February 19, 2025
Thank you to those of you who were able to join members of our Reliability team at the most recent community meeting (February 12, 2025) to talk about power service in your area. It was great to see so many residents out and have the opportunity to hear from you again since our last meeting this past summer. For those who weren’t able to attend, we wanted to make sure you received an update on the work we’re doing in your community.
While reliability has improved for the larger area, we know there have been too many outages recently in Merigomish. We apologize for this poor experience, and we want to assure you we remain committed to continuing the important work we’ve shared with the community to improve your service. Here’s a look at some of the work that has been happening and the progress we’ve made.
| 2024–25 Commitments | Status of our Commitments |
2024: Invest a minimum of $350,000 for vegetation management, including hazard tree identification and mitigation 2025: Invest a minimum of an additional $350,000 to perform vegetation management along 35 km of power lines | 2024: We completed 9 km of vegetation management, including 4 km of widening in cross-country sections and removal of nearly 500 hazard trees ($302,000 investment) 2025: We are on-target, widening 2.2 km of cross-country sections with another 4.5 km assigned; continuing feeder sweep to identify hazard trees for removal |
| Complete nine priority items identified during the 2023 distribution line inspection | On-target: Completed eight of the nine priority items (e.g., pole and transformer replacements) |
| Design a long-term solution for increased reliability for the community of Big Island | We are gathering information to determine the best option for the necessary upgrades and are committed to holding a community meeting to discuss our approach |
There is more work we need to do across the province and in your community. We will continue to build on the progress we’ve made as our teams continue to implement our Reliability Plan to strengthen the grid and make it more resilient to the impacts of climate change and severe weather. Our plan includes investing about $1.3 billion in our infrastructure across the province over the next five years—starting with approximately $250 million this year. The focus will be in three areas:
This work will be reflected in the Merigomish area with the following work:
We take our commitment to you, our customers, very seriously and are committed to making sure you have reliable service you can count on. We also want to make sure you have someone you know you can reach out to if you have reliability related questions. Ben Arsenault is the Reliability Advisor in your area and would be happy to speak with you about any concerns you may have at benjamin.arsenault@nspower.ca.
Please visit here for more information on our reliability work >
Sincerely,
Paul Dandurand | Director of Reliability, Nova Scotia Power
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