Neighbor Must Pay City Light To Install New Underground Power Line

Last month we posted about a neighbor, who lives on 51st Avenue NE, who experienced a power failure in the main City Light cable which runs from the street to their house, resulting in about $2000 – $3000 in damage to their electric panel and various items in the house including the thermostat, the oven controls, the sprinkler system controls, several fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, a sound system & a DVD/VCR machine and four surge suppressors.

The family was without power for several hours and had a huge overhead cable servicing their home until a permanent replacement underground.

The family told us, at the time, that City Light said that there had been several similar failures in the neighborhood, and "if another failure occurred in the  line, we would be charged for complete replacement of the line including placing the power line in underground conduit, the current line is simply buried in the ground."

The family recently let us know that they are responsible for the charge of installing the new line underground and wrote: 

We have had further communication from City Light regarding the permanent replacement of our failed power line.

The City Light spokesperson has now told us that we are responsible for laying the conduit for the new cable. This communication came over a month after the failure and was delivered orally with accompanying comments that we had been told to handle the matter, even though no such conversation took place. We are facing a bill of several thousand dollars for this.

 

Of  interest to all residents of Laurelhurst is the statement that “these line are failing all over Laurelhurst and that individual residents will have to pay for installing the new conduit (City Light will pull in the new cable after the conduit is in place).

Residents should be aware of this issue, as there has been no public communication of any of this to us.