Residents urge Dominion to bury power lines
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| A downed tree hit a power line on Sleepy Hollow Road in 2012. |
suffered through several power blackouts in recent months – some lasting days –
are urging Dominion Virginia Power to bury power lines as the best way to
prevent outages.
They expressed frustration at a meeting with Dominion Aug. 23 convened by Del. Kaye Kory, who’s received lots of complaints from constituents on this issue. Several people complained that whenever there’s a storm, trees knock down power lines along Sleepy Hollow Road, causing outages in Lake Barcroft and surrounding neighborhoods.
When there is an outage, Dominion crews give the top priority to areas where the most people are affected, Shaw said.
For example, a downed transition line, which could affect 10,000 people or more, would be fixed first. A substation serves about 6,000 people, and a main circuit, about 1,500. Dominion also gives priority to power lines feeding into hospitals, nursing homes, and water facilities.
Dominion has no plans to step up it’s underground power program, and is not considering burying the power lines along Sleepy Hollow Road, said Brendan Shaw, external affairs representative in Dominion’s Northern Virginia office.
“Sleepy Hollow is the weakest link,” said Holmes Run resident Collin O’Neill, who said he lost power three times this summer. “It would make sense to bury lines there.”
“Power is more reliable in other areas,” O’Neill said. “Any time there is a weather event, I cringe, wondering if the power will be out.”
“We’re been asking for buried power lines for over 20 years,” Terry Adams, a resident of Lincolnia, told Dominion representatives. “Why don’t you do that? You care more about shareholders than customers.”
The General Assembly has been talking about undergrounding for 10 years, Kory noted. It’s hard to make changes in how Dominion operates, but it might be helpful if more residents complain, she said.
Dominion is burying about 400 miles of power lines a year within a large swath of the state, Shaw said.
Since 2016, power lines have been buried in the Lake Barcroft area on Lily Dhu Lane, Jay Miller Drive, Whispering Lane, Lakeview Terrace, Tallwood Terrace, and Lakeview Drive. In 2014, power lines were buried in the Columbia Pines neighborhood in Annandale.
“We’re burying lines strategically,” said Dominion engineer Nick Nelson. Undergrounding efforts focus on areas more susceptible to outages, where there are a lot of trees and older infrastructure.
If the data makes sense to bury power lines, we would do it,” Nelson said. “The data isn’t there for Sleepy Hollow Road.”
Now that Fairfax County is planning to construct sidewalks along Sleepy Hallow Road, it was suggested that project could present a good opportunity for burying power lines.
But Shaw said Dominion would not coordinate with the sidewalk project.
“If the data doesn’t show it makes sense, we can’t underground, even though Sleepy Hollow will be torn up when the sidewalks go in,” Nelson added.
While there would be fewer outages if power lines were buried, sometimes underground wires go bad, and it would take much longer to figure out where the problem is and fix it, he said.
While the most common cause of power outages is storms, outages are also sometimes caused by dead trees falling on wires, vehicle accidents, birds or squirrels, equipment failures, or people digging without calling Miss Utility.
“We’re looking to mitigate risk, not promising to end outages,” Shaw said. “Because of the severity of the recent storms, outages affected 100,000 people in Northern Virginia.”
Dominion is taking other stops to prevent outages, including the use of a “self-healing grid” that automatically isolates areas where a tree has fallen and maintains the power supply to as many homes as possible.
Dominion also trims tree branches within 15 feet of power lines and completed “a hot spot cleanup” in July, said Nelson.
“No amount of trimming will do any good. There are huge, old trees at the end of their lives. They’re all dying. The trees need to be replaced,” O’Neill countered.
When there is an outage, Dominion urges people to report it online or call 866-366-4357.
I wonder if they provide the data that they base their decisions on to their customers.
Dominion needs to reevaluate its data. My neighborhood fronts on Sleepy Hollow. Although our power lines were buried a few years ago, we've continued to suffer power outages precisely because of the problems addressed in this article. Dominion has rebuilt its lines along Sleepy Hollow countless times. You can tell just by looking at the number of newer looking poles and crosspieces. I understand that burying lines is expensive. But so is repeatedly having to trash a freezer full of food. – Sparky
And where was PG on this, nowhere?
I live in LB and it's a terrible problem – BUT – a lot of the problem would be helped if people would take care of their trees. I've lived here 10 years and have had tree services come out to prune the trees at least twice, and taken down 3 trees over the years that were starting to die. Most of our neighbors don't do this, and so we have a lot of trees and big limbs just waiting for the next storm. If people would take responsibility for their own property and the trees on it, I bet we would see some reduction in the power outages, which do come quite often around here (we had several outages, 3 of which lasted for at least a couple of hours – one lasting about 8 hours which meant throwing out a lot of food in our fridge).
What this comes down to is Sleepy Hollow area residents trying to get a subsidy from Dominion customers elsewhere, rather than taking responsibility for clearing at-risk trees from their own properties.
(Speaking in general here, not to anyone in particular) If you buy a property in an area with overhead lines, you know, or should know, what you are getting into. It is not reasonable to try to pressure Dominion to cater to your wishes. If Dominion caves, everyone else has to pay for your lack of property maintenance.
This is a really good point
What do we have to do to make this a public utility responsive to the public? I can’t count the times we have lost power. It’s like living in a third world nation. How is this acceptable? They need to invest in their own infrastructure. How much time and money do they spend putting up lines that come down as soon as we get a strong wind? Overhead lines are an unsightly blight and if they have the capability to bury them then they should do it. I understand the need to keep the most populated areas serviced but none of this would be a concern if they would just bury the lines.
If you want a more responsive power company, lobby the legislature to stop meddling in the electricity business. Then Dominion would actually be accountable to their customers. As it stands now, they're only accountable to politicians and bureaucrats.
It's *not* like living in a third world nation 4:37, believe me.
As much as it hurt wallet-wise, I cut down 4 trees on my yard because 1 was getting eaten by termites, and the other 2 were pine trees which I heard were shallow roots. After the recent storm that hit BC hard, I'm glad I cut them down, even though it came out of my wallet, it's safer than one falling on my house!
In my neighborhood with lots of trees, people pay themselves to bury the lines, if they choose. Why should this neighborhood get a subsidy? Our power goes out too.