Fiber company hit Lexington gas line. Officials say it risked fire, must change how it digs
A fiber optic cable company whose digging activity has caused repeated problems in the town of Lexington, has again had its work halted after hitting gas lines last weekend. After its latest mishap shut down a neighborhood, the company has been told it will not be allowed to continue its work until town officials are satisfied with how it plans to change its operations going forward.
The news follows a nearly two-hour meeting Thursday between Ripple Fiber, town officials and a half-dozen other agencies that highlighted concerns about the company’s operations in Lexington County.
Lexington Mayor Hazel Livingston started the meeting by reading a letter to Ripple Fiber President Gregory Wilson signed off on by the town council criticizing the impact his company has had on the town.
“It appears that Ripple is more concerned with speed and not taking into consideration the disruptions that happen to our citizens every time there is a utility hit,” the mayor read.
The letter also noted that Ripple had not gotten the required franchise agreement with the town to do the work that caused so much disruption last week, which “is not a formality,” the letter said.
Lexington issued a stop-work order against Ripple on Saturday, after the company’s digging activity reportedly damaged multiple Dominion Energy gas lines. The gas strike last Friday caused a loss of service to the Woodcreek neighborhood, which was also closed off for a time by Lexington police while repair work was done.
This is the second time in the past year that Lexington has ordered Ripple to stop work in the town. In March, Lexington temporarily halted work over water line strikes, unrepaired work on lawns and even reports of Ripple employees going to the bathroom in residents’ bushes.
Officials from various agencies underlined that these kinds of strikes are not just an annoyance but can be dangerous to both workers and residents.
“I have seen a worker burn to death from hitting a gas line,” said Lexington County Fire Marshal Dean Anderson. “And if a four-inch gas line gets lit off, the house it’s in front of is going to be gone.”
Even short of a fire, responding to such a call — and ensuring a whole neighborhood can be safely reconnected — can tie up firefighters for hours, Anderson said.
Wilson, Ripple’s president, told the gathering that his company is striving to work as best they can with a minimum of disruption to the town. It’s not in his company’s interest to alienate the people they ultimately want to be their customers.
“We want to partner with the communities we enter,” he said. “If we upset them, they won’t buy the service.”
Ripple is attempting to do something that hasn’t been tried in more than a hundred years, Wilson said: the community-wide installation of a brand-new utility service, something that is bound to cause some disturbance.
The rollout of fiber optics is meant to boost internet speeds around the Midlands, but the process of installing the cables on roadside rights-of-way has led to damage and disruption in many neighborhoods.
Another similar company entering the Midlands, Lumos Fiber, was previously blocked by Lexington County from installing internet cables in the Murraywood neighborhood near Irmo following a water line strike that caused major damage to a residential street. Lumos’ Lexington County ban was lifted in October 2024 after the company’s pledged to have all work crews go through a new round of safety training and required them to attend monthly safety meetings.
Prior to that, Lumos was also stopped from doing work in Columbia in 2023 after similar water and gas line strikes, including one gas leak that required several residents of the Elmwood Park neighborhood to be temporarily evacuated from their homes. The North Carolina-based fiber-optic internet company’s work also caused at least two major water main breaks in other parts of Columbia.
“I can’t say there will never be a hit again,” Ripple’s Wilson said Thursday. “No company could say that. But I want to get it to the lowest amount possible.”
But at Thursday’s meeting, officials said they needed to see more concrete steps taken to ensure events like last Friday’s won’t be repeated, and that the company needs to slow down its efforts to make more care that its laying its cables properly. Lexington Utilities Director David Wiman said he had previously left meetings with Ripple only to spot Ripple crews taking improper actions they had discussed on his drive home.
“These type of issues are recurring because what you told us is not matching your actions,” Wiman said. “You can’t say, ‘Bad things happened but we’ll do better,’ because I don’t believe you at this point. It means nothing until we see it happen.”
Livingston said her office and other members of the town council have been “bombarded” with complaints about Ripple and she wanted to ensure their concerns are addressed.
Town Councilman Gavin Smith said after the meeting that he was keeping a running tally of issues residents are having with Ripple as he hears about them and plans to follow up on each of them to see how the company responds.
“I personally won’t vote to lift the stop work order until every single issue we’ve submitted to them is taken care of,” he said. “I’m not looking for 98% resolved. A hundred percent of them need to be resolved.”
But while the town of Lexington can make sure Ripple is operating safely and responsibly, the town pointed out after last week’s gas strike that state and federal law allows utilities access to public right-of-ways to provide their services, so they can’t stop fiber companies from working in the area completely.
Thursday’s meeting didn’t give Ripple the green light to return to work, but it did lay out the steps the company needs to meet to get back into Lexington. They must fix damages to residents’ homes and offer a corrective plan to address deficiencies. They must commit to laying no more than 4,000 feet of cable in a day, and communicate with the town about specific work plans ahead of time so that all existing lines in an area can be properly marked. The company will have to use more careful boring techniques and equipment, give workers proper safety training and provide oversight of its subcontractors.
“You need to give them a plan,” Livingston underlined to Ripple at Thursday’s meeting. “There will be no work until we have a plan.”
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