Lights Out!

One fun aspect of writing this blog is the tremendous knowledge I gain by carefully reading newspapers and scouring the Internet looking for interesting stories to expand and share.  So when I saw a story in the Chicago Tribune  about the energy-saving street lights on Lake Shore Drive, I thought, “Didn’t I write about that already?”  I discovered I did, but not with the latest twist in the story.

On August 10^th, I wrote a blog, "A Glowing Recommendation," about how some streets in Chicago were getting new metal-halide street lights that will glow white instead of yellow.  

The Sun-Times story in August that I wrote about said, “So far, about 2,300 lights along Lake Shore Drive from 71st Street to Hollywood Avenue, nearly 3,000 lights along Western Avenue from Howard Street to 119th Street and about 300 miles of alleyways across the city are scheduled for replacement.” 

What I enjoyed about writing the street-light story was figuring out how many street lights were going to be installed in the 300 miles of alleyways if we knew that there were 3,000 in the distance from 71^st to Hollywood Avenue.  I ended the posting by commenting, “Luckily, federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy is paying for the new lights and Chicago will save about $2 million a year in electricity costs.  No scandal here, just some interesting mathematical facts!”

I was wrong!  It turns out there IS a scandal of sorts!  Ten percent of the lights don’t work and the city is stuck paying the repair bill!

The Tribune reported  that the streetlight installer’s $1,162,624 contract was paid with federal stimulus money. "All repair and maintenance are paid for by the contractor," CDOT spokesman Brian Steele said early last week. "The city does not accept responsibility for a new fixture until we inspect each installation."

Steele was wrong!  Only issues with the new fixture heads are the contractor's responsibility.  As to the problems with the street lights, “The contractor installing the new streetlights found deficiencies, including faulty connections leading from the existing wiring to the poles, as well as bad circuitry, officials said. They added that they cannot put a price on the fixes until they figure out the problem's extent.”  There is nothing wrong with the fixtures themselves except the existing infrastructure of the city’s electrical wiring.

So while Chicago was fortunate to receive the energy-efficient street lights complimentary from the federal government, where is the money going to come from to make the repairs?   The city should have looked this gift horse in the mouth and seen its teeth were yellow.