EDITORIAL
Electric Co. reliability project not just routing

Hawaiian Electric's latest proposal for a major transmission line project aimed at increasing reliability of service will not have to endure all the environmental and aesthetic challenges that faced its previous Wa'ahila Ridge proposal.

But that hardly means the multimillion-dollar project should be treated as a slam dunk by the electric company or the Public Utilities Commission, which will have the final say.

The Wa'ahila project taught the electric company a lesson about working with the community on such controversial projects.

Clearly, a series of community meetings that led up to this latest proposal left the utility with the strong impression that a route through Palolo Valley would be a nonstarter. It was also clear that the community wants these massive power lines put underground.

The utility says undergrounding the 46,000-volt lines in the McCully-Mo'ili'ili will cost as much as $59 million and will likely drive up average residential electric bills by around $1 a month.

That, in and of itself, might be acceptable if the public can be convinced that the benefits of the project outweigh the costs and the obvious construction disruption.

But several substantive questions remain to be thoroughly and honestly worked out, both with the public and with the PUC.

• First, has it been conclusively demonstrated that this project, which Hawaiian Electric contends is needed to complete a "ring of reliability," is truly needed? It is not enough to say this would increase reliability; obviously it would. The question is whether our current system is unreliable enough to justify this project and its costs.

• Are there other, less disruptive ways of upgrading reliability? The PUC, in fact, is about to open a docket on something called "distributed generation," which essentially means a matrix of on-site power generating stations rather than one central generating site connected by a complex system of distribution wires.

Routing is obviously a major component of this decision, and Hawaiian Electric has done a thorough job of consulting with the community on this aspect.

But there needs to be a community consensus on all aspects: routing, need and alternatives. That means the PUC must take more than a narrow engineering-focused approach as it decides whether this project should go forward.