Don't Shoot the Lines

As hunting season quickly approaches and our high-speed internet service continues to expand across the Eastern Shore, I’d like to remind our members to take caution when shooting around overhead powerlines. Here at Choptank Electric Cooperative and Choptank Fiber, we are dedicated to providing your farms and rural communities with the most reliable and cost-effective electricity and the best quality internet available.

Many of the utility poles around farms and hunting land now support fiberoptic cable in addition to our power distribution lines. These fiber lines are very fragile, containing up to 144 glass tubes in one cable. If hit by a shotgun blast, the fibers will break much more easily than powerlines, and each individual strand requires time-consuming splicing repair.

When fiber cables are shot, homes and businesses along that line lose access to the internet until a repair can be made manually. Not only does this put homes at risk, but several local 911 services lease our fiber for emergency communications. If the broken line is located over a field of crops, getting in before harvest is difficult.
 
Under Maryland law, the cost of the repair is borne by the landowner or the hunter who damaged the line. The average repair to a shot-damaged fiber cable runs from $15,000 to $20,000. We want to protect you from that expense and protect everyone who needs the electricity and internet service on our lines.
 
Visit our website at www.choptankelectric.coop/DSTL to review basic hunter electrical and powerline safety rules to follow. Thank you for helping to keep the lines safe during this hunting season.

Sincerely,

Mike Malandro, President & CEO