MASSENA -- Massena Town Supervisor Joe Gray is asking all four members of the state Legislature who represent St. Lawrence County to look into why incidents like the widespread telephone outage last week seem to occur about once a year.

Gray's letter, sent to Sens. Joe Griffo and Patti Ritchie and Assembly Members Addie Russell and Ken Blankenbush, says that the July 13 outage of thousands of telephone lines across the North Country, costs businesses and household thousands of dollars and threatened the effectiveness of emergency services.

The text of Gray's letter follows:

Once again yesterday thousands of homes and businesses, including hospitals, rescue squads and fire and police departments, were without telephone service through no fault of their own. According to media reports, the outage occurred when a Verizon fiber optic cable was either cut by someone digging or knocked out by a thunderstorm.

Five or six hours later service was restored to some areas, most likely costing businesses tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and efficiency not to mention the threat to human health and life due to the interruption of communication for emergency services.

It is time for New York State and its Public Service Commission to put an end to this situation which seems to arise at least once a year. And every time we lose phone service, we hear about the lack of redundancy in the system and that Verizon officials are working feverishly to correct the problem so future outages are unlikely.

Apparently that is not true because the problem is never corrected.

Consider this letter as a formal request for the New York State Senate to convene hearings on this perennial threat to public safety and damage to our local economy. It is time to hold the Public Service Commission accountable for its continued failure to assure the residents of the North Country and other rural areas of New York have uninterrupted telephone service.

Verizon should also be held accountable for their blatant refusal to spend the money necessary to build redundancy into their systems. This multi-billion dollar utility should be called before the Senate to explain their continued failure to protect our homes and businesses.

I find it hard to believe this would be tolerated on Long Island, or in Manhattan, Syracuse, Buffalo or any of the urban areas of our state, so why should those of us who choose to live in rural communities not be afforded the same level of service?

I look forward to your response. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of service in your pursuit of justice and fairness in the delivery of telecommunications services to rural communities like Massena.

Joseph D. Gray, Supervisor

Town of Massena