404 Coolidge Street

                                                                                                Chapel Hill, NC  27516

                                                                                                (919) 929-1670

                                                                                                capowski@med.unc.edu

                                                                                                January 13, 2003

 

Mayor and Town Council

Town of Chapel Hill

[email protected]

 

Dear Mayor Foy and Members of the Town Council,

 

Please start the processes to bury our electrical power distribution system.

 

Duke Power representatives have described to you their heroic efforts to restore power to us customers after the recent ice storm.  I commend the linesmen and their support staff who did the actual work under extremely difficult and dangerous conditions.  However, to a large part their efforts were made heroic by the failure of the management of Duke Power to learn from the 1996 Hurricane Fran and take steps to reduce the vulnerability of our power distribution system to storms.

 

I live in Westwood, one of the town's older neighborhoods, and while my petition uses Westwood as an example, everything I present here was repeated often throughout the entire town.  Below is one picture of storm damage to the power system.  Please note that every electrical component in the photo (wires, transformers, poles, etc) is only six years old.

 

                                                                        Capowski petition, Jan 13, 2003, page 2

 

The reason that all the electrical components in the photo are only six years old is that after Fran, Duke Power crews rebuilt the entire power distribution system in Chapel Hill in one week -- a phenomenal achievement!  The result was a power distribution system that was intact but vulnerable to the next storm.  In the six years since Fran, Duke Power did nothing to reduce the system's vulnerability, so that the recent ice storm produced Fran-like destruction.  Unfortunately the stakes were much higher this time, due to freezing weather and longer nights.  Today we repeat once more the post-Fran situation, a physically intact power system that is a sitting duck for the next storm.

 

Mr. E.O. Ferrell, Duke's VP of  Power Distribution, tells us that Duke would bury power lines, but the cost is enormous, and Duke customers in Charlotte will not pay to bury lines in Chapel Hill.  In reply, I ask questions like these:

 

What is the cost of 50,000 Chapel Hillians shivering in the dark for six days?

What is the cost of carbon monoxide poisonings?

What is the cost of house fires?

What is the cost of schools being closed for several days?

What is the cost of merchants being closed for six days?

What is the lost revenue to Duke Power from its customers?

What reconstruction costs would be saved if the system were less damaged?

What new materials engineering products can be used to reduce the cost of line burial?

 

Hurricanes and ice storms will continue to occur -- they are part of our climate.  Since Duke Power on its own will not reduce the vulnerability of the power distribution system, please require that they do so.  I see this as a long process, involving local and state legislation, new electrical construction standards, and even cooperative financing.  I anticipate that Duke Power will muster its lawyers, lobbyists and political contributions to fight any new regulations.  However, Chapel Hill is our town, not Duke Powers', and the street rights-of-way are ours, not theirs.

 

Though it is not the current focus, improved aesthetics are an added benefit derived from burying the power system.  Plain and simple, overhead wires are ugly.

 

Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.  We've repeated it once; let's not do it again.

 

As always, I thank you for your service to our town.

 

                                                                                                Joe Capowski