This PSEG project aims to enhance reliability in the Five Towns

PSEG Long Island is installing 3,000 feet of new underground transmission will remove 500 feet of overhead wire and replace and install transmission and distribution poles around Hewlett as part of a system-wide $302 million project that is expected to be completed in February.

Work got underway in September for the project that PSEG said should improve the sustainability and efficiency of the system’s infrastructure, even in severe weather conditions. The utility began publicizing what it’s calling a reliability project on Sept. 1 and work began that month.

“We are committed to making every effort to ensure our grid is resilient during storms,” Jeremy Walsh, PSEG communications senior generalist wrote in an email.

Daytime work has been planned for sites near the intersection of West Broadway and Serena Road, and under the Long Island Rail Road tracks near Railroad Avenue. Overnight projects include work on West Broadway between Nassau Street and near the Broadway intersection, on Railroad Avenue spanning to Franklin Avenue, on Station Plaza between Franklin Avenue and New Street, on Hewlett Plaza between New Street and West Broadway and on West Broadway between Hewlett Plaza and Broadway.

PSEG said that they do not anticipate planned power outages throughout this project and they anticipate minimal traffic and parking disruptions. However, the impacts of the work were being felt by residents and businesses.

Michelle Quimosing-Cruz, director of Physical Therapy at Progress in Motion Physical Therapy on West Broadway in Hewlett, said she sometimes sees large unlabeled trucks, potentially related to the work, along West Broadway and Serena Road, which is the only access point to the parking lot of her business.

“On occasion when they’re here, some of our patients find it hard to get around, so that they can get to our parking lot,” Quimosing-Cruz said.

She said the traffic, however, is something they’re used to in the area.

“In a sense it hasn’t really been that bad,” Quimosing-Cruz said. “The daughter of one of my new patients brought in some paper work and said she was just five minutes away, but because of usual traffic here, it took her longer.”

Quimosing-Cruz understands the interruption and is not upset about the work.

“It’s definitely an impact, because they’re blocking our entrance to the parking lot, but if it’s a necessary repair, of course, we can’t afford them not doing it,” she said.

Kevin Ra, office assistant at NYU Langone Medical Associates Hewlett works in the same West Broadway building, but has not seen a major impact on traffic from the project.

“I get here around 9 o’clock in the morning and we don’t really experience much traffic,” Ra said. “I know certain days when they have trucks out, it’s a little more, but I can only assume that if there are other disturbances down the line, that would amplify it, but it really hasn’t been too much.”

Hewlett-Woodmere Business Association President David Freidman said that the project has not caused a major change, but future development in the Five Towns may.

“If they continue to add more of these projects the traffic will come to a complete stand still,” Friedman said. “This project seems to be much more limited.”

Elisa Bachrow Hinken, an Inwood resident, was unaware of the specific project, but remains concerned about the navigability of the Five Towns.

“The bottom line is we are a very vulnerable community, traffic-wise,” she wrote in a Facebook post.