EuroWire January 2018

Transatlantic cable

After stopping at the unemployment office, she would head for the airport with her children to reserve flights to Boston. “It hurts my heart, seeing this all destroyed, and I love it so much,” she said. “Who knows when the businesses will reopen? They were already struggling before the storm.” † † Ms Alvarez observed that, as with all catastrophes, not all victims suffer equally. Hurricanes favour some industries, like construction, which had been moribund in Puerto Rico for a decade. Is the tolerance of Americans for overhead power lines coming to an end? The United States bristles with transmission lines strung aloft on poles – an obtrusive presence incomprehensible to Europeans. But a controversy now roiling a residential/recreational area of coastal New Jersey suggests that utility companies and telecom operators may no longer be able to count on the willingness of communities to share their outdoor space with the disfiguring impedimenta of electricity transmission. As reported by Vince Conti of the Cape May County Herald , a movement on the part of many residents of Stone Harbor to rid the borough of Atlantic City Electric (ACE) steel utility poles has gained momentum. Stone Harbor shares Seven Mile Island, a barrier island on the Jersey Shore, with Avalon, whose substation regulates the electricity supply to both boroughs. On 7 th November, its mayor announced that Stone Harbor had “But the real boom,” she wrote, “is in joblessness.”

commissioned the municipal engineering firm Mott Associates to conduct an independent analysis of the feasibility and costs of removing ACE’s galvanised steel poles and burying the electric transmission lines to Avalon. (“Steel Poles Stay or Go in Stone Harbor,” 12 th November) Mr Conti provided background. In October 2016, amid uproar over the installation of the 70-foot-tall poles, ACE presented the borough with a $25 million estimate to relocate the overhead transmission lines underground and remove the steel poles. Telecoms including Comcast and Verizon would require replacement wood poles or have their infrastructure also buried, at a cost additional to the electric company’s estimate. Mott is to look for ways to accomplish the desired changes, to consider legal issues that may be involved, and to perform a feasibility study for moving the electric utility’s distribution system – the wires that bring power to individual homes – underground. † † When infrastructure upgrades were started on Seven Mile Island, ACE asserted that the steel poles contributed to its ability to hike the power feed to the Avalon substation from 23 kV to 60 kV. The company further maintained at the time that overhead infrastructure allowed for faster identification of problems and quicker restoration of power when problems occur. The poles were also said to provide superior resistance to the wind damage associated with coastal storms. Residents opposed to the poles have consistently maintained the contrary position: that underground infrastructure provably offers greater resilience in the face of weather.

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January 2018