Double utility poles are illegal in Massachusetts, so why are there so many of them?
Once you see them, you can't un-see them. Double utility poles — when a new pole is put in the ground, and the old one is cut off and attached to it — litter the sides of Massachusetts roadways in nearly every city and town.
They are eyesores and unsafe, and most of them are illegal.
Yet NewsCenter 5 found the number of double utility poles across the state is rising.
Among the double utility poles added to the state's ranks last year: the one in Marc McGeehan's Winchester front yard.
"It just doesn't look safe," he said. "You've got these two brackets holding this secondary pole up there."
In January 2023, McGeehan says a car crashed into the old utility pole. Eversource crews came out right away, cut off the bottom of the old pole, installed a new one into the ground, and stapled the old pole — with all the wires and a streetlight still attached — to the new one. But that was it.
"The light has not been moved. The wires have not been moved. Nothing's been moved," McGeehan said.
Eversource "had three trucks here the day the accident happened. I'm just shocked they did not move their wires over at the same time," he said.
Winter, spring, summer and fall came and went, and nothing happened.
"I did call three, four, five times," McGeehan said. "And then I contacted my state rep's office. They tried August, September and October, and nobody responded to them either."
Double poles like McGeehan's aren't just an annoyance. They're illegal. Massachusetts state law gives utility or telephone companies 90 days to transfer the wires and remove the old pole. The problem is that state law lacks any type of penalty if a company simply ignores it.
State records show the number of double poles in Massachusetts has been steadily growing — from 14,931 in 2019 to 18,917 now. Of that number, the vast majority — 16,749 — have been up longer than 90 days. That's 89%.
It’s also not clear how many poles aren’t even counted in the records the utilities are required to submit to the state. Despite being in place for a year, the double pole in front of McGeehan’s home is not listed in the database.
State Rep. Tackey Chan, D-Quincy, has had enough and is now pushing a bill that would start fining pole owners after six months. The fines begin at $10 per day but grow to $100 per day after a year.
"It is per pole, per day. So obviously, as we know, there's a lot of poles and the fining could be very substantial," Chan said. "Homeowners shouldn't have to look at these poles, and obviously, they could become a hazard, especially if there's a storm or perhaps a car accident."
However it happens, McGeehan doesn't think it's too much to ask Eversource to simply do its job since it is that company's pole.
"It should not be this difficult," he said.
The day after NewsCenter 5 contacted Eversource about this story, the company sent a crew to move their electricity wires to the new pole. An Eversource spokesman said the delay was because it required a brief electricity outage, and there's a school up the street. That work could have been completed last summer.
None of the other wires on the pole or the streetlight have yet been moved, 13 months after the initial crash.