AT&T’s legacy phone community could have practically 200,000 miles of lead-covered cables, based on an estimate by AT&T submitted in a courtroom submitting.
“Based mostly on its data, AT&T estimates that lead-clad cables symbolize lower than 10 p.c of its copper footprint of roughly two million sheath miles of cable, the overwhelming majority of which stays in energetic service,” AT&T wrote in a courtroom submitting yesterday in US District Court docket for the Japanese District of California. “Greater than two thirds of its lead-clad cabling is both buried or in conduit, adopted by aerial cable, and with a really small portion working underwater. There are various prices of set up, upkeep, and elimination by cable kind (aerial, buried, buried in conduit, underwater).”
Reacting to the courtroom submitting, monetary analyst agency Raymond James & Associates wrote in a analysis notice, “AT&T is telling us that the entire publicity is 200,000 route miles or much less.” With about two-thirds of the lead cables both buried or put in inside conduit, “We imagine the implication for AT&T’s information is that the route miles that must be addressed most instantly is about 3.3 p.c (or much less),” the analyst agency wrote.
AT&T’s new courtroom submitting got here in a case filed in opposition to AT&T subsidiary Pacific Bell by the California Sportfishing Safety Alliance (CSPA) in January 2021. The sportfishing group sued AT&T over cables which can be allegedly “broken and discharging lead into Lake Tahoe.”
AT&T: No must take away Lake Tahoe cables for now
The 2 underwater cables run alongside the underside of the western facet of Lake Tahoe for a complete of eight miles. AT&T “contends that it stopped utilizing the Cables in or across the Nineteen Eighties or earlier, that the Easements due to this fact have terminated, and that Defendant not owns the Cables,” based on a November 2021 settlement.
AT&T agreed in that settlement to take away the cables however now says it’s at an “deadlock” with the CSPA relating to elimination. “On this matter, AT&T has at all times maintained that its lead-clad telecommunications cables pose no hazard to those that work and play within the waters of Lake Tahoe, however in 2021, AT&T agreed to take away them merely to keep away from the expense of litigation,” an AT&T lawyer on the agency Paul Hastings wrote yesterday in a letter to the plaintiff that was connected to the courtroom submitting.
AT&T mentioned “the events ought to agree to keep up these cables in place to allow additional evaluation by any certified and unbiased celebration, together with the EPA, and permit the protection of those cables to be litigated with goal scientific proof fairly than sensationalized media protection. To do in any other case would give the misimpression that these cables current a well being threat, which they don’t, and would destroy proof obligatory for all related details to be made public in courtroom.”
To assist its argument, AT&T cited the nonprofit Environmental Protection Fund’s place that the EPA ought to examine underwater cables:
AT&T just isn’t alone on this conclusion. In actual fact, simply yesterday, in an open letter to the US Environmental Safety Company, the Environmental Protection Fund really useful that the “EPA ought to assess the situation of the underwater cables to find out their situation, their present and anticipated releases to the surroundings, and the dangers posed by their elimination or leaving them in place.” AT&T agrees.
The Environmental Protection Fund’s assertion was relating to underwater cables basically and never particular to Lake Tahoe.
AT&T denies confirming it will take away cables
AT&T’s stance that it will not take away the Lake Tahoe cables any time quickly is outwardly a shock to the plaintiff. The CSPA mentioned in a courtroom submitting final week that in a Zoom assembly on July 10, “AT&T confirmed that it’s ready to start the elimination course of on September 6, 2023, so long as the brand new allow request that AT&T submitted to State Parks in Might is accredited by State Park.”
AT&T’s submitting mentioned the corporate by no means “confirmed” that it’s ready to start out the cable elimination course of on September 6.
The CSPA argues that the lead-covered cables “have leached, are leaching, and can proceed to leach lead into the waters of Lake Tahoe, and that such leaching could current an imminent and substantial endangerment to human well being or the surroundings.”
