THUMBS DOWN to a report released earlier this week showing that FairPoint Communications has failed to keep up with its service requirements since workers went on strike in mid-October.
The report, filed to the Public Utilities Commission on Monday, showed that customer-reported service problems spiked in November and December, and that in both months more than 85 percent of the problems were not fixed within 24 hours.
That’s compared to 58.4 percent in October 2014 and 21.17 percent in October 2013. The PUC requires that no more than 12.35 percent of customer service problems take more than 24 hours to fix.
FairPoint also continues to miss benchmarks related to the number of customer appointments through the company’s fault.
“FairPoint was bad before and it’s getting worse,” said Maine’s public advocate, Tim Schneider.
As Schneider recently observed in an op-ed to this newspaper, Maine residents and businesses in rural parts of the state that have spotty cellphone service rely heavily on reliable landline service. For many, the loss of landline service for any amount of time is a safety issue.
That FairPoint’s service has plummeted shows the company, despite assurances, had an inadequate plan for dealing with the strike. It is also troubling that FairPoint was not meeting the PUC’s minimum requirements even before the strike began.
THUMBS UP to bills sponsored by Rep. Drew Gattine, D-Westbrook, and Sen. Tom Saviello, R-Wilton, that attempt to alleviate the problems caused by the high levels of arsenic found in well water in parts of Maine.
Gattine’s bill reportedly would mandate that wells are tested for arsenic before a home sale, while Saviello’s would strongly encourage testing while creating a fund to pay for education and possibly remediation for low-income Mainers.
A study released last April involving 272 schoolchildren from the Augusta area and York County, both places where a type of bedrock containing arsenic is found in abundance, showed that even low levels of arsenic can lower IQ levels by five or six points. A previous study estimated that 31 percent of wells in the Augusta area contain arsenic above the federal standard, which itself is higher than the levels studied in the IQ research.
Attempts to mandate testing have been stymied before, particularly by the real estate industry, so the bills likely will face opposition.
But lawmakers should come away from this session with a plan to make homeowners in high-risk areas more aware of the possible exposure to arsenic, and to make testing more widespread. The state also should see how it can provide resources for homeowners faced with high arsenic levels but who are unable to afford the costly water filter systems that mitigate the problem.
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