Massachusetts Legislature to Tackle Double Pole Issues
A Massachusetts legislative committee is drafting recommendations to address the issue of double poles -- utilities putting up new utility poles beside old ones and leaving the old poles in place indefinitely. Currently there are a dozen bills in the state that, in various ways, attempt to encourage utilities to remove double poles in a timely fashion.
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"We anticipate that there will be a bill very shortly,” said Rep. Kate Hogan (D), who was appointed by the legislature’s joint committee on telecom chair Rep. John Keenan (D) to form a subcommittee to address the issue. The subcommittee has met with a variety of stakeholders, including electric utilities, Verizon, municipal officials and union workers, and recently issued some recommendations to Keenan, said Chris Eicher, aide to the joint committee. He declined to discuss the details of the recommendations but said the joint committee is reviewing the recommendations and working on possible “legislative options.” The committee, through an extension order, has until May 1 to make its final recommendations on the 12 bills that state legislators had filed with the committee, he said. The amount of bills introduced showed how much interest lawmakers had in the issue, Hogan said. “You can’t manage something that you can’t measure,” and that’s why the subcommittee needed to evaluate the issue, she said.
The state law that requires utility companies to remove the old poles within 90 days has no teeth due to lack of an enforcement mechanism, said Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Until the state government takes enforcement seriously, the utility companies are going to continue to ignore the problem, said Bedford Town Manager Rick Reed. The city of Salem has long suffered from double poles, said city engineer David Knowlton. He claimed almost 200 have been in existence since 2009 and more than 80 since 2006. That has caused neighborhood blight, public safety concerns, and decreased property values, and the city has had little to no influence over removing them, he said. Beckwith urged the legislators to allow communities to impose a fine for non-removal.
The issue of double poles is complex, involving the coordination of wire transfer by all of the various entities on the poles, including utilities and municipalities, a Verizon spokesman said. He claimed Verizon has made good progress transferring wires and removing poles in the state. There have been a number of suggestions to improve the complex process and “we are all working together to improve it,” he said.
Of the 12 bills on double pole issues, some would give cities and towns the authority to fine pole owners by the day if they don’t get pole removal done on time. One bill would direct state regulators to assess progress on removing double poles and suggest further solutions. The bill numbers: H-876, H-884, H-886, H-1755, H-1764, H-1769, H-2609, H-2619, H-2622, H-3057, H-3059 and H-3380.