Last month, Connecticut’s premier utility company Connecticut Light & Power Co., suffered a massive storm in two senses of the word: A freak Nor’easter pummeled Connecticut and much of the Northeast, leaving 1.6 million power outages in its path. Meanwhile, residents found themselves without power for days, some even weeks, and were left no choice but to point the finger at the utility company responsible for the failed restorations.

Since the Oct. 29 snowstorm left widespread storm damage in its wake, CL&P as well as the utility company’s CEO Jeffrey D. Butler, in particular, have come under fire for failure to bring in enough private line and tree repair crews to efficiently restore power to affected homeowners. Even so, Butler defended CL&P’s response to both the October snowstorm and Tropical Storm Irene that hit the Northeast back in August.

However, amid this criticism and following the 13 days it took to completely restore power to all 831,000 CL&P customers, Butler announced today (Thursday) that he will be resigning from CL&P after two years, as reported by the Connecticut Mirror.

“We reluctantly accepted Jeff's resignation,” said Charles W. Shivery, president and CEO of Northeast Utilities, CL&P's parent company, as reported by the Connecticut Mirror. “His commitment and dedication on behalf of our company, employees and customers have been exceptional. We thank him for his important contribution to NU, CL&P and the community. We wish him all the best.”

Earlier this month on Nov. 6, Butler experienced a surge of criticism from legislators when CL&P failed to meet its self-imposed cut-off for restoring the majority the 830,000 power outages caused by the Oct. 29 snowstorm. Since then, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, whom had appeared with Butler at daily televised press briefings, has made it his mission to uncover any dishonestly within CL&P that may have occurred in the storm’s aftermath.

“I presume we're going to find some level of malfeasance,” Malloy said the day following the Nov. 6 deadline, as reported by the Connecticut Mirror. “Those responsible will be held accountable ... and we will hold them to a very high standard. They failed by their own standard. I suspect they failed by the industry standard as well,” Malloy said at that time.

His words for Butler weren’t any less harsh.

“His company's handling of this entire situation has been unacceptable,” Malloy added. “I think it is time to change the way this company is being managed.”

Of course, this has moved legislators to push for a re-evaluation for how utilities should respond to these scenarios, and perhaps set new standards for CL&P and other utilities of how to gauge their performance and response to massive outages in the future.

According to the Connecticut Mirror, James A. Muntz, Northeast Utilities’ president for transmission services, will fill Butler’s position until a replacement is found.