Shedding new light

By Erin Nicholes - 09/26/2008

ANACONDA — After a century of reliably lighting the town, historic street lamps have left many residents in the dark lately.

"You'd do better with a birthday candle," said county Chief Executive Rebecca Guay.

But a new project aims to shed light on the problem.

The 2008-2009 Anaconda-Deer Lodge County budget calls for $150,000 to be spent on repairs and upgrades to the town's street-lighting system.

Glass-globed, antique post lamps illuminate Anaconda neighborhoods as glowing nods to the community's roots, and 100-year-old light poles still mark the route of the trolley that once took Anaconda Co. workers to the smelter and home again.

But in the past year especially, the long trustworthy lights have been fickle after a waterline replacement project ripped through wiring and a severe wind storm ruined transformers. Despite temporary fixes, lights have been dim, sporadic or entirely dark throughout town.

"We are going to try and throughout the winter determine where our biggest trouble spots are," said Larry Sturm, county road supervisor. "When you're working with such an antiquated system, it can be trying at best." While a financial crisis left the county struggling to repair infrastructure for several years, the budget is now healthy enough to start tackling projects, and lighting tops the list, Guay said.

"The money's in the lighting fund, and that's what it's there for," she said.

The dollars come from user fees collected within the lighting district, which encompasses most of the town. The cash will be used to buy equipment to replace antiquated wiring, pour new concrete bases for antique posts and install high-efficiency bulbs.

The new bulbs, currently in use on Main Street, are safer and more economical.

Two full-time county electricians are already working on the project, starting by pinpointing the most serious problem areas.

"We're going to be doing some mapping so we can lay these out in say a grid where we can tie everything together with one central junction box or source point," Sturm said. "As we go down through the years we can do another section and feed off of the same junction box." In the spring, the county plans to begin replacing wiring, which could require cutting narrow trenches in streets, and pouring new bases for lamps.

The concept is simple, but the details are likely to be tricky.

Currently the lights work on an outdated direct-current system energized by a transformer in Mill Creek.

"The system is like an old string of Christmas tree lights — when one lights shorts out, they all go out," Guay said. "Finding the cause of an outage can be particularly challenging since a short in one area can cause an outage clear across town." And shorts in wiring have caused some interesting geological effects beneath Anaconda's streets.

As the rubber-like insulation on the wiring has broken down, the heat from arcing wires has fused dirt, sand and other materials to create chunks of rock that in some instances resembles obsidian.

While the project is underway, it will be a while before all dark streetlights are turned on, Guay said.

"We've got a lot of them," she said.

Meanwhile, residents can help with the project by reporting outages and requesting repairs to bases, poles and globes at 563-4000.

— Reporter Erin Nicholes may be reached at erin.nicholes@lee.net