Pulaski County officials say they won’t be covering the repair bill for an underground cable damaged by the County Highway Department. Highway Superintendent Terry Ruff asked the county commissioners Monday how he should handle a $1,047 repair bill from CenturyLink.
He said the damage occurred during a digging project near county roads 200 South and 1,000 West. “This is an accident on my crew, really,” he said. “I could see it. It was marked, and they still got into the dang thing. But I believe on this one, they had it marked and they found one and then they went ahead and proceeded, and then I’ll be a son of a gun if they don’t get into the second one, and that’s the one that was the hot one.”
Ruff said the person who marked the lines initially told him the Highway Department wouldn’t be responsible. “Well then the next day, we went out there, and it was under investigation,” Ruff said. “They had flags up and the whole nine yards. And then it takes a couple, three months, and then you get this thing.”
The commissioners and County Attorney Kevin Tankersley recommended not paying the bill.
For the past several months, Ruff has been asking them to put a more formal policy in place, after the Highway Department got billed for similar accidents. He noted Monday that with the summer mowing and construction season getting underway, the risk of running into underground cables is high.
Commissioner Kenny Becker said the policy several years ago was that the phone or cable company assumed responsibility for any accidents, in exchange for using the county’s right of way. Becker was under the impression that CenturyLink would still be willing to agree to such an arrangement, if the county were to put it in writing. But County Attorney Tankersley said he spoke with the same CenturyLink representative, and she never said that to him.
In the end, the commissioners felt that if the company wants to continue placing cables in the county’s right of way, it should send an inspector to supervise digging projects or assume responsibility for damages.
