The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s
hazard-mitigation program has handed out
$176 million for 156 projects to bury power
lines, in 16 states and four U.S. territories, FEMA
says. Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis signed
legislation this year to encourage moving power
lines underground, has been one of the top
recipients, along with Minnesota.
But the FEMA hazard-mitigation grants for the
work so far break down to a little more than $1
million per project. In California, where PG&E
oversees 100,000 miles of overhead electrical lines,
that average size of grant doesn’t cover the price
tag PG&E puts on burying a single mile of line.
That mostly leaves households with the bill
for doing any burying of power lines, mostly
through increased electrical rates.
In practice, that means more affluent
communities with the means to pay higher
rates are sometimes the ones getting their lines
buried, in decisions driven as much by looks as
by safety and convenience.
In Palm Beach, Florida, a resort community of first,
second and third homes, property owners paid
attention when a utility begin to erect unlovely
concrete power poles as part of an effort to harden
the state’s electrical grid against hurricanes.
Instead of accepting the concrete poles, Palm
Beach’s residents narrowly voted in 2017 to pay
for a $90 million bond issue, paid for by property
owners, to bury the overhead lines.
“There’s big benefits,” said Steven Stern,
manager of Palm Beach’s undergrounding
utilities program, who noted hurricanes
sometimes knocked out power for days. And
“the look is fantastic.”