Our friend the mighty Steve Scauzillo, environmental writer from the San Gabriel Valley News Group, sent us this letter worth pondering.
by Steve Scauzillo
Is the simple answer to all the wind-related power outages to put electric utility lines underground?
Well, most definitely.
However, before a city makes such a commitment, it must consider the cost, as in dollars. Some from other states estimate that to be $1 million a mile.
Wait. Before every local city official, city manager, city council member and public works director in earshot in the hit-hard San Gabriel Valley short-circuits the idea right now, they should at least have that meeting with their power provider. The discussion should at least be put on the next city council agenda, and the one after that.
It would not take much persuading if one were to ask the 226,000 Edison customers without power after the Super Santa Anas struck late Wednesday night, wreaking all sorts of havoc in Arcadia, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Altadena, Temple City, Monrovia, San Marino, Alhambra, Glendora, Azusa, etc., what they thought of the idea.
Much of these cities sat lifeless for days because old, wooden power poles snapped, sending not just wires but transformers crashing to the ground and lowering the curtain on life and business as usual. People shivered in their homes. For some in Temple City and South Pasadena, the power outage caused water pumps to shut down, so they were without water, too.
The Westfield Fashion Plaza in Arcadia sat lifeless for most of Thursday. It’s hard to ring up a cost estimate of the loss in Christmas shopping sales. Suffice to say, it’s huge.
Small business owners from Monrovia’s Myrtle Avenue to Temple City’s Las Tunas Drive to Main Street Alhambra had no power Thursday, and while some area stores were up and running Friday, many remained closed over the weekend. Don’t forget, the losses to small businesses, whose margins are much smaller than corporate chain stores, hurt so much more. They may not have insurance to write this off. Mom and pop may just have to eat those losses.
Also, let’s get an estimate, shall we, on the cost of all the food emptied from household refrigerators and tossed into garbage bins.
Then, put all that up against the cost of undergrounding utilities. That would be a fair comparison.
No one can argue that high winds break tree limbs, uproot trees and knock down fences. No amount of utility undergrounding could prevent any of that, nor stop that tree from splitting in half an apartment building on Hudson Avenue in Pasadena.
But undergrounding utilities, especially power lines, will help keep the lights on, the electricity flowing, the water pumping and yes the cash registers ringing.
Undergrounding utilities will eliminate some of the stress we’ve seen the Super Santa Anas bring to people’s lives and to our fragile economy these last few days and for days and weeks to come.
Let’s take Santa Monica as an example. In 2004 that city started planning for an undergrounding utility project for its Sunset Park neighborhood at a cost of $8 million, most of it paid for by grant dollars. The project was recently completed. It began when a citizen complained.
