Brutal storms hit Northern Illinois Thursday, knocking down massive trees, and cutting power to hundreds of thousands of customers in Cook and Lake County. Heroic and commendable efforts were made by the many utility crews and emergency workers that rose to the occasion, working double shifts to restore electric service and remove trees from roadways. All around, the normal routine is returning and neighborhoods are being tidied up to their pre-storm level.

Which brings up the question, what was the pre-storm level? In the 21st century, throughout much of Chicago (excluding the Loop), most of the suburbs, and the entire rural Illinois, nearly all electric lines are strung between utility poles, much as they have been for over 100 years, despite a massive increase in home electrification and amperage load, and improved construction techniques. Despite huge technological advances in every other industry, our electric delivery is stuck with an early 20th century system of high wires criss-crossing our neighborhoods and falling down during inclement weather.

So is this an intractable problem too complex for modern society to grasp? Well, it has been grasped in much of Europe with buried cable being commonplace in Western Europe. However in the countries of Eastern Europe, in Russia and in countries of the third world, there are still many utility along roads and sometimes even in urban areas. Aside from the Third World, there is also the Kenilworth-Wilmette border, which I photographed this morning, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States, tightly restrung after the recent storm . Could our more endowed suburbs be holding on to overhead lines as some sort of suburban totem, rather than trying to move electrical transmission up to the level of Turkey or Albania?

Per the Edison Electric Insitute, lines above ground, while being less reliable, are much easier to repair than buried cable. Water seepage underground can damage buried cable systems and cause outages due to flooding. Burying electrical transmission cable incurs costs (quoted by Ameren and the Edison Electric Institue) at $1 Million per mile. Some quick math, at a 75ft wide suburban lot, with two lots per cable line, that would be 140 homes on a one mile suburban stretch of cable, or a cost of $7150 per homeowner to have cable buried.

Of course some scrutiny is advised. I called a subcontractor I know who actually buries cables. He charges $78,000 per mile to the utilities for his labor and material, about 12 times less than the Utilities are quoting. Also there is nagging tax question. Overhead lines do not look to be included in property taxes, while buried cable is taxed as real property. It is also quite likely that regulatory costing plays a major role in line burial. Expenses incurred by utilities are typically billed as cost plus profits, while capital improvements are not, thus it is much harder to pass these costs on to customers.

Much like local phone service, electric service seems immune from competition and technological advances. The last mile of utility service delivery involves a great deal of customer contact, quality assurance, and the key economic role of locking in long term customers, with very few choices of alternate products. Generations of State Regulation have got us a grid system on par with Romania, all with considerable political squabbling, nepotism, and hopscotching of jobs between regulator and regulated. Speaking for the Chicago Daily Observer, it is time to demand something better than a 3rd world infrastructure.

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John Powers is the President of the Chicago Daily Observer

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