Contributed Photo
One of the new utility poles on Arsenal Street that replaced the ones that fell during Friday’s Nor’Easter. Residents noted that this one, like the ones that fell, are leaning.
A mix of strong winds and the force of one pole falling led to the failure of several poles on Arsenal Street during last week’s Nor’easter, according to the utilities.
The utility poles along Arsenal Street are co-owned by Verizon and Eversource, said Howard Waterman, from Verizon Corporate Communications.
“We jointly own those poles with Eversource, and we worked quickly with them and others attached to the poles to clear the area and restore Verizon service to those impacted,” Waterman said.
Eversource spokesman Michael Durand said that a combination of factors led to the multiple broken poles.
“The damage was storm related, with strong wind gusts initially snapping one pole that had four transformers on it,” Durand said. “When that one pole broke and fell, the combination of wind, weight and inertia took down the other poles.”
The state of the poles prior to the storm has been questioned by many residents wanting to know how such a major failure could occur. Some have posted photos showing the poles leaning before the storm. A resident sent Watertown News a photo of one of the new poles showing it is not straight, and added that some of the others are not straight either.
When asked about whether there was concern about the poles prior to the storm, Durand said that the maintenance of those poles is taken care of by Verizon.
Verizon did not respond to multiple questions about the condition of the poles prior to the Nor’easter.
Soon after the poles went down, Eversource rerouted power and used other equipment to restore power to as many customers.
“Between this and emergency generators, we were able to restore power to all but about 100 customers by later in the day on Friday,” Durand said.
As of Sunday, Eversource had restored power to almost all customers, Durand said, and as of Wednesday (before Wednesday’s snow storm) no outages were reported.
Arsenal St. Utility Poles Replaced, Crews Working to Put Wires Up
So, Verizon says the poles are co-owned by Verizon and Eversource.
Eversource throws Verizon under the bus and says Verizon is responsible
for the maintenance. Verizon has no response… typical.
As messed up and inexcusable as the situation was, I have to laugh.
For anyone that’s interested, you can use Google street view and see for
yourself the condition those poles were in.
The Town of Watertown has an opportunity now to require the lines along Arsenal Street to be underground. Developers seem to want this as do residents all over town, particularly in residential neighborhoods. Developers are trying to make their new residences and business districts attractive and now we know that safety because of stronger and stronger storms is an issue as well. Let’s demand more than a pro forma refusal–the last we heard it was because of the different trainings above ground and below ground technicians need. Costs should not be allowed to be placed on residents along the streets. Are there public utility laws that would help us?
Putting the lines underground on just Arsenel Street would cost millions of dollars. When at least 33% of the town roads need repaving, how can you justify spending 5-10 million to bury power lines on one street?
So this wasn’t a problem until the poles fell down? Do we have a town engineer or someone in that capacity that does any kind of inspections of street and sidewalk hazards ? This is a reactive approach. Putting the lines is a good ideas, however if you ever saw what is already underground on Arsenal st. you would realize it would almost impossible.
It is so clear that these wires belong underground for many reasons. Can our town government not see to it that this happens? I am certain that no party wants to pay the cost. But perhaps the town could forward an effort to share the tab, especially since developers are building very large projects in the area.