Town fed up with shoddy work

Moorcroft is not going to tolerate shoddy work from Black Hills Energy contractor, E&S, said the council on Monday. The Gillette operations supervisor was asked to attend Monday’s council meeting to address the myriad complaints and resolve the issues perpetrated by the contractor, but did not appear.

At Monday’s meeting of the governing body, the quality of the contractor’s work was nonetheless the focus of discussion.

Councilman Owen Mathews noted his experience with them.

“I haven’t been real impressed with the way they went through with this. There are reports of people coming home to holes in their back yard where they come in and rerun everything. I caught them going right across my yard to [install] my neighbors [line],” he said.

He said that the crews expressed, “absolutely no concern for the community and their customers in this town”.

E&S also cut across the private property managed by Councilman Paul Smoot and Town Attorney Jim Peck advised that such an action is not customary.

The crew cut RT Communications’ phone line when they dug in the yard of one Moorcroft resident. The individual employs a medical assistance device.

Mayor Dick Claar reported, “They just buried the line.” Claar called RT and they fixed the damage.

Councilman Ben Glenn and Public Works Director Cory Allison had examined a patch E&S had put in a street after cutting into the surface.

“They just put the [same] cement piece right back in there, noted Allison. “That’s got to be re-poured.” This will allow moisture under the roadway.

“If they’re not doing the job up to snuff and they didn’t come tonight,” Councilman Dale Petersen stated, “We should shut them down.”

The body unanimously approved stopping all remaining work of the contractor until such time that a representative attends the next meeting and addresses these issues of sub-par work.

Allison reported that the crews have not cleaned the areas of previous work, saying, “There are big piles of dirt everywhere.”

He said Tuesday afternoon that he attempted to locate the E&S crew without success throughout the morning and has made several attempts to reach Wilson via phone to stop all work, but has received no response. There are approximately seven remaining areas waiting to be replace.