By Elizabeth Hopley / Column in the Greenwich Sentinel
The day before Thanksgiving, during families’ last minute errands, a construction supply truck snagged the sagging wires along busy East Putnam Avenue, grinding traffic to a halt. Firemen arrived quickly to untangle the mess and divert traffic, but had to leave the wires strewn in the street until the utility company could restring them back to their precarious perch. It’s unknown how many stores and residents lost power, internet, phone, but it begs the question: Isn’t there a better way for utilities to service customers in the 21st century?
This same story plays out countless times across our town and nation: a fragile 19th century system of exposed overhead wires easily derailed by minor mishaps or weather conditions, causing blackouts, lost productivity, and safety issues. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that America’s overhead grid costs us $80–$180 billion every year in outages, spoiled food, lost wages, and emergency services.
Now, imagine our town without the unsightly web of overhead wires. Instead of driving past a procession of utility poles leaning under the weight of too many wires, there’s a lush, green canopy of trees, cleaning the air, absorbing storm water runoff and cooling the road in the heat of summer. Meanwhile the underground grid is buried safely along our roads, bringing worry-free reliability to our utilities infrastructure.
. . .
Undergrounding overhead wires and planting trees will deliver four immediate wins: First, blackouts almost disappear and communications like phone and cable become stable and reliable. Second, scenic beauty is restored as trees replace the visual clutter of wires and poles. Third, home values increase by 7–20% in neighborhoods that have underground utilities. And lastly, the cost can be offset by savings in other areas. Outages already cost billions. New drilling technology has slashed undergrounding costs and the outsized costs of maintaining overhead systems are minimized
Read the Full Column in the Greenwich Sentinel.