WASHINGTON - Since the derecho knocked out power to over a million
customers in Washington region, there have been more calls to bury power
lines. Now a fed up Pepco customer has started a petition.
The online petition
is directed at Pepco CEO Joe Rigby. It asks the utility to spend some
of its annual profits to bury power lines, which the petition says would
make them more reliable and safer.
The petition says Pepco made $68 million in profit in the first
three months of 2012 and the petition asks the utility to commit to a
five-year plan to bury power lines.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
It will never happen because it costs $1 million dollars to bury one mile of overhead cables. That cost would be passed on to consumers. They wouldn't stand for it. Not to mention overhead lines last longer than those buried underground, and it's easier to find the cause of an outage quicker with overhead lines then it is buried lines.
ReplyDeleteThe government gave the power companies money back in the late 70s early 80s to put the lines underground. They didn't do it. Their reason was the union. If they put the lines underground they put the union linemen out of work. Now when a developer wants to build houses they are responsible for putting in the underground power. Would you like to guess who they have to hire to do it?
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