COUNCIL STRAYS FROM POLICY ON UTILITY LINES

Against the warnings of much of the city staff, the Cape Girardeau City Council Monday voted to allow the developer of a new subdivision to bury its electrical wires and water mains in the same ditch.

Keith Deimund, developer of the 15-lot Lynwood Hills Estates subdivision, contended that the practice is safe and violates no codes. He is developing the subdivision just west of Route W and north of Lexington Road just outside the city limits.

However, in return for city water, Deimund has agreed to follow city codes and be annexed into Cape Girardeau.

In December, city engineer Mark Lester wrote to Union Electric to tell the company that the city would not allow it to bury its wires in the same trench as the water main. Although the city has enacted no code that prohibits the practice, Lester said it has been the city's longstanding practice.

"The city believes very strongly that this is a severe hazard to any city, contractor or private party that may have to do any kind of work on this water line or in its immediate vicinity," Lester wrote.

In February, Lester wrote a letter to Deimund that said that if electrical cables were to be installed in the conduit, the city would shut off water service. Instead of complying, Deimund decided to take his case to the City Council.

He came with Larry Simon, supervising engineer for Union Electric in Cape Girardeau. Simon said that the National Electric Safety Code calls for 12 inches between buried cable and water mains. He said the conduit exceeded that recommendation.

In addition, Simon brought a section of schedule 40 PVC, the kind of conduit Union Electric buried the wire in, and attacked it with an ax in front of the council. He held it up, pointed out that the blow only produced a small nick in the pipe, and said, "I don't think there's a man alive who can put a hole through this conduit."

"What about a backhoe?" said Tom Taggart, division manager for Alliance Water Resources, the company that runs the city water system.

Simon said anyone digging would know the conduit was nearby and so would dig by hand. Taggart said that forcing his employees to dig by hand would increase costs.

Taggart said that the 7,000-volt wires in the conduit, although designed to ground automatically if they were hit or if water were present, could malfunction. "At 7,000 volts, it would most likely be a fatality."

But council members wondered how the city could enforce a requirement that isn't part of its code. "We're trying to impose this on someone when we have no basis for it in regulations and code," said Councilman Richard Eggiman.

The council unanimously voted to accept the subdivision as-is when it is annexed.

Afterwards, Councilman James Williamson submitted a motion for the city staff to recommend a policy on buried pipes. That also passed unanimously.

In other business, the council heard from Michael Charek, a resident who has a sprinkler system installed on his lawn. He protested the city's enforcement of a code that mandates homeowners paying for annual inspections to make sure the backflow valve on his system works.