Some things survive long past their best-before date, like temporary fencing that is trampled down and has no apparent purpose.With so many wires and pipes buried below ground, utilities are constantly digging up roads and sidewalks and are issued upwards of 100,000 utility cut permits by the city each year for the excavations.But as we've written before, contractors hired by utilities to do their dirty work are not as good at returning the excavated area to its original condition as they are at fixing the underground problem.Frances F. reported on SeeClickFix that a utility chamber at the corner of Greenland Rd. and Plateau Cr., near The Donway and Lawrence Ave., has been surrounded by plastic fencing for at least two years."Garbage collects here and it has become unsightly," she said, adding that "two years is definitely long enough" for whatever is going on there to have been fixed by now.We went there and found two large, rotting sheets of plywood next to the sidewalk, surrounded by temporary fencing that's been trampled down on one side and filled with trash tossed into it by pedestrians.We lifted the plywood and spotted two green metal plates that said "North York Hydro" on them, an indication that the vault below the plates contains electrical equipment that pre-dates Toronto's amalgamation in 1998.But we saw nothing to indicate why the plates are covered by plywood, or why they're surrounded by temporary fencing, unless someone intended it to be a garbage receptacle.It looks as if something or other was done long ago, but somebody forgot to finish the job by taking away the wood and fencing.While we were there, we noticed a long section of sidewalk about 20 metres away that had been dug up and filled with asphalt that was as undulating and sunken as any we have ever seen.No wonder we get so grumpy about the stuff utilities get away with.STATUS: Tanya Bruckmueller-Wilson, who deals with media for Toronto Hydro, said a crew would be sent right away to see what's going on inside the fence.

And we've asked transportation services to arrange for a proper repair of the sidewalk.