MW hopes to tighten rules, minimize damage of fiber optic installation

Aug 02, 2023

MINERAL WELLS — City council members will try and tighten the permitting rules Tuesday for contractors laying underground lines, hoping to plug huge water losses from fiber optic networking.

It’s not just Mineral Wells’ problem, though the water loss during the worsening drought is frustrating — and expensive — enough for the city and its customers.

The issue of fiber contractors hitting underground lines surfaced July 18 as officials with Texas Gas and Oncor electric told the council their underground lines are consistently disrupted by contractors unleashed by a push to bring high-speed internet to rural Texas.

In January, CBSDFW reported residential sewage lines in Fort Worth were being ruptured by fiber optic contractors, with at least one home flooded with wastewater. Residents in Longview in March reported disruption to cable, electric and water services after contractors began work laying fiber optic lines. Several neighbors in a Denton County community in February filed a lawsuit against a high-speed internet provider claiming negligence after installers cut the underground water supply.

“It is our understanding this issue is widespread,” Mineral Wells City Manager Dean Sullivan wrote in an email Friday. “Tuesday night, the city council will again take the matter up for discussion. An updated excavation and permitting ordinance will be presented for consideration in response to this topic.”

During last week’s council meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Doyle Light followed the utility officials by reading through recent Friday drought updates.

Those include weekly water losses attributed to fiber line excavation.

Light’s total from June 16, plus the July 21 and June 28 reports that had yet to be written, neared 4 million gallons lost from city lines — 3,955,000 to be exact — from at least 21 ruptures attributed to fiber contractors.

Expanding high speed internet in Texas certainly is a good goal. But it also appears, for now, to be the Wild, Wild West for contractors and subcontractors.

Officials in Mineral Wells still did not know Friday how many contractors and subcontractors are laying fiber — or for whom.

No one seems to know if the activity even has state oversight.

Sullivan said he at one point tried the state’s Public Utility Commission but had “zero luck with a contact.”

“Of the state agencies which we have contacted, no clear answer to this question has come forward,” he said.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Friday told the Weatherford Democrat it does not have a regulatory role in fiber optic lines.

A spokesman there suggested the PUC, where Sullivan tried, and the Railroad Commission of Texas.

Emails sent last week from the newspaper to those two state agencies did not receive replies by deadline Monday.

The cost from water loss, one paid by 39,000 city and wholesale water customers in two counties, is only the beginning.

Each time an underground transmission line is ruptured, Mineral Wells Fire/EMS must respond to the scene.

Sullivan reported that’s cost the city $17,000 so far this year.

“It’s about $850 per run plus time on scene,” he wrote in an email to the Democrat. ”However, the Fire/EMS costs are far eclipsed by the significant costs incurred by our entire water system in the tens of thousands of dollars for many of the major water main intrusions these contractors’ negligence is causing.”

An “emergency weld on the main (line) hit off SW 15th Ave. at U.S. 281 South” added another $500 in city expense, he said.

“They are subcontractors for contractors through providers relative to the expansion of the Texas broadband network,” Sullivan said, adding that residents are faithfully calling the city when lines break.

“Our residents have been our first line of defense,” he said. “Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some of these contractors who hit a line and then leave.”

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