Recently, the Wrangell and Petersburg Boroughs helped one another with a ‘handshake agreement’ that sent Wrangell’s 80-foot Line Truck over to its neighboring municipality for about a week. Petersburg crews worked fast to trim trees close to powerlines before sending the vehicle back on the Friday morning ferry.
“We’re trimming over top of the power lines where the snow builds up and makes problems,” said Petersburg Line Foreman Scott Newman. “We’ve got some of it done and still have a lot more to do. Some of the poles are really far off the road, and they’re pretty hard to get done.”
The Wrangell truck is able to move tree- trimmers closer to trees located farther from the roadways.
Newman estimated that his crews had trimmed “several tons” of limbs already, focusing on some the worst areas in the borough. “We didn’t get it for very long this time, but we got a lot of trouble zones taken care of. We appreciate getting the truck from Wrangell, for them letting us use it.”
Sandy Beach Road was one of the areas crews spent the most time on, working their way up and down stretches of the street on Monday which were blocked off from traffic.
“It’s one of those pieces of equipment that you don’t use all that often, but boy, when you need it, it’s the only thing that will work,” said Clay Hammer, Wrangell Power & Light Superintendent.
Petersburg’s own PMP&L superintendent, Joe Nelson, had approached Hammer around late July, looking to borrow the rig for a few projects, he said.
The truck was acquired by Wrangell in about 1998, when the second phase of the Tyee transmission line maintenance project was concluding, he said. The borough picked it up at surplus prices afterwards, but comparing it to a more recently acquired 50-foot line truck, purchased at about $200,000, he estimated the equipment at approximately $300,000 in initial value. Though no agreement has yet been formalized, he added that he and Nelson had been bouncing around the idea of sharing the maintenance costs on the vehicle and sharing access to it.
“It’s a pretty big investment to have it sitting the whole time,” he said. “We do our best to help each other out and this was an opportunity for us to pay it forward a little bit. They needed some help and we’re just helping them out, basically.”
The two municipalities have a long history of cooperative agreements and offers of aid, said Jeff Jabush, Wrangell Borough manager, recounting a time when both of Wrangell’s garbage trucks went out of commission unexpectedly, and “Petersburg had offered us the use of a garbage truck they had and they weren’t using. The line truck was something we had most of the work done, so it’s one of those things where it makes sense to help each other out. Most of our department heads have a great relationship with their counterparts and I know we all work well together. Sometimes it’s our turn to help over there and sometimes they help over here.”
Reader Comments(0)