Why Can’t We Just Bury All The Power Lines?

Many people in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas are in their third day without power thanks to Friday night’s Derecho. The latest reports from utility companies are saying that it’s likely going to be the end of this week before all the power is restored (assuming we don’t get more storms between now and then, of course) and the weather if forecast to remain hot and humid from now until Saturday at least. Some elected officials are publicly trying to berate the utility companies into fixing things faster, which seems like little more than foolish grandstanding to me but then that’s what politicians do isn’t it. For those who have lost power, it’s all been very frustrating. Whatever food was in refridgerators and freezers has long ago spoiled, and unless there are alternate living arrangements available, one must suffer through some pretty unpleasant weather.
All of this leads David Frum to ask a question that I’m sure many residents of the D.C. area asking, why can’t we just bury the power lines:
Outages are not inevitable. The German power grid has outages at an average rate of 21 minutes per year.
The winds may howl. The trees may fall. But in Germany, the lights stay on.
There’s no Teutonic engineering magic to this impressive record. It’s achieved by a very simple decision: Germany buries almost all of its low-voltage and medium-voltage power lines, the lines that serve individual homes and apartments. Americans could do the same. They have chosen not to.

Read more: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/why-cant-we-just-bury-all-the-power-lines/