dslwanter Same thing was said here about the non-English speaking workers. I really don’t know that that’s the issue. I really think it’s just a lack of requirement for potholing and other obstruction verification techniques. They don’t do any of that because it slows down work, costs more to clean up (in addition to residents complaining about more holes), and nobody’s forcing them to do it. The operators of these subcontractors have (well…had) a queue of jobs lined up, and the faster they go the more they can get paid using the same crews.
I’ve also heard about that happened with markings in other neighborhoods around here where the locators came through. The boring contractor took 1-2 weeks or more before showing up. Just bad scheduling all around. My guess is that when these contractors get backlogged and take longer to get to the next job site, they aren’t calling for remarking because, again, that slows them down.
I’ve read Howland Twp has taken quite an aggressive lead on pushing back, though. I heard that they went to the county and are imploring county commissioners to attempt to stop all underground fiber optic work in the county while simultaneously securing another voluntary stop-work agreement with Lumos (you know…the legal approach).
I’ve also heard rumors of two different state house reps and a state senator working on some kind of legislation. Nothing has shown up online yet, but best I can tell it sounds like it may be some combination of state-funded assistance for the families directly impacted by the explosions and possibly some new authority conveyed to townships to exert more local control over directional boring – seemingly to legalize the exact kind of moratorium that is being asserted illegally right now.
