Fight to rid lawn of empty pipe ends after Turning To Ted

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- When a Mission Bend neighborhood got better underground wiring for cable and internet, the progress actually made Robert McGhee's yard worse. When he couldn't get help, he Turned to Ted.

McGhee will be the first to admit the bright orange pipe sticking out of his front lawn wasn't the biggest problem in the world, but he was pretty upset such a small issue went on for months.

For more than a year, every time McGhee came out of his Mission Bend home, he focused instantly on that short piece of plastic pipe left sticking out of his front lawn by an AT&T crew installing new lines.

When we went to check the pipe, we found it was empty. Not only was it an eyesore, it wasn't even delivering data. Despite numerous calls McGhee just couldn't get AT&T, the company that stuck the pipe in his front yard in the summer of 2018, to bury it or take it away.

The new piping is an upgrade of some sort for the neighborhood - faster internet, better cable - but to McGhee, it was an annoyance. It shouldn't have been there and it really didn't seem to serve any purpose.

"That's not easily said," McGhee told us laughing at the futility of his multiple calls. "No one (took responsibility), no one ... you know until I got in touch with you."

We reached out to AT&T. The company quickly tracked down a subcontractor in our area to take away the pipe stuck in the middle of McGhee's front yard.

"It shouldn't take this much effort," McGhee said.

We wanted to know what happened that left the pipe there for so long, but AT&T didn't say. It did tell us the company that installed the pipe came out and fixed it.

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