If ATT Bill Passes, the Next Ice Storm Will Kill People

I was one of the tens of thousands of Kentuckians left without power by Tuesday's ice storm. But I don't live in Metro Louisville, where if you can't use your car you can still walk to a place where you can get help.

I live in the most rural part of a rural county.  Technically just a few miles from an interstate highway, but for all the use back roads are in a ice storm, the highway might was well be on the moon.

I lost electricity for just 13 hours, but that was more than enough time for my cell phone to lose power. I would have been stuck with no way to call for help - if I hadn't kept my old land line. My old AT&T landline.

Which the Kentucky state senate voted to let AT&T to take away from me. Voted just five days before the ice storm took out the power.

John Cheves at the Herald:

A bill that would further reduce state regulation of telephone service in Kentucky could speed through Senate committee and floor votes Thursday.

Senate Bill 99 is the newest version of what many at the state Capitol call "the AT&T bill," because that company has played a key role in pushing the deregulation proposal for several years. Critics blocked it in the past, saying it could leave rural Kentuckians stranded without cheap and reliable land-line service while freeing the major phone companies to pursue more profitable high-tech customers.

SNIP

Since 2011, AT&T's political action committee has given about $55,000 to state election campaigns in Kentucky, including $5,000 to the Senate Republican majority's chief fundraising committee and $5,000 more to the House Democratic majority's chief fundraising committee. The company spent $108,846 last year on legislative expenses related to its 22 Frankfort lobbyists.

The article fails to mention the biggest problem with eliminating landlines and forcing people to use cell phones: electricity service in the Commonwealth is extremely unreliable. Every time a puff of wind knocks a tree limb onto an overhead power line, power goes out to thousands of people for hours if not days. No electricity, no cell phones.

Not that the Kentucky General Assembly or the Public Service Commission, which have consistently refused to force utilities to bury power lines, gives a shit about citizens injured and dead from being unable to call for help.

KY Senate Rushes to Let AT&T Kill Rural Phone Service

Quick, somebody go check the copy of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives; somebody must have scratched out the third word of the Preamble and added a new one, so that now it reads:

 

We the Corporations

 

Because we are truly a nation of the Corporations, by the Corporations and for the Corporations

 

John Cheves at the Herald:

A bill that would further reduce state regulation of telephone service in Kentucky could speed through Senate committee and floor votes Thursday.

Senate Bill 99 is the newest version of what many at the state Capitol call "the AT&T bill," because that company has played a key role in pushing the deregulation proposal for several years. Critics blocked it in the past, saying it could leave rural Kentuckians stranded without cheap and reliable land-line service while freeing the major phone companies to pursue more profitable high-tech customers.

SNIP

Since 2011, AT&T's political action committee has given about $55,000 to state election campaigns in Kentucky, including $5,000 to the Senate Republican majority's chief fundraising committee and $5,000 more to the House Democratic majority's chief fundraising committee. The company spent $108,846 last year on legislative expenses related to its 22 Frankfort lobbyists.

The article fails to mention the biggest problem with eliminating landlines and forcing people to use cell phones: electricity service in the Commonwealth is extremely unreliable. Every time a puff of wind knocks a tree limb onto an overhead power line, power goes out to thousands of people for hours if not days. No electricity, no cell phones.

Not that the Kentucky General Assembly or the Public Service Commission, which have consistently refused to force utilities to bury power lines, gives a shit about citizens injured and dead from being unable to call for help.

Just Bury the Fucking Lines Already

Three times in six years, not-that-unusual storms shut the entire state down.

Not for hours, not for days, but for weeks.

Hundreds of thousands of people - a fifth of the entire state - without heat, without electricity, without even water in the depths of winter. Trapped in their homes by blocked roads, unreachable by civilian emergency agencies, themselves paralyzed. National Guard mobilizing equipment last seen in the Iraqi desert, in order to save lives.

The same insane scenario, played out against solemn promises to prevent it from ever happening again, only to repeat. And repeat again.

This is inexcusable. This is criminal. And this is totally avoidable.

But don't expect the Public Service Commission to figure it out.

Kentucky can take a number of steps to reduce the impact of severe weather on electric infrastructure and other utilities and to improve the preparedness for and response to major power outages, the Kentucky Public Service Commission (PSC) said in a report issued today.

The report makes 64 findings and recommendations. It is based upon the PSC review of the September 2008 wind storm and January 2009 ice storm, which caused the two largest power outages in Kentucky’s history.

SNIP

“I can assure you that this Commission is committed to seeing that the lessons of the 2008 wind storm and 2009 ice storm do not go unheeded,” (PSC Chair David) Armstrong said.

Lessons that apparently do not include the blatantly obvious need to bury power lines, starting yesterday.

Placing existing electric lines in Kentucky underground would cost at least $217 billion, a figure that includes only utilities under PSC jurisdiction. The report does not recommend large-scale conversion to underground lines, but recommends that utilities consider conversion to underground lines in specific circumstances, such as lines that are prone to repeated damage.

"Repeated damage." Would that be the power line damage that now costs the state of Kentucky hundreds of millions of dollars every year?

Would that be the damage caused by massive, widespread, skyrocketing unemployment, damage that would be substantially mitigated by a $217 billion, job-creating project to bury power lines across the state?

Would that be the damage caused to working families throughout Kentucky by crushing utility rate increases approved by a corporate-cock-sucking Public Service Commission that works for Big Coal, not the public?

It's going to happen again. If not next year, then the year after. Entire state paralyzed for weeks. A million people trapped without power. A billion dollars to repair the damage.

And the PSC standing by, wringing its hands and whining that there's nothing it can do.

First KY Stimulus Project: Bury the Power Lines

There are 500,000 people - 1/8 the entire population - without electricity in Kentucky this morning. Temperature is 25 degrees, dropping into the teens by Friday night.

They are without power - the light switch kind and the political kind - for one reason, and it's NOT the weather.

They are without power because 90 percent of the electric lines in this state are swinging naked 20 feet in the air, taunting giant tree branches that take every opportunity to rip those smart-ass suckers right out of the grid.

I've lived in this state more than 40 years, and every year it's the same refrain: Bury the power lines! It's too expensive! All you silly people who expect the lights to go on in return for the outrageous utility bills you pay: FUCK YOU!

Ice storm, heavy snow, tornado, hurricane remnants, suicide squirrels - overhead power lines are begging for catastrophe, and catastrophe is what we've got.

No, I don't think the taxpayers should cover the cost of something Kentucky Utilities, Louisville Gas and Electric, and all the rural cooperatives should have paid to do decades ago.

I think Kentucky should get stimulus money to bury all the lines, do it ourselves, then force the companies to reimburse us.

Every dime. Plus 10 percent interest per year for the 60 years they've been putting off burying the lines themselves.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.