Pay to play?

Kickback charges delay ConEd line

The arrest of 11 employees of Consolidated Edison Co. of New York Inc. on kickback charges put a quick stop last month to the start of construction in Yonkers on the utility’s underground power line to upper Manhattan.

“That’s why this thing is in limbo,” ConEd spokesman Chris Olert said last week.

The utility is trying to find a project contractor to replace one who allegedly paid out more than $1 million in kickbacks since 2004 in exchange for supervisors’ approval of payments for work not done on gas and electrical line projects New York City and Westchester County. The alleged kickbacks were made by the construction company’s president and co-owner, who cooperated with federal investigators and was not named by officials announcing the arrests.

A ConEd source said the alleged contractor in the case is Felix Associates L.L.C. of the Bronx.

Con Ed’s Olert said Felix was contractor for the southern segment of the project in Yonkers, where the 345-kilovolt, 9.5-mile-long line will be laid under Riverdale Avenue into the Bronx. The line’s approximately 5-mile route through Yonkers will pass through business districts along some of the city’s main thoroughfares, including Tuckahoe Road, Saw Mill River Road, Old Nepperhan Avenue, Nepperhan Avenue and Prospect Street.

The estimated $215-million project, called the M29 transmission line, will begin at ConEd’s Sprain Brook substation off Tuckahoe Road and end at a new substation in the Inwood section of Manhattan. A tunnel will carry the line beneath the Harlem River.

Olert last week said a separate contractor on the northern or Tuckahoe Road end of the project in Yonkers should start work in about two weeks. Work on the southern segment should start in three weeks to a month, he said.

The spokesman said ConEd has not yet found a substitute contractor for that work. “We’re trying to expedite it,” he said.

If convicted, the defendants in the kickback case each face a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

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