Md. Town's Holiday Glow Is Zapped

By Mary Otto
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 19, 2005

LONACONING, Md. -- Every year, Christmas lights glittered in this little coal town.

They were like ordinary light bulbs, but tinted in every color, and the Goodwill Fire Co. strung them, pole to pole, building to building, and they cast a magical spell.

Every year, the lights reminded the older folks of times past, when Lonaconing was a thriving hub, where the silk mill hummed on Georges Creek and there was a movie theater on Main Street where Santa gave out oranges.

Those days are gone, and so are the twinkling lights. Disputes with utility companies about safety violations have left the town dark this December. Even the snow is covered in coal dust, the residue of a 21-ton coal spill on Main Street 12 days ago.

"There have always been Christmas lights -- even during World War II," said Betty Fazenbaker, 81, pausing at noon at the town luncheonette. "I don't know who is to blame."

Around Lonaconing, that remains a point of contention.

Verizon Maryland Inc. and Allegheny Power, which own the utility poles in this Western Maryland town, say safety was at issue. The companies' officials say that they offered to help the town correct National Electric Safety Code violations and get the lights up in time for Christmas but that the town chose not to.

The town officials say the offer was too little and too late.

"I have no lights," said John W. Coburn Jr., mayor of the town of 1,100 about 150 miles northwest of Washington. "How did you help us? I'd look up that word 'help' in the dictionary."

The trouble started in July, when after doing things the same way, year after year, something changed. The old light bulbs were becoming unreliable, so the town's Christmas Light Decoration Committee decided to invest more than $3,000 in new strings of lights.

The committee members also decided they would need to install new outlets and sensors on the utility poles. So with an eye toward a Nov. 20 lighting ceremony, the town sent a work order to Allegheny Power.

"We put in the work order in September," said committee secretary Michael Staup. The decoration committee stayed busy through September and October, planning a bike raffle fundraiser, ordering new hooks and wires to string the new lights from pole to pole and building to building, just how people in Lonaconing liked them.

But the work order sent to Allegheny Power started a new set of wheels turning.

"If they had just gone up and hooked up the lights like in the past, they'd be up there right now," said Allegheny Power spokesman Allen Staggers. "Because they asked for more power connections, that triggered an inspection process that is not done year in and year out."

Or as Fazenbaker, at the luncheonette, put it: "If they had just put them up, nobody would have said anything. But they wanted to do things according to Hoyle."

The bad news started to hit in November.

First there was a letter from Verizon to the mayor about the dangers of illegal attachments to utility poles. It warned "that posting of any signs, banners, Christmas Decorations or balloons onto poles without permission is illegal and can be prosecuted as trespassing."

Town Council member Sandra K. Wilt said that if she were still a footloose 20-year-old, instead of 53 with a job and a daughter to raise, she probably would have committed the trespassing herself to put up those lights.

"I'd have gone to jail for the lights when I was younger," she said.

But the utility companies were not about to disregard the dangers. The Maryland State Highway Administration got involved. Town officials were informed that most of Lonaconing's poles were only 40 feet tall, instead of the required 45 feet, which would mean the Christmas lights would hang too low over Main Street. An 18-foot clearance would be needed from curb to curb.

"If a wire is hanging at 15 feet, a truck could snag it. It could snap a pole, and someone could get seriously injured," Verizon spokeswoman Sandra Arnette said.

"We never said the town should not hang the lights. But safety is the first thing."

Verizon had worked with the town of Havre de Grace in northern Maryland to resolve similar problems, she said.

In Lonaconing, November turned to December, and town officials continued to talk with Verizon and Allegheny Power.

Allegheny Power agreed to send a lineman to town the second week of December to work on some of the acceptable poles. But the town would need to remove all existing lighting attachments and install new attachments on each pole to meet specific safety standards -- and hire specialized workers to do it, something the town's tiny budget could ill afford.

"They gave us a list of all of the poles and what they needed," Coburn said. "But some of the needs are out of the town's budget."

Overwhelmed, the Town Council voted unanimously to abandon the lights this Christmas.

In an effort to salvage some holiday spirit, the Christmas Light Decoration Committee bought some electric deer figures and trees to stake into the ground around town. But by that time, the ground had frozen solid.

"It's hard to get anything in the ground here now," Staup said on a 20-degree morning last week. "We can't even get Christmas wreaths in the graveyard."

In one last attempt to make a holiday statement, town workers have inflated a large green Grinch, the famous Christmas-hating character created by Dr. Seuss.

The Grinch now smiles his fiendish smile in Fountain Park on Main Street, where the coal truck spilled, right next to the Verizon office. He guards a carefully lettered sign that reads, "Who really did steal Christmas from Lonaconing?"