The amazing story of KUDZU

(Wiki ain't the only pebble on the beach)

(Wiki ain't the only pebble on the beach)

Thanks, JT.

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I'm not sure because if we imported them to get rid of the eucalyptus we would end up needing camels to get rid of the koalas.
A non native species is always potentially dangerous to native ones.

That's the beautiful part, when winter comes, they'll all freeze to death!

Sorry, you walked right into a Simpsons joke.

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It started growing up telephone poles and pulling down the wires and causing no end of havoc.

Are there still many overhead telephone wires in the south? When I travelled across the northern part of the USA by rail this year I was surprised to see that all the lineside telegraph poles had been abandoned and their wires were mostly gone.

In the UK we now have very few overhead telephone wires (the railways being the last to use them - but they abandoned them about 25 years ago). We buried ours but I suspect that the USA might have gone straight from overhead wires to wireless.

I can't speak for the rest of the country but San Francisco is full of overhead wires.

Hawaii, too, is "full of overhead wires."

This is one of my ... favorite topics ... or "pet peeves."

My contention is that underground installation of utility hardware makes the landscape far more attractive than overhead installation. The Hawaii Electric Light Company argues that underground installation is 1) far more expensive than overhead, and 2) virtualliy impossible due to the difficulty of digging a trench in the volcanic soil. Why, then, I ask, doesn't the Water Department put their pipes up on poles ????

However, it's not purely a matter of esthetics. Engineering "studies" show that the cost would be overcome by the fact that underground installation pays vast dividends after three years due to the elimination of maintenance costs.

I believe that the Public Utilities Commission is influenced by the powerful IBEW -- the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- whose jobs depend on having poles to climb.

As it happens, although most of our telephone cables are now buried, in the country many of the power cables are still overhead (as is mine to my own house).

In Partridge Green we have frequent power cuts (often lasting only minutes- although we were off for 30 hours last winter). But even these short power cuts cause all the clocks to need re-setting and, until I paid for an uninterruptible power supply, crashed my computer. In my previous house in Reigate (with underground supply) power cuts were far less frequent.

The power lines are overhead in most areas here in Los Angeles North too. (It used to be Portland)
Where they're underground, rain enters the vaults and shorts lines, so it's a lose/lose situation here, it seems.

Chiming in from ol' central NJ-- here, our pole-mounted wires continue to crowd out one's skyview, & the wires are apparently as old as the 1920's housing stock. In the rain, a fine misty static seeps into one's telephone conversation.

Like Richard, I am surprised by the obtrusiveness of overhead cables in American cityscapes. As he says, over here such cables are usually run underground, apart from in some country districts.

In the next street to my home there is a solitary telephone pole. It is the only one for miles around and has wires leading to half a dozen or so of the neighbouring houses. I have often idly wondered why it is the only one in the area. Everybody else is connected by underground cable.

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In the next street to my home there is a solitary telephone pole. It is the only one for miles around and has wires leading to half a dozen or so of the neighbouring houses. I have often idly wondered why it is the only one in the area. Everybody else is connected by underground cable.

This is still quite common and is by way of being a transitional system. All the main distribution poles were removed from trunk routes and buried many years ago, but in some closes and cul-de-sacs where there were several houses situated close together, the trunk cables would be taken up a single pole and then distributed overhead to the various house in the close. My old house in Reigate had exactly that system.

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Originally posted by arnie:
Like Richard, I am surprised by the obtrusiveness of overhead cables in American cityscapes. As he says, over here such cables are usually run underground, apart from in some country districts.

Don't you know us Yanks yet? Nobody's figured out how to do it at a profit yet! (Think health system...)

What I find most distressing is that sometimes the wiring is both above and below! Around here, there are wires above all over the place, and yet every time they need to work on the connection boxes, etc, they need to go under the streets. What is THAT about?

The problem is, of course, that in most cases the roads and buildings antecede the utilities. It's easier to install poles and overhead wires than it is to dig trenches. So it's an ongoing compromise between providing the services and not inconveniencing the residents.

Most new developments (in the UK anyway) have underground services installed as the place is planned and built.