Bury the lines

I am still not sure that I feel comfortable using unpaid labor to do skilled work like that.

Let's use tax dollars. That's what taxes are there for.

Like you, Ballvalve, I also feel a little sad that the English no longer run the show here.

We did send a few miscreants here, however. From which, some of you may well be descended.

The criminals we sent to America were, of course, not our brightest and best. Many were sold as servants as soon as they landed here (unlike in Australia where they were made to work in the penal colony). In buying them, owners looked for particular skill sets that they could use on their plantations.

Not a great start...

http://www.alwaysonsale.com.au/aos/p...hughes-robert/

While the power is out, read "Fatal shore", you can find it for a few bucks, I would guess. One of the best reads on Englands colonization.

And the Aussie unfortunates were also often sold and rented to the landowners, if they survived the passage, the sodomites, and the first hundred lashes.

I have not found any writing on Englands criminal transport to America, outside of one nice Three stooges episode.

Perhaps we are descended from them.

http://www.onceuponatimebooks.com/si...000162384.html

Here is an epic read for 100 pennies. Books are going out of style. And note the heading photo on the link.

So, in a previous life I did worked for the power company maintaining all of those dang above ground power lines. I was one of the guys that fixed the lines when the tree branches knocked them down. My company would have buried the lines in a heart beat, but the cost would have been ASTRONOMICAL!! For the few power outages that could have been prevented by burying the lines we would have had to dig up every backyard in the city, and reinstall every house's power box. (and as you well know once you modify something you have to bring it up to current code) Oh, and those same power poles also carry everyone's phone and cable service. So all of that would have to be buried as well. But, even back then, 30 years ago, all of the new neighborhoods were being built with underground power.

I decided to quit when, like the days before it, I was 40' in the air in a high lift bucket truck, looking at a high tension line only a few feet away. I realized that I could touch death without even trying. Be thankful someone will do that job. I have done it and I am thankful.

I live 14 kilometres from town so nothing out here is buried except for the last 300 feet from the pole to my house. I much prefer the clean look of no overhead wires.

My internet comes to me through the air and so doesn't rely on wires. Mind you, without electricity the batteries in my UPS and my laptop will run down as too will the UPS on the WISP's tower. I work in IT and am on-call 24/7 every other week so I need VPN access back to my place of work. The first thing I do in a power outage is to VPN in to see if the outage afected the town also, and whether the backup generators started.

The electrical utility here is pretty good at recovering from lightning induced outages and reclosers take care of most of them. It's the trees falling onto lines and the drivers plowing into the poles that cause the extended outages. While I have a genset for backup power, the WISP tower does not, so once their UPS depletes, I can no longer access the internet and cannot VPN to mey network. Mind you, once the tower UPS depletes, my cellphone also stops working so I tend not to get so many calls.

There is no excuse not to bury lines in urban areas, and that includes the burbs. I think overhead high voltage lines should also be buried in rural areas of scenic beauty.

The taxpayer should pay. And it should be Federally mandated.

In California, ALL new home contstruction for the last 50 or so years has been underground electric. San Diego Gas & Electric has an ongoing project to underground ALL wires in the city, but is doesn't happen overnight. It is expensive and utiliy owners = STOCKHOLDERS = ( Moi ! ) pay for this out of profit margins.

Then the taxpayer needs to come in and help. We need an efficient infrastructure.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ian Gills

Then the taxpayer needs to come in and help. We need an efficient infrastructure.

---

After you, senor!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jimbo

utiliy owners = STOCKHOLDERS = ( Moi ! ) pay for this out of profit margins.

---

Ja, but think about how much they save not having to prune trees and repair lines after storms.

Think about the cost to society of losing power. Elderly people dying. Food going off.

The power companies should be held to account and taxpayers should pay.

The market is failing.

You cannot bury main high tension interstate transfer lines. But you could put a windmill atop each tower.

Since we accept those eyesores and bird killers, might as well dress up the towers for some use.

NUCLEAR POWER: our only hope.

Or that accelerator in france causing a huge black hole to suck up half the earth.