In 2021, AT&T agreed to remove lead-clad cabling currently in service in the Lake Tahoe region of California and Nevada. Though the lawsuit that prompted that decision is now labeled as “resolved,” AT&T has placed itself back in court. As Reuters reports, AT&T now says its research indicates that accessing and removing the cabling could be more hazardous than keeping it in place.
AT&T has stopped the cable removal project for the moment. In its new legal filing, the company said the lead-clad cabling should remain undisturbed at this time to “permit further analysis by any qualified and independent interested party, including the EPA, and allow the safety of these cables to be litigated with objective scientific evidence rather than sensationalized media coverage.”
The coverage AT&T refers to is several Wall Street Journal articles suggesting that AT&T and other telecoms have lead cables and poles in and around Lake Tahoe, and the U.S., that are potentially dangerous. A drop in AT&T stock prices occurred shortly after the reports were published.
AT&T contends that its findings “differ dramatically” from the information presented by the news source. Expert testing by AT&T noted that the lead-clad cables “represent less than 10 percent of its copper footprint of roughly two million sheath miles of cable, the overwhelming majority of which remains in active service.”
The telecom pointed to a letter sent to the EPA by the non-governmental organization Environmental Defense Fund. The letter urged the EPA to “assess the condition of the underwater cables to determine their condition, their current and anticipated releases to the environment, and the risks posed by their removal or leaving them in place.” In its court filing, AT&T asserts that the Wall Street Journal funded the EDF study in hope of obtaining “the result it wanted: high lead levels.”
Distancing himself from the legal matter, Tom Neltner, Environmental Defense Fund’s Safer Chemicals Senior Director, has said that the group was referring to the lead cables in general, not the Lake Tahoe situation in particular. He declined to comment on whether or not AT&T needed to take immediate action, stating only that “The point is, [that the] EPA needs to investigate, figure it out.”
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