SLIDELL, La. — The president of St. Tammany Parish is calling for harsher penalties for contractors who interrupt utilities.
His statement was released after one contractor, Vexus, hit a neighborhood’s water lines twice in a week and triggered boil advisories. But a spokesperson for Vexus told WWL Louisiana there was “literally nothing” its contractors could have done to prevent the breaks as the exact location of the water lines is unknown.
The boil advisories encompassed an area that included the Cross Gates subdivision. Homeowner Cheryl Ross Brown said she has dealt with regular boil advisories in the past and when she was notified of another on March 7, she thought “Here we go again.”
In the advisory, St. Tammany Parish noted that the advisory was caused by contractors with Vexus hitting a water line. The company is in the process of installing fiber to bring high-speed internet to the area. That advisory was partially rescinded the next day.
Then on March 14, Ross Brown started doing her dishes and noticed “the water pressure was really low, and then within half an hour there was no water.” She looked outside and saw water in the street. A Vexus contractor had hit another water line, this time right outside her home.
Her water was out for most of the rest of the day. “I had to get water from the pool to flush the toilets and things like that, we couldn't take a shower,” she said. A second boil advisory was enacted for the neighborhood. Ross Brown and her neighbors’ water came back that evening. The next day, the boil advisory was lifted for the entire area except the homes right next to where the water line was hit, including Ross Brown’s.
Thursday, St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper released a statement in response to a question WWL Louisiana asked regarding Vexus. Without naming any specific company, he said the Parish is “actively and aggressively pursuing stronger ordinances” to protect utilities from “careless and/or apathetic contractors.” He added that he hoped for a resolution at April’s Parish Council meeting.
A representative with Vexus, however, claims the breaks were not the fault of its contractors. Hunter Mcallister, Vexus’ Director of Operations, spoke with WWL Louisiana the day the second advisory was lifted. He said the breaks were “not carelessness,” and that Vexus is “going above and beyond what any utility company would be doing right now.”
He explained that the water lines in the Cross Gates area are older and, as a result, the exact location of them is not always known. “20-30 years ago,” he said, “you didn't have people drilling through the ground. So you never really paid attention to the depths or exactly where the lines are.”
Vexus’ contractors are performing a drilling maneuver called “potholing” to check for interruptions underground before they lay the fiber. Mcallister said the industry standard is to space the holes about every 100-150 feet and for this project, Vexus is “potholing” every 50 feet. He added that after the two breaks last week, the company is considering halving that distance.
When contractors hit the second water line, he said it was “five feet” from where they believed it was. “There was literally nothing we could have done to have seen that, or known that was there, and there was nothing the Parish could have done.”
He also said there was no guarantee it would not happen again but that “obviously, the goal is to go in there as clean as we possibly can.”
WWL Louisiana reached back out to Parish President Cooper’s office to find out more about the parish’s utility maps and Vexus’ claims. So far it has not responded.
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