There are 45,000 utility poles stringing electricity throughout the city of Windsor.

During a three-year span, Enwin Utilities will inspect every one of them.

Glenn Cousineau is the one of the workers tasked with the job. He's a system inspector with Enwin. He can read the health of a hydro pole with a hammer.

"Safety is definitely Enwin's priority. They don't want poles falling on anybody or falling down or outages," Cousineau said. "I mean, a storm we can't help. But if we can help it with a pole being rotted, we change it. Or even if just some equipment on a pole is bad, we can change it. Stop an outage from happening — all the better."

'Safety is definitely Enwin's priority.'— Glenn Cousineau, Enwin

Cousineau's position was added in 2002. He pounds on the pole's exterior, measures cracks in the wood, even drills into the pole at ground level to see if it's rotten. He then treats it with insecticide and moves on.

"It's a very important job for Enwin," he said.

Enwin will replace 2,800 poles between 2013 and 2017 at a cost of $12 million.

Jim Brown, Enwin's director of infrastructure, said customers need not fear the money being spent. Brown said the cost of replacing poles is built into the current electricity rates, so customers won't be facing a increase.

"What we want to make sure doesn't happen is that the poles are allowed to deteriorate over time. And then when we have a big storm, we have many many poles down and can't get them back up in time," Brown said.

He said both wooden and concrete poles are thoroughly inspected but that the two types age differently.

"With the concrete poles, they're likely to deteriorate from the outside in, as opposed to the wood pole, which will commonly deteriorate from the inside out," he said.

Some poles 70 years old

Cousineau said he's serviced wooden poles that were installed in 1941.

"And they're hard as a rock," he said.

That doesn't mean they all are.

Maria Fogolin lives on Windsor Avenue. She said her neighbour has called multiple times to get a pole fixed near both their homes.

"I'm concerned for a while because I think it's going to fall down eventually. And if it does, we gonna be without electricity," she said. "It seems like it's been leaning worse lately. I'd like them to replace it because it looks awful."

Despite the efforts of Cousineau, and Enwin, people in Windsor call the city's 311 service to complain about utility poles.

Wooden and concrete poles are thoroughly inspected but the two types age differently. (CBC News)

A spokesperson from the city says there have been more than 13,000 complaints directed to Enwin in the last three years. However, there are no firm statistics on how many of those complaints were about electrical poles.

Tom Denonville says there's a suspicious looking concrete pole near his home on the east side.

He claims a mailbox once near the pole was moved because it was too close to a leaning pole.

"Probably about three years ago, I talked to a couple people and they said they were going to look into it there but they just painted the red x on it. It's been like that for so long they're going to wait for it to fall down basically," he said. "And the wires are going to come down. And I think they're a little slow and it needs to be done."

Cousineau said there used to be a different way to identify weak poles.

"A good storm and you'll find wind and a pole will snap because it's already rotted and blow over. That's usually what we're trying to avoid," he said. "Because we get lots of good storm here and hopefully we keep the poles up."

Cousineau said regular inspection can extend a pole's lifespan by 10 years.

As Brown points out, an example of how a lack of attention to infrastructure can cripple a city lies across the Detroit River.

A strong storm can knock power out in places of the Motor City for weeks.

So a little preventative medicine goes a long way towards keeping the lights on, he said.