Austinites wonder why power lines aren't buried underground to reduce outages

AUSTIN, Texas — Ice and falling tree limbs are the reasons for power outages across Central Texas and this has many Austinites wondering why power lines aren’t buried underground to reduce the number of outages. Austin Energy's general manager was met with that same question on Thursday.

General manager Jackie Sargent said this is a question that utilities get all the time. As we're used to seeing power lines above ground, she said the reason they're not being buried as often is that they're expensive and can take longer to fix.

“It’s very expensive to retrofit a system and go back and bury powerlines. Very expensive, billions of dollars," she said.

Over time utilities have had opportunities to bury power lines as new developments are created. However, buried power lines come with their own set of problems just like the ones above ground.

"They are vulnerable to flooding, and if they do have an outage, it is more difficult to identify where the damage is, where the break in the power line is, where the damage has occurred," Sargent said.

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That would mean the crews would excavate the buried lines and replace cables. The Public Utility Commission of Texas said the placement of distribution lines is a business decision made by individual utilities. They added that there are many factors that can impact the decision to bury a line or build above ground like cost, accessibility, and disruption to roads and property during installation and maintenance.

“The outages that customers experience from a buried line are typically much longer than from overhead lines," Sargent said.

In a state like Texas that has a lot of limestones, Sargent said that also makes it harder to dig trenches to put the lines in. CBS Austin did reach out to other utilities to get their take on buried lines, but of course, they are still working to restore power to thousands of customers in Central Texas.