If you thought the amount of debris on the ground after last week’s ice storm was something, you’re right. But it’s nothing compared to what’s still hanging over Duke Power’s power lines. While folks debated whether Duke Power should bury its lines in the wake of an ice storm that left large areas of Mecklenburg County cold and in the dark for days, Creative Loafing took a look at the job Duke is doing maintaining its current above-ground power lines. What we found may at least partially explain why so many people lost power last week. From Plaza-Midwood to West Boulevard, tree limbs grow over and under power lines — tree limbs so large that the lines couldn’t possibly have been maintained in the last decade. In many instances, where power lines run behind homes, they often disappear into dense vegetation. The problem isn’t a scattered one, either. There are enough large-sized limbs still sharing space with Duke’s unburied power lines to once again plunge large areas of the county into darkness in the wake of some future ice storm or hurricane. Contrary to the company’s claims last week, it appears that much of this growth could be removed without substantially changing the appearance of the trees, as the accompanying pictures show.
Duke Power says it spends $40 million a year maintaining the lines, about double what it was spending two years ago. Even with a budget that size, though, Duke is only able to maintain about 7,000 miles of its 52,000 miles of lines each year. The city and the county lack ordinances governing the maintenance of the plant life that shares space with Duke’s power lines. When, where and how Duke Power chooses to maintain the lines is left almost entirely to the company.
Like Charlotte, cities all over the country have studied and then discarded the idea of burying power lines after repeated power outages. That’s what happened in Annapolis, Maryland, and Boca Raton, Florida, after public officials learned what it would cost to bury the lines. But in most cases, serious studies of how well local utilities maintain their lines weren’t conducted.
In other cases, cities have paid to bury lines in select areas or, like the Jordan area of Palo Alto, residents of neighborhoods or small geographic areas have convinced the local power company to let them pay to bury the lines in front of their homes. But that option appears to be limited to those neighborhoods where people have significant disposable income. In Denver, Colorado, residents of a 120-home neighborhood paid between $500 and $15,000 each to bury lines in front of their homes. The city matched their contribution with a $1 million contribution of its own to make the deal happen.
In San Diego, the city council voted last December to raise San Diego Gas & Electric Company’s annual franchise fee by 3.5 percent to help pay for burying lines. The new charge was predicted to raise $34 million a year, a cost the company passed on to its customers, who complained loudly about the rate hike to the council.
Still, Charlotte does have a source of money it could use to begin burying lines if it chose. Each year, Charlotte receives a portion of the franchise fee that local telecommunications, gas and electric utilities pay to the state of North Carolina. According to figures provided by the city finance staff, Charlotte expects to receive $27 million in franchise fees in 2003, about half of which is generated by Duke Power. At present, the money simply goes into the city’s general fund, but the city has demonstrated that it could do without some of the money last year after Governor Mike Easley refused to return about half of franchise fee money to Charlotte.
Easley appointed a panel last week to study whether better trimming of trees or the burial of power lines could improve the state’s ability to withstand extreme weather conditions. The city council has also asked city staff to look into the same issues.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2002.
