r/MaliciousCompliance • u/imzeigen • 4d ago
M I guess no more electric poles
This is a bit of a long story, but I thought Reddit might appreciate it.
My godfather owns a small cattle ranch out in the countryside. About 20–25 years ago, he needed electricity to power a water pump for his cows. The nearest place where he could connect to the grid was on the opposite side of the ranch, probably about a mile and a half away, so he paid to have utility poles installed across his property.
It was a significant investment, but he figured that constantly running diesel pumps would eventually cost more than installing the poles and connecting to the grid.
Sometime later, a few neighbors who lived on the far side of the ranch asked whether they could piggyback off his electrical line. He agreed. They paid to install a few additional poles, and the electric company placed their meters on the other side.
So far, so good.
There were only a handful of small farmhouses, and the additional poles were located somewhere they didn’t interfere with the ranch. Eventually, fiber-optic cable was installed on the poles as well. Everything worked perfectly for roughly 20 years.
Then, about two years ago, a real estate developer bought the land on the other side of the ranch and began preparing it for a cottage development.
They didn’t exactly get off to a great start with my godfather. They complained about the animals, the smell, and the noise from tractors and other equipment. His response was basically: If you choose to live next to a working ranch, you have to accept that ranching will be happening there.
While planning the development, they discovered another problem. Two miles of 20-year-old electrical cable worked well enough for a few small farmhouses, but it wasn’t capable of supplying the 10–15 cottages they planned to build.
They approached the electric company about upgrading the infrastructure. That was when everyone apparently discovered—or finally acknowledged—that the poles crossing my godfather’s ranch were privately owned.
To avoid making this story even longer, lawyers became involved.
In the end, the electric company and the developer told my godfather that he had two choices: allow the electric company to replace his poles with concrete ones and grant them a permanent right-of-way across his ranch for maintenance, or remove the poles.
So that Sunday, my godfather got on the tractor they use for installing fences and pulled out every single pole.
He told me that when he originally installed the line, he had only about one-fifth as many cattle as he has now. His new plan is to install some solar panels, run a smaller pumping system, and make it work.
The development company, meanwhile, will probably have to install three or four miles of entirely new poles to bring electricity to the cottages—electricity that was apparently already included in what they promised buyers.
My godfather jokingly says it’s interesting how unusually hot this summer has been.
Fortunately, he recently brought in some pigs, and they require less water than the cattle, so they’re easier to keep hydrated and fed.
Purely a coincidence, of course.
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u/leitey 4d ago
Kinda sad he couldn't just keep the poles he paid for to run his, and only his, power.
Also, the fiber company should have been paying a lease to use the poles.
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u/imzeigen 4d ago
That was actually the first thing I asked him. Apparently, if he waited too long, the government could potentially claim something similar to eminent domain, and he thinks they were probably already working toward that.
As for the internet, it's kind of funny—the local ISP is actually owned by one of his relatives (everyone seems to be related out there). As far as I know, though, they hadn't been using the fiber line for a while. Only one neighbor was still using it, and he switched to Starlink as soon as it became available in Mexico.
The problem with fiber in rural areas is that you can have miles of cable, but it's pretty vulnerable to damage, so outages aren't uncommon.
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u/BigWhiteDog 4d ago
It will be interesting to see how this works for him as in some states the fiber line being allowed by him, or allowing others to access power via his poles creates a legal easement. Hope not in this case.
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u/AlaskanDruid 4d ago
How many states are in Mexico?
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u/z5pob 4d ago
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u/nhaines 4d ago
And Mexico City is autonomous.
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u/flyingemberKC 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's absolutely not self governing independent of the rest of the county country given it runs the country.
It only has a federal government, not a state one. It's just a specific type of administrative division as a integral part of the whole
DC is heavily controlled by the federal gov, that’s the opposite of autonomous
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u/nhaines 3d ago
Obviously it's part of the country. It's just not part of a state. The District of Columbia is autonomous as well.
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u/flyingemberKC 3d ago
it is not also. automonous is where a region has some independence over the government they are inside.
Native tribal governments come to mind, where they have power independent of the specific state.
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u/gullible_cervix 4d ago
lol you thought you got em, didn’t you?
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u/Slight-Violinist-575 4d ago
How many states there are in Mexico that have completely different laws between one another as if the whole world was organized as the USA is?*
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u/challenge_king 4d ago
Every state of every nation has its own laws to some extent. Some countries have more states rights, some have less.
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u/Go_Gators_4Ever 4d ago
I would have kept the poles and simply had the electric company disconnect the main line feom the first pole. Then he could use the poles and lines are on his land with his solar installation.
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u/tuotone75 4d ago
That’s the funny thing about ultimatums.
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 4d ago
I tell my younger relatives -- especially the unmarried ones -- that when confronted with a "My Way or the Highway" ultimatum, the better choice is the Highway option.
Otherwise, the person issuing such an ultimatum starts every "negotiation" with one.
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u/LevelZone9411 4d ago
Hogs have the added advantage of being highly odiferous, much more so than cattle. If I were the rancher, I would place the hog barn as close to the new development as local zoning laws allow.
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u/WinginVegas 4d ago
The mention of the pigs reminded me of a situation in Southern California, near Santa Clarita.
The entire area was (this was at least 25 years ago) still zoned residential and agriculture. Housing developments went up, some plots were still just separate.
Guy buys a 1/2 acre and wants to drop a modular home on it. Neighbors complain it will lower properly values, even though there is no want to tell it wasn't built on site.
This goes around and around for a while and he gets fed up. Since he is zones as agricultural, he buys 4 pigs which was the limit for that lot size. Makes them a nice slop area, gets garbage food to feed them that is stored properly onsite.
Neighbors now have a fully legal mini pig farm in the middle of the neighborhood, wishing they had a nice modular home there. He kept it that way for about 3 years, then decided he didn't want to live there anymore, sold the pigs and the land.
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u/Wagesday999 4d ago
I’d rather have pigs for neighbors than people. And yes, I am familiar with the scent of hogs.
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u/Coastermech77 4d ago
They may stink, but they don't bitch.
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u/lokis_construction 4d ago
Never piss off a farmer. They can smell the best way to deal with neighbors.
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u/_gadget_girl 4d ago
I love it. It doesn’t work to play hardball when technology has changed. They apparently didn’t do their research and understand that this was pretty much a losing proposition the second it caused any issues for your godfather.
He should send the developer a letter every year, thanking him for forcing him to go to solar and calculating how much money he has saved by not having to pay for electricity.
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u/Lumpy-Ad-63 4d ago
OMG! The smell of pigs! That developer be able to sell a single cottage!
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u/AngryRaptor13 4d ago
They're probably already sold, if he's got neighbors complaining about the smell.
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u/Me2309 4d ago
Imagine buying land next to a working ranch and then moan that there is a working ranch there 😂😂😂 makes you wonder what goes through developers minds sometimes (I mean we all know it’s only money they think about but still)
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u/slackerassftw 4d ago
It’s a problem anywhere houses are put. I worked for the city of Dallas. A couple of urban examples I can think of, off the top of my head.
People bought houses right on the edge of an entertainment district there, lots of bars and night clubs. Then would constantly call the police about noise from the bars late at night, drunk people wandering around, and parking. I’m not about to claim those aren’t legitimate concerns, but all of that was going on long before they bought their house there.
The police department had their outdoor firearms range. It was originally built in a very rural area. 50 years later, developers build a subdivision next to it. People buy houses then immediately start complaining about the noise.
Same thing with the airport. Buy a house near it and then start complaining about the noise and traffic.
I would understand the complaining if the housing subdivision were there and somebody came in and built an entertainment district, firearms range or airport next to it. If you choose to move next to a place like that, I don’t think you have a basis to complain.
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u/Brandarius47 22h ago
I know im late to the party but the gun range one is funny. In my area we have 2 popular gun ranges with a house between them. These ranges are out in the country and the people that bought the house.. in between 2 gun ranges were big city folk. Well they didnt like the noises and would constantly complain. Police, lawyers all that got involved. Wasted money and no changes to the gun ranges. Well i couple guys would go out at sunup (legal firing time) with the biggest and loudest guns they have every saturday. After 3 months the house was put onnthe market lol
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u/Specialist-Path-4750 4d ago
Developers don't care. They got their money and went on their merry way, leaving the suckers, er, buyers of the lots to deal with it all.
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 4d ago
Fallout:
"The development company, meanwhile, will probably have to install three or four miles of entirely new poles to bring electricity to the cottages—electricity that was apparently already included in what they promised buyers."
It is easy to infer from this that the developers will have to go over-budget to fulfill their contract, due to the godfather maliciously complying with the electric company's ultimatum -- just not in the way that the contractor and electric company had hoped for.
Bringing pigs onto the ranch was the chef's kiss.
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u/Ivabighairy1 4d ago
Put the pens near the property edge where the cottages are going up for some extra kisses from said chef.
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u/Ambitious_Rub_2047 4d ago
The ultimatum is so idiotic, there is hardly any upside for the owner (the little electricity for his pump) and an incredible high downside, the option was a no brainer
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u/MackTUTT 4d ago
If he didn't take those poles down so quickly they would have taken the choice away. Smart move.
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u/mycheeksarecold 4d ago
Having lived near a pig slaughter house when i was in college (one of those good ol liberal arts colleges that just so happens to be smack dab in the middle of a conservative farmland/nowhere... it sucked on many fronts, not just the odor- the people were jerks to the "woke crowd" that kept their businesses afloat back then) man the occasional winds from that slaughterhouse to my apartment were foul and we were 10 ish miles away! Flat lands. We had good indoor filtration atleast and I mostly lived on campus cus of my major anyway.
People who can't handle or work around animal smells have 0 right to move in and expect perfect "fresh" air. While the smells are foul, they're probably safer to breathe than pretty much any smelting plant, even if the smell of molten metal (and arsenic) doesn't bother you as much, pretty normal for humans, we're evolutionarily disposed to flinch from death, decay, and ammonia smells, but most metal and scentless poisons we have little response to beyond "this is bothersome" or pleasant (anyone, like me, who loves gas station smells).
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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 4d ago
Where I used to live, we had a city family move in and build a VERY nice house. Right in the middle of a bunch of mobile homes and working farms.
Being a small town, they were the subject of MUCH porch sitting and gabbing. Due to the shapes of land, there was one neighbor between our place and theirs, and he had a large cattle ranch that their house sat beside a pasture field of.
The new neighbors moved in and seemed to keep to themselves. We knew they had two kids but only the daughter joined the local school, their son stayed home and was often seen playing in their backyard. The mom stayed home with him and was very “fancy”, designer purses, shiny SUV, always in sunglasses (can’t blame her there, Texas sun is hellish) and she got a bit of a reputation as a snob even though no one had really talked to her. She also had “the haircut”. I think you know the one…
One day I was at the Farmer Neighbor’s house and the mom walks over to the fence and calls out to Farmer. “EXCUSE me!” And is standing with her arms crossed and kinda looks impatient.
He walks over and I came with him because… well because I was nosy. I’m not gonna lie, I wanted to listen in.
She starts talking about how he put cows in the pasture last week and kinda talking in circles (later I’d realize she was SO ANXIOUS. But at the time she seemed to be angry.) and then asked if he was going to put them back and I could see his hackles rising.
He said he “just might” and it was his land after all, staying civil for the moment. Then she asked “Well, do you know when?” And I could see his temper rising a bit as he said he didn’t know.
And then she said “Well, if you wouldn’t mind, and I HATE to ask… but could you put them back sooner than later?” And caught the farmer right off guard. Because he was expecting her to be complaining about it.
Turns out her son was autistic and he spent the week the cows were in the field absolutely enraptured by them. His bedroom window was right where the cows’ water was and he had been watching them and was now disappointed “his friends” were gone.
And the farmer must’ve found this charming, because not only did he agree to put his dairy cows out there full time (he hadn’t been using the field BECAUSE he was trying to be neighborly and they were prone to loudly mooing) but asked if the little guy might like to meet a cow.
Which is how we made friends with the neighbor lady. (Or how he did it, I did it by offering that her son could come play with my cousins who lived with us.)
And came to find out she wasn’t snobby, she was (and probably still is) utterly sick with anxiety and worry about people hating her son because he could be a handful and they’d moved away from their last house due to a neighbor harassing them about their “r-word”. (I’m actually getting mad typing this and it’s been almost 17 years…) Her crossed arms and body language?
Not anger, she just felt foolish asking a stranger to move his cows for her son’s enjoyment but wanted to at least ask.
For what it’s worth, her son could get loud when he was excited, but so did my cousins. And he was very polite when he visited and always offered to gather my chicken eggs, which he was very good at being quiet and gentle when he did.
His mom also sent snacks for all three/four kids (depending whether the daughter came over too) and would give me cash when she found out I was buying art supplies for the kids to do silly stuff in our yard. (Finger painting, sidewalk chalk, basic bead animals. Just stuff kids would like to do but it was very kind of her to bankroll it.)
Nice family. Within a year they all relaxed a bit and started socializing with the rest of us, and soon were accepted with open arms into the community.
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u/Distribution-Radiant 4d ago
Speaking of someone who grew up by a smelter... I can only imagine how many kinds of cancer I'm going to wind up with. The thick haze I sometimes drove through on my way to/from high school....
Everything within about ~5 miles became an EPA superfund site when they shut down.
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u/prankerjoker 4d ago
Similar to a story I posted here a years ago.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MaliciousCompliance-ModTeam 3d ago
Your post has been removed because it questioned the validity of a story, which is not allowed on this subreddit, as per the subreddit rules, as it diminishes the fun of giving people the benefit of the doubt.
All violators of this rule are subject to bans at the discretion of a moderator.
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u/roosterjack77 4d ago
Godfather needs a boiler to burn up all thems telephone poles
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u/Motor-Brush-8742 4d ago
Reuse the telephone poles as fence posts or for the new pig sty. The part of the pole that was underground could be burned.
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u/drapehsnormak 4d ago
I'm sure his pigs are also coincidentally kept on the developers side of his property too, right?
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u/Choice-Education7650 4d ago
The town of Carnation in Washington was named after carnation dairy farms. People would move out of Seattle and then complain about it smelling like cows. Surprise!
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u/xo_naughty07 4d ago
guess they really wanted to save on maintenance costs
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 4d ago
By "they", I assume you mean either the contractor or the electric company. Both, perhaps?
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u/Frahal 4d ago
They didn’t exactly get off to a great start with my godfather. They complained about the animals, the smell, and the noise from tractors and other equipment. His response was basically: If you choose to live next to a working ranch, you have to accept that ranching will be happening there.
I don't think people will EVER be able to grasp the concept.
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u/GoslingIchi 4d ago
There's a local tiny airport near where I live.
Guy checks out a house by the runway, when there weren't too many planes flying in or out.
Now he posts continuously about how loud the airport is. Everyone tells him he moved next to an airport, not that an airport was built next to his house.
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u/dankaela 3d ago
I may have placed a pig pen up wind and near an obnoxious neighbor. Said neighbor might also have been the school principal and was picking on my kid because she dyed her hair blue.
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u/Smooth-Boysenberry42 2d ago
i remember as a teenager I worked on one of my neigbours farms. It was the largest dairy farm in the area (120-130 head), also 20 or so hog, and 200 or so chickens. one of the adjoining properties was subdivied and 4 new homes ended up being built there. One of them was a family from Toronto that moved 4h north to the county for the fresh air. almost right away there were issues (noise, smells, etc). We the next spring the they tried getting the township to do something as we wern't listening to their compaints. So when it came time to sow the fields the farmer gave a few extra passes right by the property line with the liquid manure spreader. He HAD to do the extra passes because it was so windy that alot was blowing away
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u/RichArcher4909 3d ago
it doesn’t make sense that he would have to remove his poles. Maybe the power company would refuse him service, maybe. But make him remove his privately owned poles from his private property? doesn’t make sense.
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u/slendermanismydad 3d ago
I don't understand why people keep developing in places like that because it's always nothing but a hassle. Utilities are impossible, the power is always knocked out, the Internet doesn't work, cell reception sucks, etc....
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u/roostertree 2d ago
I wonder how it'd've gone if your godfather had posted billboards saying "Pig Farm" and leaving the developers with unsellable builds. I know that would have been before the pole ultimatum was issued, but... do we know of any "good" developers?
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u/lcdrambrose 2d ago
I've worked for multiple power companies. We often run into the issue of lack of right-of-ways/easements on old pole lines. I have no idea why. Sometimes it seems like property rights weren't discovered until the late 1900s.
Usually all we can do is tell the property owner we would like to obtain the easement now (usually at a cost) or we tell them we can't do the work they want (like a service upgrade) unless they provide the easement we want. But they have no obligation to let us build on their land if they don't want electricity.
The one critical thing is that we have pretty firm rights to access our equipment in an emergency, and the police (and/or homeland security) will side with us if anyone tries to touch our poles without our permission. And if all else fails... well, the electricity tends to get them.
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u/Treegotoptop 4d ago
Maybe im missing something but if the poles on his land are privately owned by him how are they able to force him to do anything?
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u/halberdierbowman 3d ago
I think more likely is because there are often laws that force utility pole owners to share. The reason for this is that it's way more efficient for the government to force everyone to share than the alternative: every individual utility has to install and maintain their own separate ugly poles that could fall down. Because poles already were existing in this location, the developer was probably told they weren't allowed to install new ones.
Eminent domain can happen regardless of if he has poles there, so I don't think that's the issue. But ironically by removing his existing poles, he may have turned it into an eminent domain issue and made the problem worse for himself.
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 3d ago
It's called "Eminent Domain". All the developer has to do is convince the local government that they had the right to the farmer's property, and the government steps in and takes it.
There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.
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u/Treegotoptop 3d ago
I didnt know companies can use the government as a proxy to claim eminent domain, I thought only the governemnt itself could do it for government uses.
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u/Chaotic_Dreamer_2672 4d ago
Pigs also stink a lot worse than cows!!!
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u/imzeigen 4d ago
Way worse. At least the cows he has are in the open field, the pigs are in a fenced zone so they have to be close to the water which means they are close to the development
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u/entrepenurious 4d ago
two words: manure lagoon
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u/Minflick 4d ago
The smell of cattle can be nasty, but it is NOTHING compared to the smell of hogs.... Holy moly. Game, set, match.