Ezee Fiber said installers take precautions when they dig, but water lines are difficult to locate since many of them have been buried for so long.
HOUSTON — Maribel Guerrero won’t soon forget the day her Cinco Ranch front yard turned into a river.
“It was a terrible day, I would say, very surprising,” Guerrero said. “They hit the water pipe, and it was on one of the main lines, so that caused the water to flood the street. A lot of mud … a lot of water.”
As it turned out, her property wasn’t the only one impacted by a fiber optic cable installation company hired to put down new lines.
Guerrero said contractors working for Ezee Fiber were the ones responsible for the mess at her home.
Repeated issues actually led to a moratorium being put in place on fiber lines being installed in Katy. Eventually, tougher rules were implemented for installation and permitting.
Ezee Fiber’s vice president of construction, Matt Demuro, showed KHOU 11 News its process.
“We’ll door tag all doors (saying), ‘Hey, we are coming in to do construction,” Demuro said.
He said crews map out planned routes and search for the utility lines that are already in the ground. He said the hard ones to find are water lines, like the one that flooded Guerrero’s yard.
“Those lines are unlocatable. A lot of them have been underground for a long time, and they’re plastic level lines with water. And so electrical signals don’t run along them to help you find them,” Demuro said.
He said that using ground-penetrating radar to get a clear picture under the soil is too costly to use across a large area, such as a subdivision, so crews have to find those lines the old-fashioned way. Adding to the job’s challenge is that in Texas, water utilities aren’t required to mark the path of their lines. Finding them is a slow, painstaking process.
“You really don’t want to go faster than just a little bit of a crawl,” he said.
Ezee Fiber said its crews do their best to avoid accidents, but that doesn’t help the homeowners dealing with the aftermath of their mistakes.
Guerrero said her house has started having foundation issues since water flooded the area around her home. She said the company hasn’t been much help.
“They haven’t acknowledged that that is happening, although I sent pictures and the claim,” she said.
President of the Better Business Bureau of Greater Houston and South Texas, Dan Parsons, said Ezee Fiber has lost its accreditation due to unanswered and unresolved complaints.
“We made the decision. We had what we call a pattern, you know. Accredited businesses don’t have, or should not have, unanswered complaints or unresolved complaints,” Parsons said.
Parsons said it’s not a problem that the company hit the lines; it’s the response.
“Our problem is something different — I don’t care if you go in and take somebody’s whole yard out, put it back. That’s all we want to see,” Parsons said.
Parsons added he’s open to reviewing Ezee Fiber’s accreditation if he sees an end to the pattern that led to the revocation.
When asked about the loss of accreditation, EZzee Fiber sent this statement:
“While we are disappointed in the loss of our accreditation, we are engaged in the process of responding to the posted comments.
“We hope the comments shed further light on the individual situations — which we have resolved and have apologized to the homeowners for causing in those cases where a legitimate complaint was filed.
“We plan to apply for BBB certification in 2026.”
After KHOU 11 News sent Guerrero’s complaints directly to the company, she said they reached out to her about her claim and potential repairs to her home.
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