WAWARSING – Only a week after the year's worst snowstorms cut power to hundreds of thousands of customers, most of the snow and ice has already melted away — but it's possible that residents of the regions hit hardest by the storms' fury will be feeling the weather's impact for some time to come.

According to John Maserjian, Central Hudson's director of media relations, the costs to the utility company throughout the storm can't be figured out just yet — but it's likely that they've exceeded the company's budgeted storm fund of roughly $5 million.

"We are looking at those costs now," said Maserjian last Friday, just as almost all of the 150,000 customers who lost power had gotten service restored. The reason that the costs aren't known yet, however, goes to show how much manpower was mobilized during the storms.

"During the storm, much of our accounting staff was in the field providing support services, so we were unable to pull together a full tally," added Maserjian.

He was able to say that the ice storm from December 2008, the last time there was widespread loss of power throughout Central Hudson's service area, cost the company about $8.5 million. Maserjian also described the process for covering the costs of such times when expenses go above or below what's been budgeted.

"Any costs in excess of our storm budget will be deferred, put into a deferred account, to be recovered at some point in the future," he said. "Any adjustments to the utility rates would be through a formal rate process."

The current rate adjustment that's being negotiated is to cover the costs of the December 2008 storm, while an adjustment to cover this latest round of weather disaster will come at a later time.

While many customers have praised Central Hudson's response and work during the storm, including Wawarsing Town Supervisor Lenny Distel at last Thursday's town council meeting, others have been critical of the company's maintenance of infrastructure. Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, as chair of the assembly's Energy Committee, has called a hearing in Albany to discuss the situation. Maserjian offered a response to the allegations of ill-preparation for the storms.

"We think that we did a good job in restoring service in this storm, considering its unprecedented nature," he said. "We also feel like we do a good job in preparing our system for storms like this. We invest tens of millions of dollars each year in our distribution structure, we've nearly doubled the amounts that we invest in tree-trimming in the last several years, and that's all made a positive impact on the reliability of the electric system. In fact, we feel that if those investments had not been made, the impact of the storm would have been much worse.

"But this storm broke all the rules," he said. "We've never seen anything like this."

Maserjian offered some numbers gathered by the company thus far: 200,000 pounds of dry ice were distributed, as well as 68,000 bottles of water. During that week, the call center received 342,000 calls, while normally the company receives only 15,000. With a staff of 100 representatives working on 24-hour shifts, 80 percent of the calls were handled by the automated system, while they were able to speak to 60,000 people directly throughout the week. In addition, there were 75 broken utility poles, 200 mutual aid crews assisting Central Hudson, and 100 tree-trimming crews. In total, Maserjian said that there was a field force of about 1,000 people working for several days.

As for the municipal cost of the storm, numbers are still being crunched. Ulster County Executive Mike Hein is urging New York State Governor David Paterson to seek a federal disaster declaration.

"Last week's storms placed intense pressures on already strained town and county budgets," said Hein in a press release. "There were significant costs, economic impacts and damages associated with these events and we are doing everything possible to help offset those losses. I hope that state and federal officials heed our request for assistance."

The declaration would reimburse municipalities for much of their expenses, including "overtime, equipment usage, materials and damage to public infrastructure," according to the press release.

Wawarsing Highway Superintendent Tony Paes estimated that the department logged nearly 40 hours of overtime during the storms, though he didn't have the exact number at his fingertips. He also noted that the figures published last week in the Shawangunk Journal's coverage of the storm were premature, and would likely be even higher than the $53,000 that were reported. However, the department, interestingly, didn't receive any phone calls of complaint throughout the storm, a testament to their efforts.

"We had no calls; that's the biggest thing," said Paes. "We had no people complaining. I expected to see a lot of people on the phone, but people were very nice. They kind of understood."

In the Village of Ellenville, the police force worked around the clock to ensure that people remained safe. Chief Phil Mattracion offered an estimate of about 50 hours of overtime logged in the police department, with two dispatchers working the desk to handle the deluge of assistance calls they received during the storms' most intense moments. During one hour and a half stretch, the department fielded 42 calls.

"We had wires down, trees down, a couple of accidents — mostly they ran the gamut. Power's out, wires down, wires on fire, trees on cars…also we had a cardiac arrest that we did CPR on the gentleman…and then we had a sex abuse claim in the heat of things," said Chief Mattracion.

During the first bout of storms, which occurred on Tuesday, February 23, there were two burglary attempts in the village, at the European Deli and at the Family Dollar, the latter of the two ending up successful for the burglars. The department is currently pursuing leads and the chief expects an arrest shortly.

After the first round of storms, however, Chief Mattracion said that the department was able to organize and tackle the second round of precipitation to rout any other break-in attempts while the village's power was out for several days.

"We had cars on the road, and circled businesses constantly to prevent any burglaries or looting," he said.

"These are the benefits of a village, and also of having a police department right here, where you can talk to people. We're going to be coming to make sure that you're okay."