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Residents urge county to press utilities on aging poles, citing wildfire risk
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Summary
Public commenters told Pitkin County commissioners aging telephone and electric poles in the valley could heighten wildfire risk and asked the county to coordinate with utilities on inspections and upgrades; a commissioner said he would follow up at a work session with Holy Cross.
Public commenters at a Pitkin County special meeting on April 1 urged the board to press utilities to inspect and replace aging telephone and electric poles to reduce wildfire risk.
Salem Abraham, who said he owns property in the Aspen area but lives in Texas, described several large fires in recent decades he attributed to failing utility equipment and said pole inspections are often incomplete. "They're bad people. They burned us up several times," Abraham said of Xcel Energy in his account of Texas fires; he added that some poles had not been inspected for decades and offered pro bono consulting help.
Resident Deb Bainsburger, identifying herself as a Phillips Mobile Home Park resident, told commissioners the poles in her neighborhood date to the 1950s and 1960s and "they spark. They blow out. They're old." She asked the county to contact Holy Cross so that the utility can evaluate and, if needed, replace poles in the park.
Commissioner Greg Postman responded that Abraham raised a valid point about inspections and suggested the county encourage neighboring jurisdictions and utilities to follow inspection schedules. To provide scale, Postman said Pitkin County is 622,720 acres and that a 1,000,000-acre fire cited by Abraham would be substantially larger than the county. The chair also noted Holy Cross will be at a county work session on May 5, offering a near-term opportunity for concerns about infrastructure age to be raised with the utility.
The board did not take formal action at the special meeting on pole inspections; commissioners indicated they would follow up and encouraged public and interjurisdictional outreach.
