With so many storm outages, why don’t we put more power lines underground in Mass.?

In the aftermath of a historic blizzard that left more than 300,000 Massachusetts homes and businesses without electricity, you might be wondering why more power lines aren’t put underground.

After all, burying these wires would protect them from the heavy winds, ice and snow-laden branches that frequently cause outages, right?

At a time when Massachusetts residents and lawmakers are concerned about rising energy costs, it’s hard to imagine giving utilities the green light to put thousands of miles of power lines underground, said Kyle Murray, Massachusetts program director at the Acadia Center.

“If you actually look at your bills, a major driver of those costs is delivery side of things,” he said. “That’s infrastructure. That’s poles and wires. And so undergrounding would just serve to drive that delivery portion even higher.”

To read the full article from wbur, click here.