A powerline Upgrade Project VS a View VS Public Safety

Crane setting new power poles on hill side

Duquesne Light Company  been upgrading  the Highland Power Line near my home and it was suppose to have been done in November of 2011
Upgrading from a  wooden 2 pole  69,000 volt  line to a  single  steel monopole  345,000 volt line.

http://www.highlandlf345.info/

 

The reason demand for power in the eastern end of the city of Pittsburgh and the advanced age of the old line which has been peaked out several times and failed  over the last decade and was torn down and knocked out by a small tornado which came thru in late 90's
 they started the line replacement in 2010 making good progress till they got to the Longue Vue Country Club.  who had a hissy fit and went running to a judge to get the line stopped with a injunction. Because they said it would interfere with the premiere view they have  really I have been up there its not so grand.

https://retasite.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/reta-pittsburgh-post-gazette-art-may-1-2012.pdf

Initially Duquesne light won the first round but then a judge stopped the line on appeal which Duquesne Light appealed
as thousands  of dollars where being lost every day the construction was halted .

Now I can understand they did not want to see the power line but in the same breath they where putting lives in jeopardy as the east end of Pittsburgh kept losing power during one of the hottest summers on record around here putting lives in jeopardy every time AC went out in the homes of elderly and those with breathing issues and power to traffic lights went off causing major back ups and dangers of accidents . I personally saw this many times this summer  traveling thru the east end to customers and one of the supply houses I buy from in Wilkinsburg . This club knew all along what was going on and what was to come Duquesne Light  was up front with everyone one what they where doing and they had already replaced the line up here into Penn Hills  Sub Station with no issues. Of course there was all kind of screaming over that one for no reason and you know it was nice we did not lose our power this summer like we normally did the power has been staying on and steady in the worst of storms something it never did before.

 What the whole issue came down to appears to be nothing more than  sour grapes for the country club. Lets face it all the clubs around here are hurting as demographics are changing the whole area is going from white middle class suburbs to a mix of self employed and working class   and the bad economy is not helping . Longue View  it self is in the middle of one of the parts of Penn hills where ghetto creep is very prevalent they may be a premiere club  but its not one of the names I hear among my affluent customers who play golf ever say their  going  there to play . In fact  Alcoma was sold and renamed 3 lakes  and its pool closed and Church Hill is now open to public and has troubles as do almost all the other country clubs all over Allegheny County as Very High  Real Estate Taxes   less people having the time and or money or desire  to play golf  and or hold social functions at these places. In the last decade several clubs in the area have closed and where redeveloped.
But luckily in the end they lost and construction is now proceeding and people in the east end of Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs will enjoy good solid power and developers will be able to continue the clean up and redevelopment of the slummy sections  of Pittsburgh and hopefully Wilkinsburg as well because if you do not have available electric power,water and sewers you can not develop.

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-east/superior-court-oks-duquesne-light-to-upgrade-golf-course-power-lines-670488/

 Three decades ago Penn Power told Cranberry  Pa. they had to put in poles and update or they could not develop there was not enough power and Cranberry relented and you should see the place now . I hope its the same for around here.

 One good thing Pa. also generates renewable energy in many ways including Solar Power  in limited amounts due to poor sun  available  ,Wind  Power and Hydro Power from local rivers. in this area and actually exceeds goals set by EPA green standards
and with more and more generating  facility converting to Natural Gas  and closing down  or installing scrubbing equipment on Coal Fired Plants , and all the utility's pushing rebates to install energy efficient lighting and motors  there has been significant strides with protecting the environment.  I always try and design electrical installs to allow for maximum energy savings when possible by up-sizing wire conductor  sizes, using high efficiency motors  etc.

An update on Fire Investigation and Junk Science

I wrote about this back in 2010 and now as you can see from this link even more cases are being reviewed

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/21/3297931/arson-convictions-challenged-over.html

Yes one must wonder for every case wrongfully convicted and an innocent person sent to jail how many arsonists  got away clean with fires they set because junk science was being used instead of  scientific based research which in some cases can not be recreated in the lab even thou they where physically witnessed in the field.
Yes some fires origins can never be determined , when they can not  then the  criminal part  of the case should go no further ,Period. 
until there is 100% provable  and prosecutable evidence . We do not do the criminal justice system any favors when we prosecute an innocent individual .and the millions of dollars of tax payer money  spent to prosecute bad cases .
We have a famous case here in Pittsburgh where 3 City of Pittsburgh firefighters died in a fire in the East Hills  section  of the city authorities say was set by a young man who is now fighting that conviction and I believe has a good chance he will eventually prevail because it appears to have been an accidental fire caused by a faulty natural gas line to the house not arson .

Have Digital phone Service have you changed the default Passwords?.

One of my customers recently had a problem. He was not getting   phone calls from his  normal and prospective customers  at his business it seemed from a certain area code, even thou he had heavily advertised in the area . Ends up after calling  around to his  regular customers in area after not even hearing from them he found out his phone number  he set up special for them to call was being blocked ,and telling callers the number was no longer accepting calls.
He called me as I provide him phone services to the stores and when I determined it was not the AVAYA phone equipment I maintain for him that it  was his provider Comcast/ Xfinity  I called them and when a technician looked into it one of his store employees had turned on the block using the default password provided by Comcast because he was tired of taking the calls . My customers daughter who was in charge ordering and administrating  of the lines  had never changed  them from default  pass word  and the employee using the default pass word just turned off the line using a * number command .
My customer immediately fired the employee for doing it  This action by the employee cost him several thousand dollars in advertising money and thousands more in sales and lost customers.

This is not the first time I have run into problems like this where an employee also one time had changed the hours of operation on the voice mail that they where not open  on certain days at another business I take care of  as well as an employee who un did a dialing restriction on certain lines in a customers business and made thousands of dollars in unauthorized overseas phone calls. .
 Leaving default passwords on Phone lines and systems  in today's modern world is a bad idea and in the case of the line block my customer sent in a letter and it is now not possible to use the * command to block lines and other features like call forwarding to prevent future problems. It is important to not leave default passwords in place on phone systems and phone lines where you have employees because it is just a matter of time till you have problems and that goes double for anything you have utilizing a computer chip like credit card machines , security systems etc.