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Comment by dbg31415 | Hacker News Reader

I think this bill is a great idea. All of my hassles with AT&T and Google wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was being built.

Time Warner installed cable when the homes were being built. Then about 10 years ago AT&T went through and installed their "fiber" (their words, not mine), and tore up everyone's lawn in the process. This last year Google came in... and just made an enormous mess[1]... but the good news is they did lay pipe that other services can run cables through.

[1] I've commended on this recently in other posts -- Google isn't supervising the contractors they hire in Austin and the work is getting done shoddy... and Google hasn't been doing much of anything to remedy the situation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878909

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885886

http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z

View on HN

> and tore up everyone's lawn in the process

They just did this to mine and a few neighbors, even though they weren't supposed to. They had a Ditch Witch (DW) Directional Drill [0] that would tunnel under all the lawns, and only make a little hole every few houses. However, they didn't count on the coral rock, and the DW broke, so they had to bring in a bigger one which was going to take a week or two.

Well, they weren't getting paid if they weren't working, so instead of waiting for the bigger DW, they started digging trenches through the lawns. They did this to about 5% of them, with mine being the last one before the new DW got there. They did resod, but it's all dying because they just threw the dirt back in without putting the soil back on top, and everyone's tree rings and other landscaping are ruined.

All the neighbors are pissed. I had to explain to a lot of them what fiber even was. They still don't understand why I'm too excited to be pissed.

[0] https://www.ditchwitch.com/directional-drills#content-304

Or for me, accidentally cut the copper line to the rest of the neighborhood and had to dig a trench in my front yard to repair it. I'm on the corner and towards the front of the subdivision, so I had quite a bit of work being done over the past 6 months.

And they leave a pile of dirt, plant the wrong grass sod, put the sprinklers in the wrong place, and then tell you that they are done because it's just "cosmetic" issues left? Sounds so familiar.

Time to get your hands dirty, then!

They cut my neighbors water main in the process, and then blamed it on inaccurate (spray painted) markings. I'm a novice, but even I could tell that the markings were accurate. They also managed to put a speed bump in his driveway when they were tunneling under it - big enough to spill a beer. I got pretty lucky with my dead grass and misshapen tree rings.

Where do you live? Miami area?

I'm not a big fan of disclosing my specific location on the internet, so I'll just say South Florida. ;-)

Understood. My contact issue is in my profile. I saw you might be a "neighbor" and wanted to say hello. It is pretty easy to discern where I live, but I have become inured to the risk. :)

"All of my hassles with AT&T and Google wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was being built."

This law would apply only to federally funded road projects, which likely carry the vast bulk of auto traffic but are a small fraction of the total road mileage; it will not affect most neighborhood streets with lawns.

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