I assume you mean the "grounding" connection (the egc going back to the service disconnect in a 4 wire feeder) but if you have a 3 wire feeder that becomes a lot worse than in a 4 wire feeder because it is an open neutral condition along with all of the issues of a lost EGC added on. I suppose the lesson is make sure you don't have a fault in the neutral or the grounding conductor. It is not going to end well.
An open neutral is repaired immediately because the equipment quits working. An open ground remains until someone gets a shock, or something dies. The old way, that we are returning to, wasn't better.
Wouldn't a better solution be to take an insulated neutral and and ground, both of the same size and connect them together at the out-building? Then, we would have half the chance of any fault and it would never be an open ground that couldn't be detected.
Ground fault protection isn't a good solution because some equipment won't work with GFI protection. VFDs for example.
