CHARGED: Hal and Millie Mendelson say an electric substation zaps their home.
Stray electricity has turned a Westchester County home into a house of horrors.
Pound Ridge residents Hal and Millie Mendelson say electric currents all around their property are jolting them out of their multimillion-dollar house.
They blame a faulty electric substation next door for shocking them when they turn on faucets or step outside.
“There’s times I go to my sink and there’s a little water on the rim,” Millie Mendelson said. “I might put my arm down on it — whoa!”
“I don’t feel comfortable taking a shower,” she said, adding that she wears only rubber-soled shoes.
In a lawsuit filed last week, the Mendelsons say NYSEG, the local utility, should reimburse them the $2.3 million value of their home of 25 years, which they are about to abandon.
NYSEG says the couple’s claims “are false” and insists there’s no stray voltage at all.
But records show NYSEG has known of the problem for two decades and has tried to fix it by installing voltage blockers near the Mendelsons’ home.
Hal Mendelson, a 76-year-old doctor, forbids visits by anyone with a pacemaker. “The lights go on and off in the house all the time. Appliances burn out. My wife and I both have neurological issues,” he said.
“Have you ever touched a battery and felt a little tingling?” asked Millie Mendelson, 65. “It’s like that but only worse. It’s a zap!”
The Mendelsons no longer own any pets.
“Dogs would run away. Cats would run away,” said Millie.
The couple say they euthanized a favorite dog, an English setter named Glory Be, because the voltage made her chew the skin off her legs.
“She was the most wonderful dog, and you would cry when you saw her legs,” Millie said.
“She was chewing them until they bled. . . . They were like raw meat. They were horrible.”
Hal says the power substation, which was there when they moved into the house in 1987, wasn’t a problem at first — but by 1991 enough voltage was leaking to prod the couple to file their first suit against the company.
NYSEG settled that case partly by installing isolators meant to soak up stray volts. They worked for a while, the Mendelsons say.
But over the last few years, the problem has gotten worse again.
A consultant for the Mendelsons blames the voltage on “inadequate design, construction or maintenance” of NYSEG’s equipment.
After the electrocution of East Village resident Jodie Lane on a charged-up Con Ed box in 2004, the state Public Service Commission required utilities to regularly seek out and repair stray voltage hot spots.
But the rules aren’t strict for upstate utilities. While Con Ed scanned city streets for stray voltage 12 times last year, NYSEG checked its streets just once.
Millie fears the problem will spread through the neighborhood.
“NYSEG has to do something, or somebody is going to die,” she said.
Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton