NSP RESPONES TO STREET LIGHT
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Northern States Power Company
Normandale DIvIsion
5309 West 70th Street
Edma Minnesota 55435
Telephone (612) 941-2992
June 8, 1983
Mr. Bill Craig
City Manager
City of Hopkins
1010 First Street South
Hopkins, Mn 55343
Dear Mr. Craig:
This letter is in response to your letter dated May 5, 1983
regarding the possible acquisition of our residential ornamental
street lights.
As a general rule Northern States Power is reluctant to sell
any of our distribution facilities to our customers. The reasons
for this policy are many and would include the following:
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1. Difficulties may arise in physically separating
the purchased system from the rest of our facilities
particularly in regards to maintaining our electric
system integrity.
2. Portions of our distribution facilities are not
required to be built according to the National
Electric Code. Purchasers of our facilities
could incur substantial costs attempting to
bring the system to code and in so doing re-
ducing our libility as original system in-
sta llers.
3. Selling a street light system, particularly in
an existing underground area, poses at least one
additional concern that is most important. During
installation, street light cables are installed
in the same trench and probably immediately ad-
Jacent to our high voltage primary cable. By
selling the street light system, we would be
allowing a private contractor to do routine and/
or emergency maintanence very near our main dis-
tribution system. We try very hard to avoid that
kind of situation.
For these reasons, and others, we must decline your offer
to purchase our existing custom residential street light system.
( 2)
Of course the c~ty still has the option of asking us to
remove our 46 ornamental units and replacing them with your
own ornamental system. However, please be adv~sed that under
the current rate regulations as approved by the M~nnesota
Public Utilities Commiss~on, we would charge the city the
undepreicated value of the cable left in the ground and the
termination costs to remove the poles and fixtures. We
estimate that figure to be between ten and fifteen thousand
dollars.
I hope we have answered your question to your satisfaction.
Please contact Stu Fraser if there are additional concerns or
questions.
Sincerely,
';' II
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J.H. Mertz
Division General Manager
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