Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- Kevin McGeeney and Shauna Scott Bellaccomo discovered a mystery cable tied to their tree.
- After contacting several utility companies, Comcast confirmed the line was theirs.
- Comcast removed the line, explaining it was a temporary fix after a nearby fire.
WEST VALLEY CITY — When trees began shedding leaves last fall, Kevin McGeeney and Shauna Scott Bellaccomo first noticed a thick black cable tied to their plum tree out in the backyard.
"It's attached on three different places up here," McGeeney said of the tied-up utility line.
And the line isn't just, like, dangling in the branches. Somebody went to the trouble of cinching it to the tree, so it goes over a parking lot behind their home. Sometimes, bigger trucks in that lot snag the line while passing below.
"I'm afraid it'll pull the tree over and break the wall," said Bellaccomo.
Both say they have called every utility company they can think of in their area in trying to get it removed. Yet, it remains tied to their tree and they have no idea which utility is responsible.
"Nobody asked my permission to put this thing in my tree," McGeeney said.
All right, time for a little gum-shoe journalism. The KSL Investigators went to the other side of the McGeeney and Bellaccomo's wall and observed on the ground along the line's path flags for UTOPIA Fiber. So, I reached out to them.
A spokesperson responded saying those flags are marking "UTOPIA's existing underground conduit." UTOPIA doesn't own the line in the tree and after investigating, their tech is, "pretty positive it is a CenturyLink line."
So, I reached out to CenturyLink.
Its response?
Not it. "Our cable supervisor visited the homeowner and confirmed that the fiber in question is not our cable," a spokesperson told us.
But McGeeney says CenturyLink told him it's pretty positive the cable in question belongs to Comcast.
The third time wound up being the charm. We reached out to Comcast who in turn also sent a tech to investigate the mystery line and confirmed it indeed is its line tied to Bellaccomo and McGeeney's tree. Better yet, Comcast said it would do something about it.
Just like that, Comcast removed its line from the tree.
Comcast explained it put the line in the tree as a temporary fix after a fire broke out in the strip mall behind Ballccomo and McGeeney's home last summer. Comcast says it planned to remove the temporary line once construction to the damaged commercial building was complete.
