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Up shit creek without a cable: Feds demand Eversource remove electric line under Boston Harbor that powers Deer Island sewage plant

The federal government this week sued Eversource and the MWRA because, it alleges, an electrical cable from South Boston to Deer Island is in the way of the harbor dredging the government wants to do.

In a suit filed this week in US District Court in Boston, the government charges that when Boston Edison won permission to install a 115-kV cable from a substation on K Street to the MWRA's sewage-treatment plant, it agreed to bury it at least 25 feet below the bottom of the harbor. But when the company installed the cable in 1989 and 1990, it actually did so closer to the bottom in both the Reserved Channel and the harbor's main shipping channel - at some spots just 12 feet from the bottom.

The government wants a court to order Eversource to remove the cable and to levy penalties on both the company and the MWRA.

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Comments

Rule 0 of all contracting, whether public sector or private: be in the contractor's face at all times to insist that the work is done to spec.

Yes, it's time-consuming. No, you will not make friends. No, you cannot just 'fire and forget' on the grounds that you don't have internal expertise.

Unless you want to have to do it all over again however many years later.

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Some 15 years ago, I was working in a data center. A sub-Contractor installing fiber-optic cables cut both primary and backup cables in one hole. Verizon fed the building with redundant bandwidth. By contract the primary and backup lines couldn't be closer than 50 feet from each other. Since they both were cut at the same time, it appears not only were they closer than 50 feet, they were actually next to each other. So we were out of business for almost 24 hours which in internet world is tens of millions of dollars.

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back around 20 years ago, when I worked in NJ, Newark Airport was building/extending their monorail. I vividly remember the day some contractor was driving piles for a foundation or something in one of the long-term parking lots. He punched through an underground duct bank.

I don't remember what the final judgment was - whether he screwed up & hit something that was properly marked-out or that it had been improperly marked.

I do remember the disruption. Some genius had put the primary and backup power feeds for the entire airport in that one duct bank. Everything was blacked out except the emergency generator at the control tower. Terminals, baggage handling, computers - all down. I remember that even though it was the middle of a bright sunny day, they couldn't even launch planes with good visual conditions and the operating tower/radar equipment - they fuel planes from an underground pipe system from a remote tank farm and there was no power to the pumping equipment.

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IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/QaHf2.png)

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I didn't realize they run for office when they're dead.

It's wonderful to learn something new.

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The taxpayers foot the bill for the U.S. Government's lawsuit.

The water/sewage customers foot MWRA's bill. And probably MA taxpayers.

And Eversource's customers foot their bill.

Not one dollar will be paid by anyone with actual meaningful involvement in this suit, on any side.

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Taxpayers pay US Gov's lawsuit: yes.

Water/sewer customers foot MWRA's bill. While they are taxpayers, that's immaterial because it's water/ sewer use and not income or value of property owned or whatevs that determines how much you pay MWRA. So: ratepayers yes, taxpayers no.

Eversource customers foot their bill? Possibly. Eversource will have to come before the DPU and ask for that cost to be added to rates. They'll have to establish that the cost wasn't the result of malfeasance or imprudence on their part. I'm not so sure that they'd be granted that rate increase, in which case it becomes Eversource shareholders and not ratepayers who pay that portion.

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They will have someone move it in forty five years.

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Boston Edison was be run by the Bulger Syndicate at the time and could save $Millions by not cutting through the rock. No one was going to challenge what Boston Edison was doing. Daily Fines $2,500.00 paid weekly to the Harbor Environmentalists Groups, Investigating and firing the person in charge, barring the contractor from any future work in Boston, Eversource should immediately be required to correct the problem before the dredging begins. A new contractor should bill them up the Wazoo for the new work.

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