The Linn County Commission, Evergy and Lan-tel officials have agreed on a plan that will enable county crews to work on ditches without tearing up newly installed fiber optic cable. (File photo)
By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com
MOUND CITY – On Monday, August 5, the Linn County Commissioners settled on an agreement with representatives from Evergy, Lan-Tel and Burns & McDonnell about fiber optic cable that was being installed on Yancy Road was on the Linn County road or right-of-way and was interfering with the county road crew efforts to clean out the ditches.
The permit for the fiber installation was approved in March 2023 and the project came to a stand still when Evergy had the contractors leave the area to install fiber optic cable in another area.
When the project was temporarily abandoned, conduit for the cable was left sticking out of the ground in a number of places in Linn County. The goal of this project is to connect the Evergy plant at La Cygne to the Wolf Creek in Burlington, Kan., with fiber optic cable.
On Monday, July 22, the commissioners met with the companies’ representatives and toured the area. At that time the Evergy representative said that he had not seen these issues before and would make sure the problems were corrected.
At Monday’s meeting, representatives from all three companies met with the commissioners and agreed there was a problem, the representatives were Rob Behler, Evergy manager of the network and telecommunications, Mike Mahoney engineer at Burns & McDonnell, and Scott Niemeyer co-owner of Lan-Tel.
The representatives, with Niemeyer speaking, proposed breaking up the project into four phases and work in one phase at a time alongside county employees. He said that they would work through those phases and get everything cleaned up and tied in.
Behler said that it was actually his decision to pause the work in Linn County in order to complete some work on the Missouri side before the Missouri rate case. He said the plan was as soon as that project was complete at the end of June, installation crews come back and finish up in Linn County.
“That’s one of the reasons for the delay and having stuff hanging out in the road,” said Behler. “I was not aware of the egregiousness of that.”
He said that he had met with the representatives of Burns & McDonnell and Lan-Tel and were going to be doing whatever was necessary.
“I think one of the mistakes that I’ve identified was, as we work through this the process as we run into those limited rights-of-way, we should be coming in and getting variances so that you all are aware that is happening and why it is happening,” said Behler. “The team is committed to doing that.”
Behler said that the county had brought up having a third-party inspector. He said that Evergy was paying Burns & McDonnell and that the county was welcome to deal directly with them, or the county could go through him to work with Burns & McDonnell.
“We want to make sure the county and citizens of the county are satisfied and happy with the work Evergy is doing,” said Behler. “You have my commitment that we will be involved until it is complete.”
Behler explained the importance of the work that was being done. He said that Evergy has two primary data centers, one is in Topeka at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad data center, which is Evergy’s primary data center. Evergy’s secondary data center is in downtown Kansas City, Mo.
“Right now the Wolf Creek Nuclear Power Plant has fiber going to BNSF and has connectivity there,” Behler said. “La Cygne has connectivity up north and into the Kansas City data center and also obviously the two data centers are connected east to west. What we don’t have is redundancy for that nuclear power plant’s connectivity.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants that; obviously, we want that. We don’t have redundancy at La Cygne as well, and so this is the last leg of the route. This will actually put fiber connecting La Cygne so LaCygne has north route and the south route to get back to our primary data center or our secondary data center, and Wolf Creek would enjoy the same. So that’s the reason we are doing that.”
Commission Chair Danny McCullough said it looked like they had a good plan moving forward. He asked them what their phases were.
Beeler said that they were committed to going wherever Jesse Walton, north shop road foreman, was going to work on ditches by staying in front of him so he is not going to have to dig around the fiber. He said that it would be whatever order the county wanted.
Public Works Director Shaun West said that it seemed that Boicourt was the area they should start on.
As a way to guarantee the agreement, Evergy will email the commissioners on the progress and location of the phases, the variances and the assurances that the variances will be recorded and delivered to us. West will be in charge of receiving the email and passing it on to the commissioners.
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