After we reached out asking if they would pay the family back, VEA Connect called to say they will
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A $100 million fiber optic internet expansion in St. Pete is frustrating homeowners, saying crews installing the cables are damaging their property. One family waited for months to get reimbursed for a ruptured sewer line but after we reached out to the contractor, the subcontractor that dug the line called her to say they’ll make it right. But for the Lewis family, it wasn’t about the money so much as accountability.
Almost three months ago, Jennifer Lewis says a crew installing a fiber optic high-speed internet cable showed up on her front lawn and dug two holes on her property line, feeding the cable underground. But soon after, a landscaper told her part of her driveway was loose.
“My husband came out and touched the paver to check on it,” she says. “And [the ground collapsed] and he said it smells like sewage.
When the city and a plumber were able to drain a hole about five feet deep full of raw sewage, she saw a broken sewer line and the orange cable directly overhead. A year after hurricane Helene flooded her home, her family had to leave again for close to a week.
“They told me I could use [the sewer line,] but it would just be coming out here in a pit,” she adds from her front lawn. “After all the trauma and the pile and the trash, everything from after the hurricane, I wasn’t going to do that, it’s gross.”
A plumber charged nearly $2,600 to repair the line but when she tried to get reimbursed, she got nowhere. She first reached out to the city, as she was told they may have spray painted where the line should go incorrectly. She filed a claim the city later denied.
She also contacted Tillman Fiber, a fiber optic installation company that recently announced a $100 million investment in fiber deployment in Pinellas County and other places in Florida, according to Tillman spokesperson Reggie Cardozo.
A representative for Tillman emailed Lewis last week saying her claim was being “escalated” but she hadn’t heard since. After we asked Tillman for answers, its subcontractor, VEA Connect, called Lewis while we were at her home and said they’d pay her back.
“It’s just frustrating how it had to come to this point,” she said after. “I find it very interesting when you guys got involved that somehow all of a sudden I’m getting calls responses where I’ve been trying since November to get a response on how I can get reimbursed for the damage they caused.”
Cardozo says they were still reviewing the incident before we called but says Tillman is a “good steward of the community and a responsible, contributing partner in the neighborhoods where they work.”