Five Towns Weigh Plusses, Prices of Burying Power Lines
Jul 10 - The Palm Beach Post
There were power poles and wires all over the roads of Jupiter Island after Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne came to call.
But the mess the storms left behind got officials moving on alternative ways
to get their electricity.
Now Jupiter Island is almost ready to bury its power lines.
"We think that underground works," Falcone said. "It's not
just from the hurricanes. When it comes to reliability, we find in Florida that
we suffer from a lot of other things you just don't get in other states."
Things such as sea-spray corrosion, fast-growing vegetation and frequent
lightning strikes. The town is waiting for Florida Power & Light Co. to
complete an engineering and design study that would outline where equipment
needs to go and how much the project would cost, Falcone said.
"We're very serious about it," he said.
So are at least four other of the richest communities in Palm Beach and
Martin counties. But knowing that it's going to take months of digging up
trenches and shelling out billions for what is not a fail-safe method against
power outages, even these communities are asking if it's worth the cost.
"Do we want to spend millions because we don't like the looks of
telephone poles?" said Richard Baron, mayor of Sewall's Point, which is
considering the idea.
Aesthetics isn't driving the current push for underground lines. Storms are.
After last September's hurricanes left hundreds of thousands of people in the
dark for days, the outcry to put lines underground could be heard from the
barrier islands to the suburbs. A total of 50 cities and towns across the region
have talked to FPL about underground lines.
Of the 14,566 miles of electric transmission owned by the state's five
investor-owned utilities, only 183 miles -- about 1 percent -- are underground,
according to a study by the state's Public Service Commission. To bury the rest
would cost billions, and customers would be the ones paying through higher
electricity bills, the PSC study said.
"It really hinges on whether you are getting a better, more reliable
product and then, 'What does this stuff cost?' " said Tom Bradford, deputy
manager of the Town of Palm Beach. "That's the key issue that everyone has
to decide before going forward."
FPL has been putting at least some of its lines below ground for 40 years.
Over the past five years, two-thirds of FPL's new lines have gone underground at
customers' request -- and expense.
"It's easy for developers to pass along the costs to the folks who buy
what they build," FPL spokeswoman Karen Vissepo said.
Many parts of the fast-growing towns in western Palm Beach County such as
Wellington and Royal Palm Beach were built with their lines underground. The
same goes for Palm Beach Gardens.
"I've always liked underground," said Elizabeth Beins-Isakson, 73,
president of the Saratoga Lakes homeowners association in Royal Palm Beach.
"It looks so much nicer, it looks so much cleaner, and you don't have the
problem of a tree falling on it."
But some Wellington residents, including Mark Confordia, 35, pointed out that
their underground lines eventually had to connect to larger "feeder"
lines, which were above ground. If those lines went out, the power to everything
else went, too.
"I found it incredibly odd that I lost power for nine days,"
Confordia said.
Since the hurricanes, the outages have also been more frequent, he says.
"Every time we get a storm, our power goes out. It's when the wind blows or
somebody sneezes." Overhead power lines have more frequent outages because
they are exposed to lightning, wind, trees and animals. Underground lines have
less-frequent outages, but their power failures tend to last longer because it
takes more time to find the outage and fix it, FPL says. To be repaired, the
lines often have to be dug up.
"Overhead service was established in Florida by the PSC as the standard
construction for utilities because over time it has been the most cost-effective
design," Vissepo said. "The cost of building standard overhead power
lines is already reflected in the rates we pay for electricity."
Palm Beach hired a consultant in the summer of 2003 to figure out how much it
would cost to put utility lines underground. Last year's hurricanes put the idea
on the front burner, Bradford said.
The town is working with FPL and Adelphia cable on a pilot project that would
bury the lines along the south side of Royal Poinciana Way. The project should
give town officials a better idea of costs as well as any glitches or
construction issues before taking it to residents in the form of a referendum or
straw vote, he said.
Jupiter Inlet Colony and Tequesta, two other towns weighing the underground
proposition, also say they won't make a move without taking a vote.
"It's my take that the village would do its best to do as much homework
as it can," said Tequesta Mayor Jim Humpage. "Before I spend anybody's
money, I want to make sure this is something that the overall taxpayer base is
in sync with and is something they want to do."
The PSC studied the issue of burying power lines across the state in 1991 and
again this year. Using cost-based information from three independent sources,
the PSC determined that if the state's five investor-owned utilities put all of
their lines underground, customers would pay for that through a monthly rate
hike of between 6.4 and 12.5 percent.
The costs lie in several categories, including planning and permitting,
removing poles and wires, digging trenches and installing the new underground
system. The projects could be paid for through higher electricity rates or
special state or local taxes.
The PSC also pulled information from studies and pilot programs in other
states including Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, all of
which said underground lines have some advantages but are not a cure-all and are
very expensive.
"The civil engineering of the digging is 60 percent of the costs. That's
the kind of numbers that have been floating around," said Steiner Dale,
director of the Center for Advanced Power Systems at Florida State University.
"In the end, I think the city or group has to decide what's best in the
long term."
Across Florida, other major utilities such as Tampa Bay Electric Co. and
Progress Energy-Florida received their share of inquiries about burying power
lines after last year's storms.
"There was no question that the hurricanes caused people to take a
second look at the feasibility of underground lines," said Aaron Perlut,
spokesman for St. Petersburg-based Progress Energy.
For its low-lying territories in the Panhandle, Gulf Power is considering
using special concrete pipes to protect new underground lines because storm
surges from hurricanes could tear up anything buried, spokesman Lynn Erickson
said.
After Hurricane Ivan hit the area, Gulf Power had to use temporary poles to
restore power to some towns that already have underground lines but were
completely flooded out. Otherwise, it would have taken months to dig up the
lines, take apart transformers, clean out the salt and rebury everything.
"Pensacola Beach is completely destroyed. Whole roads are torn up from
the storm. Who's to say these concrete pipes won't be torn up?" Erickson
said.
The widespread power outages prompted state Sen. Ron Klein, D-Delray Beach,
and state Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, to propose creating a statewide task
force that would examine the electrical grid and the possibility of putting
lines underground. The bill failed to become law, but Slosberg said he would
"probably" bring up the issue again for the 2006 legislative session.
Klein doesn't want the issue to die, either.
"I clearly think there are parts of the state and our local communities
that it would be a successful way of preventing power outages," Klein said
of underground lines. "The real question is: Does this make sense, does
this make dollar-and-cents sense, does it make sense for creating a reliable
grid?"
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