One criticism behind hurricane Sandy is that New Jersey's utility infrastructure, including the poles that carry power across the state, are not the best of quality. Some suggest that weakness may have been a contributing factor to the many electric outages during the storm.

Bruce Bennett, Getty Images
Bruce Bennett, Getty Images
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Assemblyman John McKeon says many out-of-state utility workers who came here after the storm complained about the quality of the wood used in the transmission poles around New Jersey. McKeon is sponsoring a bill to require the highest-quality of wood in those poles to reduce the number that fail during hard weather.

McKeon says this is just another one of the many hard lessons that we may have learned from this big storm.

He says, "We can go in a lot of different directions, and the next time we are faced with this kind of a weather event, we can fare much, much better."

McKeon's proposed legislation would also require the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to undertake a six-month study of the strength and quality of the poles and how they are anchored. Also, whether metal poles would be more practical.

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