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.

Neighbor Reports Curious Power Failure Last Month

We received this email:

About 2 weeks ago, we had a failure in the main City Light cable which runs from the street to our house. We had about $2000 – $3000 in damage to our 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. We were without power for several hours and have a huge overhead cable servicing our home until the permanent replacement can take place underground.

In speaking with a representative of City Light to find when they would be scheduling the permanent “fix”, we were told that there had been several similar failures in the neighborhood. Further, if another failure occurred in this 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).

Has anyone else encountered this problem and has anyone else been charged for the undergrounding/conduit replacement?

Just a suggestion for everyone – be sure to use surge suppressors wherever you can or GFCI outlets – these prevented a lot of other damage including our computers and television.

Equipment Upgrades Underway at Laurelhurst Substation

Seattle City Light is making several upgrades to the equipment at its Laurelhurst Substation, located at the base of the park at  4502 NE 41st Steet.

The work started Monday and will continue go on for about 10 days.  There will be trucks and other vehicles on site and in the street adjacent to the substation.


City Light will be installing higher-voltage lines and replacing three transformers. No customer outages are planned as part of this work.

The press release says:

City Light is replacing and up-grading old 4 kilovolt power lines with 26 kilovolt lines that are standard equipment for most of the utility’s distribution system. As a part of this work, crews will replace three auxiliary transformers known to contain polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) with new transformers that do not use PCBs.


PCBs are man-made compounds that were used extensively in hundreds of commercial and industrial applications due to their non-flammability, chemical stability, high boiling point, and electrical insulating properties.


Their manufacture was banned in 1979 because it has been shown that direct exposure can cause cancer and a variety of other adverse health effects on the immune system, reproductive system, nervous system and endocrine system. City Light has a goal to remove any remaining PCB transformers in our system by the end of 2010.


The PCB transformers being removed from the substation will be secured in containers on site, and then moved to another facility for safe removal of the chemicals and proper disposal. Employees working directly with these transformers and their housings will be wearing hazardous material (haz mat) suits to guard against exposure. Seattle City Light workers have considerable experience with transformer removal and have extensive training in the safe handling of these materials. The transformers will remain sealed throughout the removal process.

Here is the full press release.

Meeting this Morning on Seattle City Light Rate Increase

Did you know there is a proposed Seattle City Light rate hike of anywhere from 7 percent to almost 14 percent on the table right now?

A reader let us know about this and that a Budget Committee meeting is being held this morning at 9:30am to discuss this rate hike. So if you've got some input, you're urged to attend the meeting.

Or you can send comments asap to Seattle City Council Member Bruce Harrell, Chair of the Energy and Technology Committee at bruce.harrell@seattle.gov.

Check out Harrell's website which explains the various proposals under several scenarios. Bottom line, it looks as if increasing rates is aimed at helping with the city budget shortage.

"The Rates Advisory Committee (RAC) Recommendation ...would like to see stronger linkage between budget setting and rates..... A higher rate now increases the utility’s ability to pay back debt," says Harrell's site.

Our reader said this rate increase could devastate neighborhood businesses already struggling as well as families.