Marrowstone Island residents and commuters should plan around the Jefferson County Public Utility District’s planned power outage of 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 15. Those who have made the crossing between Indian Island and Marrowstone Island over state Route 116 in the week leading up to May 15 are likely to have noticed the preliminary work being done by PUD workers on the three utility poles lining the road near the bridge, which has occasionally reduced traffic to a single lane. PUD Engineering Supervisor Jimmy Scarborough explained the lines are slated to be shifted to temporary new poles on the north side of the road, to make room for the Washington State Department of Transportation crews when work on the bridge commences later this summer, likely in June. Scarborough added that the planned outage in electrical service will also allow the PUD to “make the best of a bad situation” by addressing a number of related issues. “We’ll be stringing in new lines wherever there’s been breaks in the line,” Scarborough said. “The lines tend to provide more reliable service when they haven’t been spliced together.” Scarborough likewise looks forward to seeing his crew of four workers trimming “trouble areas” of trees adjacent to certain lines, to avoid the trees bringing the lines down and requiring those lines to be spliced together again. “They’re pretty well orchestrated,” Scarborough said. “They’ve been prepping really hard, and they’re ready to go.” PUD Communications Manager Will O’Donnell explained that Marrowstone Island residents received a series of communiques prior to this planned outage, including notice in the PUD newsletter, multiple rounds of automatic phone calls and even postcards. “A lot of folks out here have their own generators, and CenturyLink is offering backup,” O’Donnell said. “And both Fort Flagler and WSDOT are well aware of this. A one-day outage is a lot longer than we’d like, but our crews are much safer when we can completely de-energize those lines.”