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| Yesterday morning along South 3rd Street |
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| Left for at least two weeks in front of the library, finally removed yesterday. |
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| "So sorry, this won't take long." |
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| On the ground the following day |
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| National Grid, a company headquartered in England, owns all of the city's wooden poles. |
If you've been wondering why there's been so much activity over the past few weeks on the city's streets and alleys on, near and between National Grid's wooden utility poles, HUDseen is here to help. (Even if you haven't come across any of the ugliness and disrespect, you may want to read on.) The activity, as you may have noticed, includes, but has not been limited to: trucks parked on and otherwise blocking sidewalks; loose cables taped to the bases of poles -- some for weeks and some making their way to the ground for days -- waiting to be strung above; inaccessible alleys and streets; and, perhaps most concerning, lots more diesel fumes from idling trucks to infect your lungs with cancer and add to the woes of the climate change disaster we are ignoring. We have several organizations to thank and blame for all of this.
The company doing the actual line work (as seen on the side of the several trucks involved) is AMW Utility Contracting, LLC, out of Redfield, NY, located in Oswego County near Lake Ontario. The trucks have no phone number on them, nor does the company have a website (!), but I did take a few minutes to successfully track down their phone number. (The number is 315-845-6000. Call them if you see a loose, coiled cable taped to the base of a pole or on the ground that bothers you. It's probably theirs!) However, if you call that number and get a voicemail message instead of a human being, you will be greeted with this: "Thank you for calling Todd Cable Construction..." But do not be fooled -- you did not misdial and you were not given the wrong number! A human being who answered one of my calls to this number explained to me that AMW Utility Contracting was no longer associated with Todd Cable Construction, and that they were having trouble with their phone lines.
"For how long have you been trying to get the Todd Cable Construction message off of your outgoing message?" I asked the woman.
"For about one year," she told me. Yes, this came from the company presently hanging internet cable lines all over Hudson! For the past year, a utility contractor has been unable (or just unwilling) to update their outgoing phone message so that it is accurate.
AMW Utility Contracting is blanketing Hudson with heavy black cable lines atop all of National Grid's old and new wooden utility poles for a company called Archtop Fiber out of Kingston, NY. You may have received a letter or two from this internet provider newcomer recently, trying their best to convince you that their internet service is the fastest and most reliable on the planet, better than Mid-Hudson Cable's, Verizon's, FirstLight's or anyone else's lines that may already be attached to all of National Grid's poles.
One wonders how many internet providers National Grid will allow to install lines on their poles above our sidewalks and streets. Will they allow any more to come to Hudson, or are Archtop Fiber's miles of lines the last they will allow? How much money, if any, does National Grid make leasing their poles to internet and cable providers? Are the taller and wider new replacement poles that National Grid has been installing recently needed to support all the new lines they are allowing on their poles in our city? How many more pounds and miles of lines can their poles safely accommodate and why is AMW allowed to attach Archtop Fiber's lines to old (sometimes very old) National Grid poles that should have been removed and replaced years ago and likely will be replaced soon? And if Archtop Fiber fails to sign up enough internet customers in Hudson and decides to call it quits here, will they hire AMW again, this time to REMOVE all of the lines they blanketed the city with? Would National Grid allow Archtop Fiber's useless lines to remain if AMW doesn't take them down? If Archtop Fiber forces Mid-Hudson Cable or Verizon out of business (presumably, that is their goal!), will National Grid allow those companies' lines to remain hanging above our streets and sidewalks, some from ancient poles that no one wants to remove but National Grid will gladly install a brand new much larger pole directly adjacent to, creating yet another lovely double pole situation for Hudson to look at, walk by and admire well into the future?
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| AMW taped this cable to the pole last Thursday. By Friday it was on the ground where it remained for the entire weekend. |
Then there's the fourth guilty party in all of this mess: our inattentive Hudson City Hall. Does City Hall -- particularly Rob Perry -- just stand back and allow National Grid to do whatever they want on their hundreds of poles found on our sidewalks? Do we have any skin in the game with National Grid's poles? Does Rob Perry care how many double poles National Grid creates for us? Does he care what kind of messes a utility contractor like AMW leaves us with for days, weeks or months? Has Rob recently bothered to contact National Grid (possibly calling England to do so) to ask them, "Hey, can you please tell me why a company located hundreds of miles away near the shores of Lake Ontario is making a mess of our city for a company that is located 30 miles away as they install internet lines on utility poles owned by you, a company headquartered in England?"
Of course not -- our DPW Superintendent hasn't bothered to do anything of the sort! He probably doesn't even know any of this crap has been going on, nor does he care. Rob's probably too busy trying to find more taxpayer funds to purchase several more thousand-dollar trash cans for Warren Street.
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| AMW installing a line on one of National Grid's ancient poles last week, this one along State Street. |
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| AMW vehicle blocking most of an alley last week with no one in or near the truck. |
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| AMW left behind their black electrical tape that once secured their cable to the pole. Notice the much older pole in the background. The pole in the foreground was installed by National Grid late last year. |
If you sign up with Archtop Fiber, you support the uglification of Hudson and an internet infrastructure (ala National Grid) that is completely unsustainable. Do not support them! Thanks to National Grid, Archtop Fiber has added to the problem while Rob Perry and Kamal Johnson are once again M.I.A.
To prevent the situation we currently find ourselves in from getting completely out of hand, Hudson City Hall needs to demand that National Grid and any other utilities with lines currently hanging from utility poles must first rid the city of every double pole situation in town. Then and only then can National Grid allow another utility to hang lines from their poles.
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| Double poles directly in front the house of a city official. Notice the X on the old pole, presumably signifying that the pole is no longer needed and ready to be removed. Do you think Rob Perry cares how many more years that pole sticks around? |
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| Look at how ancient and weathered that pole on the left is, still with lines attached to it. |
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| Do you think Rob Perry gives a crap that there are so many double poles in town? How about Kamal Johnson? Has he brought this issue up to his "friends" on Facebook yet? |
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| I first noticed this cable on the ground in Prison Alley about 4 months ago, found at the base of two poles. The old/ancient pole has a well-faded X spray painted on it. That cable is either owned by Mid-Hudson Cable or Verizon. Do you think Rob Perry and Kamal Johnson care who should have removed it (and the ancient pole) long ago? |
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