Hearing reveals disputed notices, lost geographic diversity and emergency routing after WAPA rebuild and Alexander Mountain fire

Platte River Power Authority moved CenturyLink circuits off an overhead WAPA (Western Area Power Administration) route in February 2023 because WAPA was rebuilding transmission poles, testimony at a Public Utilities Commission hearing showed. The move left CenturyLink using a temporary route that PRPA staff later described as lacking geographic diversity for at least a portion between Drake and Glen Haven; that temporary route was threatened during the Alexander Mountain fire in late July 2024, and emergency work in the first days of the blaze brought multiple agencies together to re-establish 911 connectivity.

The dispute that emerged in the hearing focused on whether PRPA gave CenturyLink adequate notice and clear information about the effect of the relocation on geographic diversity for 911 circuits. ‘‘I did not disclose this because I did not have a start date for when the fiber was going down,’’ Jeff Grant, manager of telecom and fiber for Platte River Power Authority, testified when asked why a detailed July 2022 schedule had not been distributed to CenturyLink. The hearing record shows CenturyLink received a February 6, 2023 maintenance notice from PRPA that described a ‘‘long term outage while WAPA rebuilds their transmission line’’ and instructed recipients to ‘‘forward this email to others within your…