Utility pole maintenance

Annual inspections protect YEC’s infrastructure.

Aging infra­struc­ture, such as decay­ing util­i­ty poles, is a crit­i­cal con­cern for YEC because it could cause ser­vice reli­a­bil­i­ty to fal­ter and cre­ate safe­ty haz­ards. YEC is res­olute in pre­serv­ing its infra­struc­ture and active mea­sures are tak­en to do just that.

“Osmose Util­i­ties Ser­vices, Inc., annu­al­ly inspects approx­i­mate­ly 3,000 of YEC’s 50,000 poles to iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty poles that are rot­ten and need to be replaced,” says Den­ny Lynn, the co-op’s vice pres­i­dent of ener­gy deliv­ery. “They also look for defec­tive poles that are decay­ing, split or have dam­aged hard­ware that needs main­te­nance. In 2011 alone, Osmose found about 85 poles that had to be replaced and oth­ers in need of rou­tine main­te­nance. Most of these poles were locat­ed in the Hick­o­ry Grove/Smyrna area.”

Wood is an ide­al mate­r­i­al for util­i­ty poles. It’s a renew­able resource which is resilient and extreme­ly resis­tant to oxi­da­tion and cor­ro­sion. YEC’s wood poles are treat­ed with a preser­v­a­tive that extends their use­ful life to about 50 years.