Community Chat

[gardenman]

Going underground isn't a perfect answer except in new developments. There's lots of stuff already underground that they have to work around. Water lines, sewer lines, gas lines all complicate "just burying the lines underground." And even if they bury the lines, they have to have the transformers above ground, so every few hundred feet there's a large green box holding the tranformers and if someone drives into that, or a tree falls on it, there goes the power again. Many property owners hate those boxes. Someone digging where they shouldn't or driving a metal post into the ground for a new mailbox can have a shocking experience if they hit a buried line. And where the lines are above ground most of the houses will have overhead connections that would have to be rerouted. 

I think that every new development should have an underground precast concrete tunnel buried under the middle of the street that houses the water, sewer lines, power, cable, fiber, whatever lines that can be easily accessed from a manhole for upkeep. You could even sneak in the transformers underground in that way. You'd need an occasional sump pump to handle any sewer or water line breakage, but by and large, it should protect the infrastructure. No homeowner or independent contractor will be digging in the middle of the street, so less risk of someone doing something too stupid. It would add to the cost of new construction, but be much less costly down the road.

[Icegoddess]

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@Jk9 wrote:

I live in a horse country rural area with a lot of big horse farms and some big vacant pastures and wooded areas too.  And there are big streams and creeks around, too.   It's not like living in a newer housing development where you can run lines to a lot of dwellings in a short distance.  The state and county trim the trees around the roads and power lines here.  There are housing developments being built here now and I don't see power poles there, but there are poles to get utilities to those developments.   

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@Jk9 , I am so jealous.  

[songbird]

It's not just power lines, it's just about everything.  Roads are made in asphalt instead of concrete.  The reason?  It gives jobs.  Streets are redone around the clock and a lot of people are happy to be working.  If you improve and drop the band aid, they'll be unhappy people looking for work.