Putting power lines underground is expensive and won’t solve all outage problems. But the Clallam County Public Utility District will continue pursuing such projects as money allows, a polite group of 11 utility customers were told by PUD commissioners on Monday.
The gathering was the first since the hard-hit PUD recovered from a month of storms, capped by a big snowstorm last week.
About 12,000 customers suffered power outages, some for days.
“There’s no free lunch,” said PUD Commissioner Hugh Haffner about burying utility lines.
“Are people willing to pay higher rates for something that happens every four to five years?
“We encourage underground lines in new construction,” he said.
But the cost per mile for three underground project bids just awarded was about three times the cost of stringing overhead lines, Haffner said.
The PUD serves customers in Sequim, Forks and unincorporated Clallam County.
Port Angeles has its own city utility.
Emergency functions
Those who attended Monday’s PUD board meeting seemed more interested in how the district could function better during future storm crises rather than voicing complaints about slow power recoveries by repair crews that often worked 24-hour shifts.
PUD commission chairman Ted Simpson said if people are interested in an underground program, the district will study it.
Commissioner Will Purser said maybe neighborhoods could set up local utility districts to pay for burying lines.
This is a recurring question with a horrendous cost, so staff should develop some cost estimates as examples, he said.
“This is a wake-up call. We will continue to talk and look for solutions,” Simpson said.
Wind storms that hit the North Olympic Peninsula during the week of Nov. 13-17 followed the Nov. 26 snowstorm, knocked out power.
But customers’ frustrations were compounded when they could not get through via telephone to the Clallam PUD office to report outages or didn’t get power back when advertised.
Haffner said the district is trying to improve restoration estimates, but new outages occurred as estimates were made.
The district has begun analyzing the logistics of a better communications system as well as getting all its substations on a computer network system known as SCADA, he said.
Be prepared
General Manager Doug Nass said he wanted to encourage all customers to be as prepared as possible — but that doesn’t necessarily mean cutting more trees away from power lines.
Cutting all the trees would destroy one of the reasons why Peninsula residents live here, he said.