Photo: Rusty Costanza, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

“Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, the conversation over how to protect the New Orleans electricity grid against stronger storms continues to return to a single question: Why don’t we bury our power lines?

Katrina changed the way New Orleans and the state prepares for the cost of turning the lights back on after a storm and spurred critical infrastructure upgrades. Still, the wooden utility poles holding up distribution lines in most New Orleans neighborhoods look much as they did before Katrina hit in 2005.

Buried lines — like those in the French Quarter and Central Business District — are generally more resilient during storms. So, why didn’t New Orleans bury its power lines after Katrina?

‘The primary answer is cost,’ said Melonie Stewart, director of customer service for Entergy and its subsidiaries, including Entergy New Orleans, which serves the city.

It costs about $1 million per mile to bury electric distribution lines, compared with $100,000 per mile for above-ground lines, according to a widely cited Edison Electric Institute research paper.

The majority of the cost of converting lines would be passed to customers. Stewart said monthly electric bills could double, triple or even quadruple during such a project. That would have crippled the city after Katrina and remains too high a cost today, she said…

Burying lines is not a silver bullet solution. Though outages are less frequent, it can take longer to identify and repair problems when they do occur. Underground lines are also prone to flood damage.

When Katrina storm surge crumbled federal levees and flooded the city, outages lingered in the handful of eastern New Orleans subdivisions that had buried lines.

Casey DeMoss Roberts, CEO of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a New Orleans consumer advocacy group, agreed the cost of burying power lines is too high. Roberts said measures such as regular tree trimming are low cost and go a long way toward storm damage prevention.

‘What we need to be talking about is tree maintenance and upgrading utility poles as well as raising and securing substations.’ Roberts said.

Still, many locals see an opportunity to lay underground at a lower cost while the Army Corps of Engineers completes several Uptown drainage projects over coming years, digging up major roads and disrupting traffic.

Stewart said Entergy would have to lay underground transmission lines far from existing water and natural gas lines. At the end of the day, it is possible buried lines would run nowhere near corps drainage work, she said…””

— Jennifer Larino, NOLA.com, The Times-Picayune

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