Dear Editor,
In mid-2018 the county council voted to close the recycle centers on Wednesdays and added days to the holiday calendar. The county is continuing to grow in population, trash disposal and revenue, so there were widespread complaints in the cut back of this essential service.
This was one of the primary issues I ran on, adding my voice to those urging the council to restore the Monday to Saturday, 7:30 am to 7:20 pm schedule.
Credit to the county council and the administration, they heard the voices. First they reopened the Easley center (Old Liberty Road) on Wednesdays. They then reopened all the centers on Wednesdays, but cut the hours from 8 am to 6 pm. Finally, they restored the full schedule last week — Monday through Saturday, from 7:30 am to 7:20 pm. Bravo!
Another issue that came to the forefront recently was high speed internet service (HSIS), or the lack of it in rural areas. When Covid-19 hit and with the onset of e-learning, telemedicine and more employees working from home, the lack of HSIS came to light.
On the bright side, everyone now recognizes HSIS is an essential utility. Additionally, those lacking this service you now have plenty of advocates on your side including school districts, business, county council, the state legislature, and even the US Congress. For example, the last time I checked in Pickens County there were 70 teachers and staff, and students in 1,830 homes who lacked high speed internet.
On the other side of the coin, pushing out HSIS to all is a daunting challenge that at best will take years to implement.
Broadly speaking internet service can be delivered via a cell tower, satellite or a wire network. A copper or fiber network is the most reliable and preferred. AT&T has the largest wire network nationwide and provides internet service via U-Verse to many. However, AT&T doesn’t have an interest in expanding its network to the rural areas mainly because the network is quite old, labor intensive to maintain[A1] and putting in the extra equipment to reach rural users is not economically beneficial to the company. Short of the US Congress mandating it, I do not think AT&T is the solution.
The state legislature is taking some baby-steps to inch the process along. One includes spending $300,000 to map where HSIS is lacking. Second, is a short-term patch to spend $20 million to purchase hot spots for students who lack internet capability. Another proposal is to spend $50 million on HSIS infra-structure.
Local utility companies have expressed an interest in providing HSIS. A year or so ago, many received a survey from the Blue Ridge Coop trying to gauge interest. Blue Ridge has an electricity network it could leverage to provide HSIS to rural areas. However, I estimate the cost would be about $100 million to put in the equipment, run the wires, etc. And I don’t think anyone will see it as fair for their electricity customers pay to subsidize it. Additionally, Blue Ridge is not a common carrier like AT&T, so in many instances they’ll have to pay franchise and right-of-way fees.
The long-term solution will probably have two elements: One, the US Congress and/ or state legislature will create the regulatory environment, change some laws and incentivize the private sector to make the necessary infra-structure investments and/ or they’ll partially subsidize these providers when it comes to the required infra-structure.
Alex Saitta
Pickens, SC