image credit: Laris Karklis/The Washington Post/Source: PEPCO
Today’s issue of the Washington Post brings Good Ward 5 News!
On Monday, Mayor Gray signed legislation authorizing $1B to bury feeder lines over the course of five to seven years. Work could begin later this year, with the RIA corridor slated for the 2nd year of the project. The DC Public Service Commission must provide final approval on a surcharge that will be billed to Pepco customers.
This is in response to the “Derecho” of 2012 that left many neighborhoods without power for days. The areas targeted in this large undergrounding initiative were hit the hardest by the Derecho.
While grid reliability is the primary reason for burying the power lines, this project has also been supported by many in the RIA community for aesthetic reasons, so this is great news for us. The large trees that line RIA between the RIA metro station and Eastern Avenue have been aggressively trimmed by Pepco over the years in order to reduce damage to power lines during storm events. The beautiful green canopy of trees is left looking mangled and warped.
A tour of highly successful revitalization zones in DC shows that underground power lines is a key component to a successful streetscape design. In fact, when FoRIA participated in the DC Vibrant Retail Streets program last year, one of the top recommendations that we received was to push for undergrounding of the power lines.
