutes away from it. If this happens the employees will drive to Hadley to get their truck and material, and then drive back to Franklin County to respond to an emergency or outage. You are adding more than an hour just for the employee to drive to the Hadley Service Center and then back to Franklin County on a good day with little traffic.

We live in a county with hill towns that consists of Ashfield, Buckland, Colrain, Shelburne and Leyden to name a few. These types of towns can lose power even in a small storm. Why should these people wait longer for their power to get turned back on because the company feels the service center is “under-utilized” and to save them money? We have had major weather changes in the past few years such as the Ice Storm of 2008, Hurricane Irene, a Tornado, Microburst’s to name a few. These types of storms can devastate these types of towns. We are unique here in Franklin County. We’re very rural. There are a lot of miles of wire that may feed only one or two homes.  We are not a big city like Boston is. We have farms in our county.  Franklin County is home to the most dairy farms in MA. Many of them do have generators but if they won't run they are in trouble. Our cows need to be milked or they get sick. With the company closing Greenfield WMECo Service Center it puts the residents of Franklin County at risk. Public safety is being compromised immensely in many ways beginning with response times to hot wires down around residents including children! People trapped in cars, town water and sewer pumping stations, fire and police departments’ lengthy waits for crews to arrive from Hadley. Also local electricians will be waiting for crews for customer disconnects and reconnects.

   If a pole or associated equipment is damaged due to automobile accident or weather and you have an emergency situation with live wires down this move to Hadley would add a MINIMUM of one hour to the time of arrival. If you add in winter weather and traffic that time will greatly increase. The company says they have “people on call 24-7.We have supervisors and troubleshooters in Franklin County. Just like now, they are our first line of defense. If they can’t fix something, they call in a crew.” For one, Supervisors don't fix anything…they supervise, and TWO there is one trouble shooter on at a time. They serve all towns covered by both the Hadley and Greenfield Service Centers. They could be anywhere between Woronoco in Westfield to the Vermont line. This can be quite a distance especially in winter weather. They have a much smaller truck and are limited to what they can fix by themselves.

How about the millions of additional gallons of diesel being burned into the atmosphere going back and forth from Hadley to Franklin County?  

If this closure takes place, Franklin County will be the only county in western mass without a WMECO service center in it. Berkshire County has Pittsfield and Lee service centers. Hampden County has Springfield service center and Hampshire County has Hadley and Cummington service centers.  Franklin County will be left without one.