The winds may howl. The trees may fall. But in Germany, the lights stay on. There’s no Teutonic engineering magic to this impressive record. It’s achieved by a very simple decision: Germany buries almost all of its low-voltage and medium-voltage power lines, the lines that serve individual homes and apartments. Americans could do the same. They have chosen not to. – David Frum
CAN’T WE ALL AGREE on this? Welcome to another edition of what I’m going to start calling The Unmaking of America.
The CNN headline reads: Want to keep AC on? Bury power lines.
We can’t do anything about felled trees, which applies doubly in Alexandria, where the humid climate has created massive nests of beautifully old trees. However, we can change the reality of people sweltering and even having their health endangered in the current heat waves, if Congress could muster the will to do their job.
When our power went off over the weekend, I took refuge first at Gold’s Gym to work out, then went to Southside 815, a cozy little restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. The subject of burying power lines became a topic at the bar.
Yes, it costs to bury power lines, as David Frum addresses, but it’s not like there isn’t an economic whallup that comes with the crash of a rampaging storm. From Frum:
1. There’s reason to think that industry estimates of the cost of burying wires are inflated. While the U.S. industry guesstimates costs, a large-scale study of the problem conducted recently in the United Kingdom estimated the cost premium at 4.5 to 5.5 times the cost of overhead wire, not 10. [...]
3. Costs can only be understood in relation to benefits. As the climate warms, storms and power outages are becoming more common. And as the population ages, power failures become more dangerous. In France, where air conditioning is uncommon, a 2003 heat wave left 10,000 people dead, almost all of them elderly. If burying power lines prevented power outages during the hotter summers ahead, the decision could save many lives. [...]
…and have you heard about America’s unemployment, the latest bad news hitting Monday on manufacturing? This from Frum, a Republican: Burying power lines is a project that could put many hundreds of thousands of the unemployed to work at tasks that make use of their skills and experience. Do I hear an amen?
That Americans won’t join in together to do something so simple as burying power lines, which requires investing in an infrastructure that prepares us for what climate change will continue to deliver, is another sign of our diminishing greatness.
Because of the Tea Party and Republicans no one has to dare mention “climate change.” Just talk about the economic hardship of people who lose their entire refrigerator of food because they don’t have a generator, causing even more economic fallout we don’t need. Talk about the deaths due to extreme heat, when people are left without air conditioning, the inconvenience of businesses that lose capital amid the extreme weather, patterns that show no signs of abating.
In the tri-state area around Washington, D.C. the situation remains serious. My husband had a short day again yesterday, because there are still tens of thousands of homes without power. He loses wages when he doesn’t get a full day’s work and he’s by no means alone. It’s just part of the economic ripple effect of power outages.
But today’s Congress can’t even muster the common sense in the face of dangerous heat waves, death, destruction and environmental calamity that delivers a contagion of economic punches to do something smart that benefits everyone.
Until Congress can do the simplest things like what Republican David Frum is suggesting, and I’m seconding, we will continue to recede and continue slipping away from the nation we once were.
image via Shutterstock
Brings a new concrete visualization to the old economic saw, “paying people to dig holes and then fill them back up again”, doesn’t it?
Nonetheless, not only do I agree, but I will even given my crew a generous tip on the side to run fiber optic cable to me as well.
It sure does.
Once again the mantra of bigger is better has been shown to be a lie. Being bigger has put millions into CEO’s pockets and nothing into the companies they run. Many of these huge mergers in the power industry have been done through private equity. The companies are loaded up with debt and then hollowed out to pay the debt and line the pockets of those who put the deal together. Sound familiar?
Hell, why don’t you just say it was Bush’s fault, too, as long as you are trotting out the usual liberal clichés.
American cities could upgrade by putting wires underground, but that’s an expensive proposition. “The general rule of thumb we use is a factor of 10. Installation costs, construction cost is a factor of 10 difference between overhead and underground,” Lindsay says.
Tom Schooley, with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, says storm outages sometimes get communities talking about moving their lines underground, but it doesn’t last long. “Whenever people mention it, or some municipality wants to do it underground and they see the expense, they say, ‘Oh, well, never mind,’ ” he says.http://www.npr.org/2012/02/01/146158822/if-power-lines-fall-why-dont-they-go-underground
I love that bit about “Tuetonic engineering”. Actually, there is a bit of the tuetonic character in their success – Germans know losing electricity is a problem and they pay attention to it. Here in America, we don’t.
The particular technologies involved aren’t that important. Above ground and below ground lines have their trade-offs. Buried lines are vulnerable to water, chemicals, and life. When they develop a problem, buried lines are often more difficult to fix. Still, in either case, the basic strategy is to figure out how you’re going to run the lines, then figure out how you’re going to maintain them in emergencies. That takes planning, and then it takes having resources on hand to deal with emergencies when they arise, which means expenses that the folks who own utilities don’t feel much need to deal with when they can just buy off a few politicians and then can do what they want.
We just don’t want to plan for a rainy day anymore. There seems to be something innately wrong about that to conservatives, at least when the government does it. We let the market take care of it, which means that people push off expenses they’d rather not deal with in favor of expenses they’d rather have – like acquiring companies instead of doing the boring, long term payoff things like making the infrastructure more reliable so you don’t have to repair it as often. When the public doesn’t reorient those priorities, through its government or otherwise, that’s what happens.
I live in Takoma Park Maryland (I am in Vermont for the summer, and to the best of my knowledge, my apartment has been dark for about a week thanks to the storms.) Every time it rains heavily, we have power outages, because we have so many low-hanging tree limbs. There has been discussion of trimming trees more to prevent so many outages, but every time it looks like it’s going to happen neighborhood groups form to protest. Same thing happens whenever putting power lines underground is discussed. Hell, a large number of my neighbors put out yard signs and held rallies to protest the building of a new cancer ward for children at the local hospital on the grounds that it would “increase traffic.” No kidding.
Some people won’t tolerate change. Of course, they are the first to squak when the power goes out for three hours as a result of a light rain. I’m just glad I’m in Vermont, where it is 82, instead of Maryland, where it’s 94 and the temperature is rising again (104 on Thursday.)
I wonder when we are going to get another blackout on the scale of the Mohawk-Niagara , August 14, 2004. Everything I’ve seen leads me to conclude that nothing about that infrastructure was changed after that fiasco and that was only heavy use, not from trees.
I was stuck on an Amtrak train in Springfield, Massachusetts for 36 hours during that blackout, trying to travel from Barre, VT to Washington, DC. Finally the train went back North- and I got off exactly where I had boarded, 38 hours later. Miserable experience.
When, a week later, I called Amtrak to arrange a refund of my ticket, the operator acted surprised and at first suggested that the company might charge me for the distance I did manage to travel. No kidding (they didn’t, though.)
Most Downtown areas and new developed neighborhood subdivisions have underground wires, which I think we all should, your right Taylor. Many people here are still without power in my state of West Virginia. I was just very lucky my power stayed on. Most European countries have underground electric wires, we don’t have that or a fast speed train. We are falling beind in more ways than one.