Over the past several years public and private utilities have been an ongoing topic for city and county citizens, specifically District 2 residents. I’m not sure how many people ever watch televised Board of Supervisors meeting, unfortunately most county residents don’t have the option to view unless they go to brucetv.tv. Nonetheless, something that never makes the paper is our engineering and tower reports.

Not many meetings go by when either our county engineer and/or tower inspector doesn’t come to the board with request for a right of way, easement, or approval to add, extend, renew or replace one of our many services from utility and service providers. Quite often it’s AT&T, C-Spire, Verizon or another company seeking to put up new antennas on one of many cell or water towers throughout the county or Cable One or AT&T running new service lines. Atmos Energy seeking right of way for natural gas line work. Or Entergy and Southwest EPA seeking to replace or add additional power lines, and the list can go on. When properly requested and permitted, never can I remember us refusing to grant these request as these providers improve the quality of life for our residents.

As supervisors we are constantly seeking to improve these services in all parts of the county. We know there are many needs; many rural areas still have no cell service, lots of county roads still have insufficient water lines incapable of firefighting abilities, many well developed county areas still have no form of internet capacity, and now rural residents in Kingston are looking at having natural gas service removed, because an 18-mile pipe running from Cloverdale to Kingston has been found to be outdated and in danger by the FERC (federal regulations).

While we can help and influence some utilities, some are much more challenging. For the residents on the 61 South corridor, we have been actively pushing for internet expansion for years now. And while some areas have received new service in recent years, we still have a long ways to go. One of our local providers has plans to make substantial financial investments in the ability to expand internet service to the southern parts of the county in the near future, specifically on the 61 South corridor. They plan to make an announcement later this year.

On Liberty Road, you can see the progress by one of our power companies to relocate lines to the north side of the road. These new lines will improve the quality of your service, mainly by reducing power outages with the installation of newer better materials.

In Kingston, we have three gas companies involved and working together to reestablish the gas line under new regulations to keep natural gas service to the 154 impacted customers. These talks led by American Midstream, look to bring relief to what looked like a painful situation to those that have had natural gas service there since what appears to be a line started in 1929, (I can’t find an official installation date). At 6 p.m., on Tuesday, Aug. 9th we will have a meeting for all Kingston residents to detail the process and status of keeping this gas line operating and service continued. The public is welcome to attend.

So just know, we know that many of our residents are battling poor internet, phone, gas and other services and while it often seems slow, we are working to try to improve these processes for you all.

 

David Carter is the District 2 supervisor for Adams County.