Real Power in the Nation’s Capital: We Need Infrastructure Update Now
WELCOME BACK, D.C., it’s good to hear from you. By now, hopefully, you and your neighbors in the mid-Atlantic area are back online after last month’s violent storms left about 3 million people in the dark and, with downed power lines and fallen trees, delayed the restoration of power. Since then, to catch you up, Tom Cruise’s Oprah couch-jumping testament to love was put in a new light when Katie Holmes filed for divorce; CNN’s Anderson Cooper came out of the closet to a worldwide yawn; and the nation celebrated its independence from an unresponsive and monopolistic source of power (and it wasn’t the electric utilities).
The ongoing power outages are an epic failure, however, not only for those who suffer in the heat but for the rest of the nation and the world looking on, aghast. That our capital is in the dark is akin to riots in London or debilitating strikes in Paris. It says something about a nation whose projection of strength is an essential part of its security strategy. There is little national power with no power in the nation’s capital.
There are a lot of excuses coming from Pepco and Old Dominion Power, the local utilities that distribute electricity to the Washington area. Deregulation in the industry was supposed to provide customers with more responsive service and lower prices. It has instead resulted in less oversight, allowing for degradation in equipment in the transmission and distribution networks, and fewer employees available to respond.
The problem is the persistent dependence on above-ground lines, which are easily downed by winds or tree branches that fall during a storm. The utilities have consistently fought regulations to require burying power lines, which occurs in most of the world, claiming that in D.C. alone, the pricetag would be close to $6 billion.