PRIVATE power poles not disclosed. What's next?

[Charlie MacPherson]

I recently purchased a home in Plymouth, MA (America's home town!).  It's 5 acres of woods, surrounded by 30 acres of conservation land, overlooking a pond and cranberry bog.  Idyllic, right?

The driveway is dirt, 2,000 feet long, dirt and VERY steep.  Let's just say that even with all wheel drive, I get a running start.

3 days after we moved in (February 28), we had a major wind storm that knocked a neighbor's tree over and took out our power lines.  After the utilities completed the repair, we still had no power to the house.  Luckily for me, my neighbor got my lines fixed because it was his tree.

That was the moment that I learned that we had PRIVATE power poles past the first 500 feet up the driveway.  I'm a real estate agent and I had no idea there even was such a thing.

The key point is that it wasn't disclosed in the listing nor in the "seller's statement of property condition".  I was completely blindsided, not to mention that I'm financially responsible for repair of these lines that run through the woods.

I'm considering going after the seller for the cost of upgrading the poles to the location and quality necessary for the utility to "adopt" them.  The current poles are not sturdy enough and a couple are not in a position where the utility can pull a truck up to the pole, which is a requirement of adoption.

We're looking at either upgrading the poles or trenching and running underground utilities.  Either way, my thinking is that because it was never disclosed nor discussed during the sales process, the seller is on the hook for the cost of getting these poles up to the point where the utility will adopt them - meaning that I will not be financially responsible for repairing downed lines in the future.  

I do have an attorney monitoring the situation and at the moment, we're thinking that the cost will be about $20,000.

Has anybody on BP ever gone through something like this?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated.