Laying Cable, Punishing Pavement

At the spot where the information superhighway met Bristol and 17th streets in Santa Ana, work crews dug trenches for fiber-optic lines. Traffic backed up. Smoke filled the air as the breaches were patched.

That was two months ago, and no sooner had one company finished its work than another telecommunications firm asked to cut on the same corner and install more lines.

As city streets are repeatedly cut up and patched up in the race to install the latest in cable and fiber optics, city officials are beginning to ask the telecommunications industry to pay for collateral damage they cause to adjacent roadbeds with their so-called “trench cuts.”

Following the lead of four other California cities, Santa Ana’s City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on a proposed ordinance levying fees for trench cuts. In part, they hope it will encourage the companies to coordinate their work with one another and with city repaving projects. However, the companies say the proposed fee violates the law.

“This is a concern nationally,” City Engineer George Alvarez said. “We knew as a result of the [telecommunication industry] deregulation we would see a lot more companies digging up our city streets to build the information superhighway. We’re just protecting our investment.”

In the last year, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Union City and San Francisco set trench cut fees.

In 2000, 21 miles of Santa Ana streets were cut for trenches or tunnels, up from six miles in 1996. The value of the paved streets is estimated at $400 million, Alvarez said.

Under the proposed ordinance, fees will depend on the width and length of the cuts and the age of the street. A typical foot-wide trench that is a mile long would require a $32,800 fee.

An arterial road that is up to 5 years old will cost $13.68 a square foot to cut. A local road that is up to 20 years old would cost $6.21 a square foot to cut.

The companies that have made most of the cuts in the past year are Level 3 Communications, AT&T;, Pacific Bell and Southern California Edison, city officials said.

AT&T; spokesman Gordon Diamond said his company has tried to avoid cutting streets if it is not necessary. Trench-cut fees “could cost us millions and millions of dollars over the course of a year,” he said.

The city projects it would earn $500,000 annually from the fees. That’s a small dent in its $20-million street-repair budget. But City Manager David N. Ream said the money would mean “we can fix up one more neighborhood’s roads each year with it.”

Alvarez, the city engineer, formed the statewide Trench Cut Coalition after the 1996 telecommunications deregulation. Member cities have spent several years determining how to impose fees that would be legal.

Diamond said he questioned whether the proposed fees violate the 1996 Telecommunications Act because they would be a barrier to entry in a market. The state Public Utilities Commission code also stipulates that fees must reflect costs incurred by a city, not an effort to generate revenue, he added.

Southern California Edison spokesman Michael McKinney said his company opposes such a fee because it is a form of double-billing the utility. Edison already pays the city 0.5% of its gross revenue in the city annually in exchange for the right to put its equipment on city streets. Under an agreement signed in 1938 and maintained ever since, Edison guarantees all its work for the life of the street, McKinney said.

Diamond said AT&T; has not formally complained to the cities but is looking carefully at each ordinance to see if the fee structure is unreasonable. Edison has not been affected because it does not serve those Northern California cities, but it is concerned that cities it serves will follow suit.

Alvarez, noting that cities want companies to combine their cuts when possible, said: “Studies have shown when you cut a street, there’s collateral damage no matter how well you patch the street; you damage the street beyond the area of the patch. What we’re hoping is that this is an incentive to cut less and to pay your way.”