Pole-ution

As long as we've lived in this house, there has been a utility pole lying close to our property line fence but on the neighbor's side. At first we thought they had placed it there for a purpose but as the years went by it seemed obvious that there was no purpose. It was just trash left by the developer who built our house 15 years ago.

This morning Carolyn called our electric utility company (known as SMUD) and asked them to come and take the pole away. She must have used the right words because there were three SMUD trucks at our house within an hour with guys asking me where the problem was. They had heard there was a “pole down” which signals an emergency for them. Expecting a live transformer and power outage, etc., they were visibly disappointed to see what it really was.

What we have, according to SMUD, is a “customer owned pole” , probably a temporary power connection used by a contractor while erecting a house before the house is ready to wire up. One of the guys said it was even likely that an electrical contractor would pay us for the pole because it’s ready to use right now.

Shortly after I was told there was nothing SMUD could do about the pole, SMUD trucks 4, 5 and 6 pulled up and the occupants started discussing the situation with the three SMUD workers already on the job. Finally, someone decided it was something SMUD could do after all. At the height of the job there were 6 trucks, vans, etc. and at least 11 men on the job. Our neighbor Wayne, hearing all the trucks and conversation, even came over to see what was going on. Two men removed the foot-step rods, 1 man removed the junction box, 1 man removed the wire, and 1 man used a chain saw to cut the pole into five pieces. The other six were supervising.

After the pole had been cut into 5 sections, it was hauled away to the back of this truck. Once they actually started on the job it was done in less than 15 minutes. The only evidence the pole was ever there are four small piles of sawdust.