The power outages caused by Hurricane Sandy should be substantially resolved by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the governor announced Thursday The White House is temporarily relieving Connecticut the cost burden associated with federal resources allocated to aid in the storm cleanup and recovery.
Berlin-based electric utility Connecticut Light & Power announced Thursday morning it would be substantially complete with its restoration efforts by Monday or Tuesday, said spokesman Mitch Gross.
New Haven-based electric utility United Illuminating announced Thursday morning it would have power restored to 95 percent of its customers by Monday.
The two utilities have dealt with more than 850,000 outages since Sandy first started impacting Connecticut on Sunday. Because of the slow-moving nature of the storm, outages still were occurring as late as Tuesday evening.
CL&P and UI restored power to nearly 150,000 businesses and homes from Wednesday morning to Thursday morning.
They had 318,568 outages combined as of 5:30 p.m. Thursday, with the most impacted area remaining along the shoreline.
CL&P had roughly 360,000 ratepayers without power on Wednesday morning but whittled that down to 221,371 as of 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Since the outages began on Sunday, CL&P restored power to roughly 500,000 customers, and the utility has 5,000 workers responding to the damage from Hurricane Sandy.
“We still have many large areas of outages,” Gross said.
UI had 140,000 ratepayers without power on Wednesday morning but managed to reduce that to 97,197 as of 5:30 p.m. Thursday. UI’s territory is along the shoreline, which has been heavily impacted by flooding and high winds.
Along the shoreline, service on the Metro-North commuter rail line between Stamford and Grand Central Station in New York City resumed on a limited basis Thursday morning. Connecticut commuters can ride free on Thursday and Friday.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said President Obama has approved a 100 percent cost share for 10 days for emergency power restoration and emergency public transportation assistance for the four shoreline counties that have already received a major disaster declaration.
This additional assistance includes, Malloy said, reimbursement of the National Guard in state active duty to conduct emergency power restoration, emergency public transportation, or direct essential support to these missions.
The 100 percent cost share means that, for limited categories of work performed during the first 10 days of the disaster, state and local agencies will not have to pay the usual 25 percent cost share.
In the coming days, FEMA will be providing further guidance to the state on what activities are covered under this adjustment, Malloy said.
