Oswego (WSYR-TV) - So the power goes out in your house – and just your house. All the neighbors have still got electricity; it's a problem with your service.
The question becomes: Who's responsible to pay for the repairs? In this one of Your Stories, an Oswego man was surprised to find out the answer.
It was about two weeks ago, at 4:00 a.m. at a home on Oswego's east side.
“We lost power to half the house. In the living room, the power went out. But it was just certain sections of the house where it went out,” says homeowner Robin Emond.
No breakers had tripped, so out went the call to the power company.
National Grid came right away and immediately they discovered, the electricity was good when it reached Robin's property. But from this point, the underground service to Robin's house, had failed somewhere underground, and that was Robin's problem.
“They tested the line coming in, they said their end was good. We had what they call a ‘bad leg’ coming to the house,” says Emond.
Somewhere, between the manhole outside and the meter on the house, the underground line needed fixing.
“I had talked to [National Grid] about doing it,” Emond says. “They said, ‘no we don't do that. You have to do it and you're responsible for it.’ That, you own the line going into the house, up to the meter.”
Sure enough, on the utility's website, it says "National Grid will repair overhead electrical lines that run from the utility pole to your residence. We will also maintain the electric meter ... you must make repairs to other parts of your electrical system."
“They said ‘we just don't do the underground lines,’ says Emond.
Robin told NewsChannel 9 because he knew an electrician who did him a favor; the underground fix only cost about $300 and two days of work. Otherwise, it would've been a $1,200 job.
CLICK HERE to visit a National Grid webpage with full details on your responsibilities when it comes to power lines.
