Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Massive Service Outage in Northern Illinois! Message-ID: <13884@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 21 Oct 90 22:47:34 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University Lines: 59 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 752, Message 5 of 10 In article <13789@accuvax.nwu.edu> Will Martin writes: >1) Is there a *law* to the effect that someone digging on private >property must "do a JULIE" or otherwise investigate what may be >underground there before digging? Sure, doing that is a good idea, but >is it actually legally required? In California (at least in my area), you don't HAVE to call, but you are still responsible if you injure a cable. >2) This was work on ordinary (it appears) residential property. Why >would a major utility service trunk, as opposed to a feeder, be >located under such property, as opposed to under municipal-owned or >public property like a right-of-way, where one would expect such >utility services to be run? Sometimes the major utility runs are installed LONG before the subdivision is created. In that case, you can conceivably get utilities anywhere under a property. Generally, the house must be sited so that the utilities can be dug up if needed, though I once saw an old subdivision that had a major sewer main under the principal residence. For a new subdivision, it is very common to run phone, water, and electric utilities under the property edge, where the sidewalk would be, rather than in the street. >Would there be something in the >homeowner's deed or title-search papers showing an easement for this >use, that the homeowner would be expected to know about? Yes, absolutely. The easements would show on both the subdivision maps and the property map. > ... indicating an underground cable ran that way; I've seen such signs >many places, and I would have thought it was the duty (and good >business sense!) of the telco to keep such signs maintained and >in-place over such an important cable run. I've seen maps where the utilities were shown as big red lines. I guess the homeowner planted over the red... :-) Most homeowners would not appreciate the phone company planting "little flags" through their front yards to mark the easement. In any event, the homeowner is free (under the terms of the easement) to do whatever he wants to the surface, as long as the phone company has the right to dig it up if necessary (with no compensation to the homeowner). It's up to the homeowner and the contractor to know what's under the ground. This was a phone fiber. One day my neighbor had a contractor putting in a stairway of railroad ties in the front lawn. They were held to the ground with long steel pipe sections. I watched one of the workmen stop a sledgehammer swing in mid stroke when a passing PG&E repairman told him he was directly above a 12 KV underground line. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)