Photo: C.M. Guerrero, Miami Herald

Severe flooding and storm surge can also put the grid out of commision after storms, according to NPR.

‘You’re simply trading off one type of risk for another,’ Ted Kury, an energy expert at the University of Florida, told NPR. ‘Yes, you’ve mitigated the risk of losing power because of a failure in the pole or a tree getting blown into the lines. But you’ve traded that risk off for outages due to storm surge or to flooding.’

Across the country, only about 20 percent of U.S. power lines are underground, the Energy Information Agency reports.

Compare that with Germany, where nearly all low and medium voltage lines are buried safely underground, providing electricity to homes and apartments across the country, according to CNN. That’s led to fewer outages in Germany, CNN reports — but then again, the northern European county doesn’t deal with hurricanes..

–Jared Gilmour, Mcclatchy via Miami Herald

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Additional counter arguments in the Palm Beach Post