Notes on the Urge to Underground
I am tormented by questions; answer them for me. You, for instance, want to cure men of their old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and good sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also that it is desirable to reform man in that way?
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground (1864)
For as long as electric wires have been strung above ground, the forces of nature have intermittently brought them down. In the winter of 1888, a heavy blizzard shattered telegraph poles and left spools of charged wire littered through the streets of New York City. This year, a freakishly strong summer storm downed hundreds of miles of lines and left millions between Baltimore and Washington D.C without power. As they did 124-years ago, outraged citizens demanded that telegraph/utility companies reroute their network’s fragile life veins beneath the earth’s surface. And, just as they did in the age of the first electric lights, the owners and operators of the utility infrastructure responded in unison: It costs too much money to put lines underground.
Cost estimates provide the biggest roadblock to any type of reform. This Washington Post article cites an estimated $5.8 billion to bury all of the overhead lines in D.C. Putting wires underground would add “$226 to customers’ monthly electricity bills for the next 10 years.” Numerous reports and articles have reached similar conclusions—undergrounding power lines is prohibitively expensive, ranging from 5 to 10 times more than stringing them overhead.
If accidents and outages caused by major storms and natural disasters cannot justify the exorbitant cost of burying overhead lines, what does push lines underground? The uncertain health effects of living near high voltage electromagnetic frequencies? The damage to trees, birds, and the rest of the environment? The vulnerability of the grid to acts terrorism posed by exposed lines? (A “dire concern” for the Dept. of Defense. Officials say an attack on the grid could be our “next Pearl Harbor”). No, no, no again.
Aesthetics is the force that moves officials, gets trenches dug, and removes poles and towers. In the case of overhead vs. underground, the eye of the beholder is more powerful than nature’s wrath or fears of terrorism.
Photo courtesy of Brian Braun (brianbraun.net)
Proponents of under-grounding list various advantages, but not having to look at the wires and poles almost always appears near the top of the list. In a study done in Richmond, VA in 2005 consumers said “The primary reasons…for placing distribution facilities underground were to improve aesthetics and reliability.” Reliability is important, but its not a grammatical accident that it appears after “aesthetics” in the above sentence.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration‘s page on under-grounding clearly states, “nearly all new residential and commercial developments have underground utility infrastructure, often required by law for aesthetic reasons.” These laws, in general, are not for safety, reliability, or protecting the grid against terrorism, they are for protecting the view.
In Anaheim, California, an ongoing program to bury all of the city’s overhead wires is paid for by a %4 surcharge on customer’s electric bills. A 2-page flyer on the city website lists numerous benefits of the program: reduced power outages, less tree trimming, etc. However, the main page makes it clear that the program began in 1990 “to improve the visual aesthetics along the city’s major transportation corridors by removing overhead power lines, phone and CATV communication cables.”
Edison Electric Institute’s report on undergrounding suggest the centrality of aesthetics in the title: “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.” The title seems like a sly way to foreground the findings: astronomical financial costs, the threat of sharp rate-increases, and the potential for major profit losses in the long term (although they break less often, when they do, underground lines can cost more to fix and maintain).
Thus, after reading the gloomy details found in the report, one has to reconsider the title. “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” is not a statement, but the first in a series of questions: Wouldn’t it be irresponsible to put our electrical infrastructure out of mind? Are aesthetics worth burying ourselves in mounds of debt? Will undergrounding some lines placate the masses, or will it just invite NIMBY (Not in my backyard) sentiments to spread?
Together, these implied questions create uncertainty that helps to undermine all calls to underground. Here it will helpful to note that the EEI is the most powerful association of utility companies in the world. Its members represent 70% of the U.S. power industry. The target audience does not want to hear positive things about undergrounding.
In 2009, the EEI released a third edition, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Revisited” to account for studies done in the wake of outages caused by ice storms and hurricanes (such as Katrina, Rita, and Ike). Recall that this research was initiated by deadly natural disasters during which poles fell onto cars and houses and thick electrified cables slapped down on the concrete and formed cat’s cradles in the wreckage. The EEI may have named their report “Safe and Sound Underground?” but that title takes away from the overarching dichotomy between “sight” and “mind.”
Most media stories start with uncertainty: “Why can’t they be buried?” and then conclude with facts “it costs too much” (the NPR report from Feb 2012 breaks that mold. They conclude: “So the bottom line is — nobody knows the bottom line. Nobody’s gone past the costside of the cost-benefit analysis.)
The EEI report takes a different approach. It frontloads the visual (rather than safety or reliability) and then presents the facts about the costs. Readers seem to have two choices: preserve the view, or invest huge sums of money.
To be fair, the EEI reports weigh costs and benefits and argue that specific studies of underground vs. overhead need to take into account many factors about the lines and the environment. However, in the conclusion, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” reconfirms the primary “desires” for putting wires underground:
For customers, improved aesthetics and the hope that underground electrical facilities will provide greatly enhanced electric reliability will continue to be the driver for their desire for undergrounding of utility facilities.
The takeaway for utilities? Aesthetics is central to the undergrounding equation, but this costly decision must be made on a case by case basis. Couching the debate in these terms creates a dangerous pendulum. Swung to one extreme, aesthetics means everything and, in cases where it favors the utilities, undergrounding may be used as an excuse raise rates, demand less regulation, and further centralize the energy market. Swung the other way, aesthetics means anything : utilities can’t be expected to save all landscapes and oh so little can be done to please the aesthetic tastes of everyone. Sure, undergrounding might be justified in some cases, by why should all customers pay higher rates just to please the aesthetic tastes of the few?
We’ve been swinging towards the latter direction as evidenced by the ongoing conflicts throughout the country as well as the conventional practices of Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs). These 1000+ page EIRs give as much space to analyzing the specific species and habitats that may be effected by a line as they do to the “Visual Impacts.”
We should not overlook the sage grouse, grey fox, or any other part of our fragile ecosystems. However, if aesthetics is such a major concern, these concerns should be reflected by the attention they are given in the EIR. When an EIR comes back with “high visual impacts,” the utilities need to do more than hope those who are impacted get used to the sight of the line.
It is time both sides acknowledge that the aesthetic perception of our shared landscape is crucial to how utilities create and how customers relate to our electric infrastructure. For utilities, this means investigating what “these power lines are ugly” means for their company and, if undergrounding is too costly, then the utility needs to find out if those who oppose the sight of the line might accept options other than putting lines underground (such as different siting or different design).
Meanwhile, customers might use aesthetics to crystallize their demands—everyone agrees that this line is horrific, it must be taken down. At the same time, it seems fair to ask customers to imagine what, in general, a “pretty” power line might look like. In either case, it seems important for individual customers and broader communities to establish aesthetic preferences and then ask: What can be done to improve the aesthetics of our environment?
Many questions have yet to be answered, among them the following: Can widespread, collective aesthetic perceptions help to revolutionize production and consumption of electricity? What role does the aesthetics of landscape have in energy discourse? As “pollution” is increasingly quantified through the buying and selling of credits, can or should we quantify visual pollution? Is it desirable to take all of our wires underground and, if we do, who will take down the decommissioned poles and lattice steel towers? (The same companies who’ve taken care of our nation’s abandoned railways?) Will metallic wires and lattice steel towers still charge across the earth’s surface after we are gone?
In my next post, I hope to offer a few preliminary answers and more information about undergrounding the 3.8 mile section of the TRTP through Chino Hills
* The “We as a species are overwhelmed” photo is from http://screamitsjustin.tumblr.com/
Power-lined 