Con Ed blames salt spread after thousands lose power in Brooklyn

Thousands of Brooklynites have lost power in recent days because of last week’s snow, and the lingering cold has made it harder for Con Edison to get the lights back on.

As of Monday afternoon, Con Ed reported around 2,000 of its Brooklyn customers were without power, concentrated in the neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Park Slope and Gowanus. Over the weekend, nearly 300 customers in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood also reported a prolonged outage.

New York’s buried powerlines were good news during last week’s massive storm. The lights pretty much stayed on for New Yorkers as other parts of the country dealt with widespread outages caused by falling trees taking out above-ground lines.

But the 116 million pounds of salt that the city’s sanitation department said it has dumped on city streets and sidewalks to combat the snow is taking its toll on the lines.

The salt mixed with water seeps underground where Con Ed’s maze of cables runs, causing localized service interruptions, the utility company said. And the pile-up of iced-over snow is making it harder for crews to access the lines to make necessary fixes.

“These conditions are why portions of certain neighborhoods are experiencing outages, and why restorations have taken longer than anticipated,” Con Ed spokesperson Jamie McShane said. “Our crews will remain on site and continue repairs until every customer is restored.”

Salt water is highly corrosive and is also an excellent conductor of electricity. The result is rust, electrical shorts and equipment failure. Sodium chloride rapidly damages metal and leaves a residue that continues to attract moisture and damages insulation and the protective coating around cables. In this case, the electricity distribution cables, which bring power to each building or structure, have been affected.

More than a week after the snowfall, streets and sidewalks still have a foot or more of snow that has trapped cars parked along roads, forcing owners to dig out their cars.

In many cases, vehicles remain buried in snow. The remaining piles of snow and trapped cars have prevented access to Con Ed’s manholes, making it difficult to repair damaged cables and get power back to residents.

“We must dig out dense, frozen layers of snow and ice just to access the system,” McShane said.

Normally, these outages would be repaired much more quickly, McShane said, but some Brooklyn residents have been without power for more than 24 hours.

Bed-Stuy resident Simon Moss told Gothamist it took more than 24 hours to restore service to various buildings in his vicinity.

“On both my block and several around, we’ve had to go door to door to make sure our elderly have somewhere to stay,” Moss said. “Our block had to mobilize to get elders looked after.”

Local businesses in the area were unable to operate over the weekend as a result of outages, Moss said.

Con Ed has been working with the New York City Emergency Management to dig out these locations and, in some cases, tow cars to help repair crews gain access. The emergency management department has also deployed warming buses to areas affected by the power outages.

Over the weekend, crews restored service to much of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. McShane said work to restore power in other areas is ongoing. The latest outage data is available on the company’s online map.

“We’re doing our best to push Con Edison to get the power back on,” New York City Councilmember Chi Ossé said.

Last month, the Public Service Commission unanimously approved a highly opposed rate hike for both gas and electric customers of Con Ed over the next three years, beginning with Jan. 2026 bills.

City Councilmember Shahana Hanif sent a letter Sunday calling on Con Ed to automatically suspend billing and issue full credits for the outage.

“This outage comes amid significant and widely reported increases in utility bills,” Hanif wrote to Con Ed. “Constituents are being asked to pay more while experiencing extended service failures, an untenable situation that demands immediate corrective action.