Avista, it is time

Now that the power is back on for customers across the Inland Northwest, fallen trees are cut up and disposed of, and repairs are underway to damaged property, the time is appropriate to reflect on the most recent weather emergency and its impact on our lives. Having lived in the area for 25 years, this writer has experienced fire storm (1991), ice storm (1996), the wind storm of 2003 and the latest event. In all these events, an average of one per six years, the electric power distribution system and weather in the form of high winds or freezing rain have teamed up to cause widespread property damage and even wider spread disruption of our lives. The average power outage has been three days, but the extremes have ranged out to a week and a half. Yet, it might have been far worse. If the most current event had occurred a month and a half earlier, there would likely have been a repeat of firestorm on a much more massive level.

The root cause of the widespread impact of these weather events can be traced back to a single fault in the power distribution system. Except in some newer subdivisions where the utilities were placed underground, the system is suspended on poles exposed to weather extremes and the resulting falling trees and/or aged falling power poles. Such weather extremes can be relied upon to occur on a regular basis, currently an average of a six-year return time. However, warming of the climate which is clearly underway, is predicted by many climatologists to contribute to even more intense storms.

Given these facts and predictions, Avista, it is time that your company and unfortunately its ratepayers move toward placing as much of the electric distribution system as possible underground. Underground installation is already required in other regions that experience storms on a regular basis. Utilities in these states have found methods to detect and repair problems in underground transmission lines. The hurdle Avista and the smaller utilities face is financing this large improvement in its infrastructure. Avista can contribute by investing the rate hikes it constantly asks the state regulators for in putting their lines underground. A constant rationale for such rate hikes is improvement in the system, yet the consumer at my level fails to see any improvement, just the high salary and bonuses Avista pays its chief executives. If their leadership and vision are so valuable, why are many of its customers shivering in the dark every six years.

Yet, Avista, and the other utilities cannot fully fund such a change in a meaningful time frame without the customer pitching in. One mechanism to assist conversion is the local improvement district (LID) used by public utilities like water and sewer districts. Avista could invest in underground main distribution lines, while neighborhoods were given the option of an LID to place the local distribution lines underground. The neighborhood could vote for or against a levy to complete the conversion. With time, we might come to the day when those shivering in the dark might have only themselves and not Avista to blame for taking the cheap way out.

Geoffrey Harvey is a Hayden resident.