Updated at 1:31 p.m., Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Burying Waianae utility lines to cost 'tens of millions'
Advertiser Staff
The price tag to bury miles of utility lines along the Wai'anae Coast could easily cost "tens of millions of dollars" and might result in higher utility rates, state and Hawaiian Electric Co. officials said today.The work on portions of 17 miles of Farrington Highway will take years and the first underground lines may not be realized for at least another two or three years, said state Sen. President Colleen Hanabusa.
HECO and state officials today announced an agreement between them that calls for reinforcing and eventually replacing old wooden utility poles that have fallen along the Wai'anae Coast over the last two years. The agreement was first reported by The Advertiser.
Which parts of the Wai'anae Coast will get their overhead lines buried, how much the work will cost and who will pay for it all will depend on input from community meetings that will begin in the next several weeks, Hanabusa said.
But Robbie Alm, HECO's senior vice president, said the project will easily run into the "tens of millions" of dollars.
The project also needs to go before the state Public Utilities Commission.
The goal is to eventually remove many of the poles and bury power, television, telephone and other overhead lines sometime in the future, although no date is outlined in the agreement.
On Dec. 5, at least 16 utility poles along Farrington Highway snapped or were bowled over by wind gusts up to 70 mph, knocking out power to hundreds of HECO customers for days and choking traffic on the Leeward Coast.
Some of the damaged poles had been replaced just more than a year before, when strong winds in March 2006 toppled more than a dozen poles.
