Fl. County Halts FTTP Until Installation Is Safer

celerityfm writes "Warning: Deploying Verizon's new Fiber To The Premises (FTTP, see previous) in YOUR neighborhood may involve geysers of raw sewage spewing onto your front yard or sinkholes opening and swallowing moving vehicles. Well, Hillsborough County, host to one of the first FTTP trial sites, has ordered Verizon to stop deployment of FTTP until they can figure out how to stop creating sinkholes that open up under minivans with children inside. No word on whether SBC is having similar problems with their fiber roll-out."

DigSafe

[syphax]

It's called DigSafe [digsafe.com]. I just learned this is a New England (sans CT) thing- what the hell do the rest of you do?

These guys have scoped out my lot two times in the past month, due to the start of a new addition, an (unrelated) emergency oil cleanup...

That's why...

[Meostro]

... we have something called Miss Utility [missutility.net] in the MD/VA/DC/DE area. Each member utility is notified and marks their pipes/wires/whatnot, and then you're not at fault if you bust something that wasn't marked.

Generally, some fella with a metal detector comes strolling through, putting a bunch of fluorescent orange paint stripes on the ground to indicate the general direction/location of underground wires.

We've only ever had cable/power/tv lines marked on our property, and nothing's been damaged during two septic tank repairs, one new well and two additions. I guess PVC would be a little harder, but this is absolutely ridiculous!

I wonder how many Verizon lines have been disrupted as a result of these guys?

Re:WTF?

[SEWilco]

What's fiber got to do with sinkholes and sewage?

More fiber causes more sewage?
More fiber delivers more spam?
More fiber sucks away more time?

Actually, the fiber is being installed underground. When the drilling punctures a water or sewer line, the leaking liquid can cause problems several ways. A puddle of sewage on the surface has several undesirable characteristics. Water or sewage leaking through earth can dissolve various materials and carry them away, creating a space. If this space is on the surface and small, it is a pothole. If this space is under the surface, when the unsupported earth above collapses that is called a sinkhole.

Sinkholes come in various sizes, and since the surface layer and "rock" supporting much of Florida can be dissolved fairly easily, large sinkholes can be created all too easily. A small sinkhole which collapses under a car can cause several dramatic situations.

Re:Dear gods, its just an optical cable!

[RPI Geek]

Incompetence is right! This is ridiculous! There's no excuse for hitting all these water mains and sewer lines.

Well maybe the laws are different in FL, but in NY State there's a number you have to call before digging to ensure that there's no underground wires/pipes/etc. When you call this number, they in turn call the right people to go to the site and mark the underground lines. Every so often there's a mistake, but it's nowhere near 200 times in a month! When I worked at Time Warner Cable for a summer, we'd get faxes from these people, and we'd send the supervisors who knew the area to mark the ground. If no one knew the area, there was equipment to find the wires and mark them properly. This way, when the people who were digging showed up, they knew where NOT to dig.

Re:Wow, thats crazy

[j0shwalk3r]

Fiber is not affected by electrical interference, as it is an optical transmission. This isn't a bad idea, outside the fact that the point of the fiber is so people don't need phone lines.

The reason they can't just go over phone lines is most likely that phone lines are burried shollow and unprotected. Whereas the fiber would most likely buried deeper in a protective conduit. So to burry over the phone line would require burrying under the phone line.

Re:Dear gods, its just an optical cable!

[Ender_Stonebender]

I live in Pinellas county, Florida, which happens to be one county over from Hillsborough. The problem is not FTTP installation, it's the fact that the water table is about two feet below the ground, resulting in every underground conduit being stuck in that two-foot space, and shitty as-built documentation. No one here has a basement because if they did, the only thing you could keep in it would be alligators. They run into the same things trying to install natural gas pipelines.

--Ender

Re:WTF?

[kovarg]

I'm local to Hillsborough and all day we've been hearing about this stoppage. Sinkholes are a buzz word because they are a (forgive the pun) a money pit for insurance companies. Potholes, ditches and everything else where the ground is unlevel can be dubbed as sinkholes. That is not to say we don't have sinkholes, but nowhere near as many as are reported. It is a large enough problem that some zip codes are blocked out of renters insurance due to sinkhole problems, but Verizon hasn't been running around and draining pockets of the water table. The real headline should be: Verizon has morons digging trenches.

I work for a Telco

[PhraudulentOne]

I work for a telco and we plough cable every day. We do this in populated neighborhoods and new lots. It is extremely rare that we cut a cable (in fact I do not know of one in over a year), but NEVER a pipe. This work is not really Verizon's fault as it seems they are hiring subcontractors to do the work. This is a simple case of incompetence where the subcontractors do not call for a LOCATE (or they get a locate done so far in advance that it washes away or something).
Also, I'm sure you all realize that this has nothing to do with fiber to the home, it has to do with people not being able to dig properly.. no matter what they are laying in the ground.

Re:Call Miss Utility

[daveo0331]

Florida has a version of this. Someone should send the link to these lowest-bid contractors.

http://www.callsunshine.com/corp/index.html [callsunshine.com]

Re:Ground penetrating radar?

[rahvin112]

Don't they have maps to locate lines, sewers and such? Don't tell me they're digging blindly...

Most states have a requirement for a "call before you dig" service. This service will notify the local utility owners in your area to come out at mark their underground utilities in your area and if you follow the procedure it essentially eliminates the legal liability of breaking the utility if you dig and hit it when it wasn't marked.

The problem is that a LOT of utilities in the US do NOT have good "as-builts". See in construction things are often built differently, or located in a differnt location due to a conflict the designer did not have knowledge of. These field changes are supposed to be cataloged and used to create "as-built" drawings that show the location of the utility as it was actually placed.

Now Verzion hires contractors to place lines, the contractor if it's following procedure has the utilties located and begins digging. If the Contractor then rips a gas line in half because the gas company didn't flag it the Contractor usually can't be held responsible. The same goes for other utilties.

Providing Verzion and their contractors are following the accepted construction practices and complying with the law the problem is not of their making or anything they can fix. The problem is the utilitiy owners that don't know where their lines are and instead of the dealing with the real problem the county halted the operation which is treating the symptom and not the problem.

Re:A Little Trite?

[ConsistentChaos]

ARGH! I absolutely hate it when people uneqivocally say that hurricanes are worse than tornadoes. Yes, the chances of a tornado actually hitting you are less, but if it does, you're screwed six ways from Sunday even if it's only an F2.

Plus, you ALWAYS know where a hurricane is and you have time to get out of the way. That's a hell of a lot better than the 30 seconds a tornado gives you when it appears.

Signed, a Texas resident.

Re:Sounds like the work of lawyers and lobyists

[hchaos]

I have worked utility construction, and yes that stuff does happen from time to time...This sounds to me like a complaint of a competitor desperately trying to stop progress.

From the article [tampatrib.com]:

Since August, nearly 200 water, sewer and reclaimed water lines have been broken across the county. Those breaks have affected nearly 3,000 customers, leaving some with sewage and water spewing through their front yards, others with ripped-up driveways and streets, and some dealing with a boil-water notice as a health precaution.

This is more than a "from time to time" problem. That's an average of roughly 2 line breaks a day, with a total repair cost so far of over $100,000 (from the article).

Also from the article:

``They were right to do it, though, because they're concerned about all that's happened and about the inconvenience to their customers, and we are, too,''

[Spokesman for Verizon Bob] Elek said. ``We wish all the problems that have happened wouldn't have happened.''

Not exactly the wording I would expect from Verizon if a competitor was desperately trying to stop progress. In short, RTFA!

Re:A Little Trite?

[WebCrapper]

As an Army Brat thats lived in too many states to count, I can second this. I'd much rather be living in a hurricane zone than in the midwest when thinking about the weather.

Heck, a lot of people party when a hurricane comes in, the media likes to play in the wind... See what happens when a tornado shows up somewhere - everyone runs like hell except for storm chasers trying to 1. help people that aren't lucky enough to win against a tornado 2. Study them - and 3 (I really don't even consider these people true chasers) - chasing tornados for art (cameras and video) and even then, all 3 groups still try to stay away from them.

I'd say a hurricane is like a dull knife, it can hurt you, but the damage isn't (usually) too bad. A tornado is focused like an exacto knife cutting right to the bone.

Now, mod me off topic and be done with it ;-)

Re:A Little Trite?

[budgenator]

After a hurricane I've never seen 40 square miles of homes leveled to the foundation, Dumpsters pushed through brick-cement block wall three stories above the ground, or a 2X12 going through a car tire. But I've seen all of that after a tornado and that was in Alabama, out in Oklahoma they get the big ones. No only reason I'm alive is because it skipped over.
I Had three steps advance warning.

Re:A Little Trite?

[cayenne8]

"I can second this. I'd much rather be living in a hurricane zone than in the midwest when thinking about the weather."

Well, I've lived in TX, AR, and now New Orleans. Well, one thing that is nicer about hurricanes than tornadoes...is that yes, you do generally get more warning. It was a bitch to wake up in Little Rock in the middle of the night and hear the tornado sirens going off...and having them whiz (hopefully) over your head.

That being said, in general, the damage by a tornado is much less than a hurricane. It is very damaging, but generally in a very small area. A hurricane can, as we've seen lately, blow away whole large towns, and flood them entirely.

This is especially true of New Orleans. If a slow moving Cat 3 or higher comes up the mouth of the river....the winds, storm surge...and the fact we're so freakin' way below sea level...would essentially wipe the city from the face of the earth. Entire city could easily be over 20 ft. under water. And with the levee system we have...once this happens, the water would be held in and have to all be pumped out from the outside.

And even though the hurricane can be tracked for weeks...trouble is, they still can't give you a good estimate quickly enough to know if you have to leave (for your life) or not. You don't automatically get let off for work if it comes close...this last time with Ivan, they did let us off work 2 days before predicted landfall. I left at about 9am Tues for Ivan. Trouble is...there is really only one main road out of the City...I-10...either east or west or Airline Hwy. It was deadlocked. It took me over 16 hours to get from NOLA to Shreveport...and I was in a car with friends born and raised here that knew all the backroads. We were lucky...others took much longer to get a shorter distance. Getting millions of people out is hard (once out, you need a place ot stay, and every hotel from NOLA to Little Rock, Houston, Memphis, etc was booked solid)....and basically, if Ivan had hit just miles closer to NOLA...it would have hit with people still stranded on the highway trying to get out of the city, and lots of people would have died.

Anyway....saying a hurricane is like a 'dull knife' is pretty far from the truth. Yes a tornado is devastating, but, in general, they are not on the ground for long, and do isolated damage. Hurricanes come in, dump tons of rain on you...throw storm surge up if coastal, so that water can't drain...and the winds can shoot 2x4's through brick walls in Cat 4-5 storms. A hurricane can wipe a city or more off the map....in facts as I've heard it, there used to be an island resort off the coast from NY city I think, that in the 17 or 1800's was wiped away out to see....and something similar I think happened in TX.

So...neither is fun, but, I'd have to say hurricanes cause by far more damage and chaos by evacuating millions of people....

Re:201st sinkhole! 202nd sewage geyser!

[macdaddy]

Bullshit. Do you have any idea how hard it is to not break a 3" PVC residential water inlet on new construction? Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep from digging up a pipe that's not supposed to be there? The county's maps are screwed up. You can't blame the contractors for that. There aren't many options for finding a buried PVC water line. Witching doesn't always work. Ground penetrating radar is expensive as hell. That's why the county is supposed to have accurate maps to guide workers. If the maps are borked then you should expect nothing less than hundreds of broken lines in a project of this size. In fact I'm truly surprised that there haven't been more broken lines witha crew of 2000 spread out across the county. I speak from experience as both a netadm and as a backhoe operator. I'm a jack of all trades.

This blame game wouldn't happen in Kansas. Kansas law requires an official "locate" before digging can commence. If the owners of said buried lines fail to locate their lines or mark them in the wrong spots, causing them to be dug up, they are responsible for the damage. Not the one doing the digging. I'm surprised Florida doesn't have a similar law.

Re:Dear gods, its just an optical cable!

[gethoht]

Yeah... some of the maps might be off, but there is equipment that can detect a huge pipe made of steel underground. It's not rocket science.

I've lived in hillsborough county(Tampa) since I was twelve, and I've done plenty of construction work down here, including digging holes for electric lines(IBEW). There is no excuse for this amount of incompetence. 1 incident, maybe, 5 incidents.... maybe, but 200 incidences in a couple months time is not acceptable at all.

99% of construction work, above or below ground is shoddy in Florida. Want proof? How about bringing a halt to the construction of a half-way done expressway, because part of it collapsed, and the rest of the columns are sinking past their tolerances(in hillsborough county no less). (See here [tbo.com]) Cheap labor and lack of regulations lead to these kinds of messes.

Re:A Little Trite?

[macdaddy]

A metal detector won't detect a non-metallic water line such as the PVC water lines in use in every single new residential construction job in the last 20 years. Ground penetrating radar is expensive as hell. Witching works well if you can find a compotent person to do it and have some spare time to kill for a project this massive.

The implement you're talking about is a "vibratory plow," also known as a shudder plow and cable plow. Vermeer makes a lot [vermeer.com] of them. You can a use shudder plow to lay a large bundle of fiber, such as what you'd use to connect COs together, but you can't use it to run fiber to individual houses. You're only talking about pulling 2-4 pairs of SMF to each residence. You would need an immense amount of insulation to keep the plow for beating the SMF to death in such a small pull.

Companies and counties that do an incompotent job of maintaining accurate cable/line plant records should be fined harshly. There's no excuse for relying on and distributing outdated records that pose risks to property, especially if you're as big as Hillsborough County, FL. These problems should have been solved many years ago. Better yet, they never should have happened in the first place.

Re:Wow, thats crazy

[kiltedtaco]

There is fiber on poles everywhere here. Almost every cable company has a decent ammount of fiber in the air going to the nodes, which are also in the air. Telephone companies use fiber on poles too. Sometimes it's just infeasable to get the right of way to lay fiber. Nearly every decent sized street around here has fiber on the poles. You can notice it by the little red or orange tags on the fiber at every pole, so nobody digs their gaffs into it.

And to reply to a reply to the parent post, fiber is more expensive to repair usually. Repairing fiber requires a special splice truck, with a fusion splicer in it, and trained (expensive) techs. There's probably only one fiber splice truck in a small town, probably less than 5 for a decent sized city. Repairing a high pair cable (assuming it's PIC) may take longer, but it can fixed by any outside plant tech.

The splicing costs for this project must be enormous.