by Michael J. Marino
Three guest speakers attended the August 10, 2022 meeting of the Huntley Project Irrigation District (HPID): Nemont representative Sean McDuffee, 811 Call Center director Clint Kalfell, and Jim Tuell, a right-of-way specialist from Nemont. They were invited to explain the position of their respective organizations regarding this question (introduced at last month’s meeting): Is HPID liable to pay $962.00 in damages to Nemont for severing one of their phone lines during an emergency culvert repair amid the June 2022 flooding?
Sean McDuffee described his professional background in both irrigation and telecommunications. His first job was digging ditches and he said, “Never once did I dig without calling in and locating first.” When he changed careers to telecom with US West, McDuffee said he saw “hundreds of lines get hit,” and often he was the first on-scene at such incidents.
“My first question was always: Did you call in and locate?” said McDuffee. The answer he heard “99% of the time” was ‘yes.’ If it wasn’t ‘yes,’ then McDuffee’s next action would be to ask for their mailing address so he could “send them a bill.”
McDuffee acknowledged there were some complaints that Nemont is “hard to get a hold of,” and brought contact cards for the board members.
811 director Clint Kalfell said after doing some research, he concluded HPID has not been calling in locate requests before digging. “That’s concerning,” said Kalfell, “because we have eight different clients with lines here in your irrigation district.” Furthermore, Kalfell stated that if a trunk line – a major fiber optic phone line that connects several different regions – is cut, the repair bill would total somewhere around $30,000.00.
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