Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Fight in works over burying power lines

There is a battle brewing over the fate of the state's power lines.

Local municipalities are clamoring to have the lines buried in an effort to minimize public safety concerns over downed lines and a clutter of power poles. It also is clear that political officials and residents want the lines underground to free their view from a web of lines.

Nevada Power Co. -- and its Reno-based sister utility Sierra Pacific Power Co. -- want to know who will pay the increased costs of burying wires and maintaining the underground lines.

In a recent series of filings with the PUC, the battle lines have been drawn.

The lines in question are transmission lines -- major lines that link communities to substations and power plants, said Mary Simmons, vice president for external affairs for Sierra Pacific Resources, parent company for Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power. It has been standard practice to bury distribution lines, which connect individual homes, for years, she said.

For the utilities and their customers, the financial questions in the debate are significant.

In testimony filed with the PUC on the issue, Sierra Pacific Power said complying with a Washoe County order to place 1.6 miles of line underground carried a cost of $3.1 million "compared to the estimated costs for an equivalent overhead line of approximately $480,000."

The added costs, however, do not stop with the initial placement, the utilities said. Repairing buried lines is more expensive and "can take days and even weeks rather than the hours it takes to repair conventional aerial facilities."

The utilities, Simmons said, have little trouble burying lines when the debate is public safety. Instead, the argument the companies lay out in testimony involves demands to bury lines for the purpose of preserving views.

"An increasing trend is emerging for political subdivisions in the state of Nevada with siting authority over electrical facilities to order undergrounding of transmission lines to mitigate aesthetic impacts associated with line extensions," the companies said in testimony.

In its own testimony, Clark County indicates that it is acting under its "general police power" to establish "ordinances with respect to the installations of utilities in order to promote the health, safety, convenience and general welfare of the public and the aesthetic appearance of the community or area."

The county also argues that underground lines are safer.

"It cannot reasonably be disputed that overhead electric lines present a significant hazard to the public," said county testimony filed by Deputy District Attorney Mark E. Wood.

Those hazards include traffic accidents resulting in collisions with poles and down lines during during storms that pose electrocution risks and leave consumers without power.

Ultimately the debate comes down to money.

The utilities said that, historically, the cost of undergrounding lines is added to the company's overall rate base. That means if one Las Vegas-area development has its lines buried, the cost is being picked up by ratepayers across Southern Nevada, including such faraway areas as Laughlin.

That's not always popular with customers, the utilities are quick to point out.

"The commission has received calls from ratepayers who have expressed concern that undergrounding can burden the utility-wide rate base with excess costs that were occasioned, not for safety purposes, but solely because of aesthetic preferences of a local region," utility testimony said.

One question being asked in the PUC case is whether or not the commissioners can order the municipality making the demands to pay the bill.

Clark County and Las Vegas officials were quick to answer "no" to that question.

"The Nevada Legislature has not granted the PUC clear and to the point authority to shift utility relocation costs or undergrounding costs from the utilities to the government," Wood said in the county's testimony. "Any such ruling by the PUC would be beyond its jurisdiction and invalid."

Deputy City Attorney Larry G. Bettis agreed.

For the PUC to get that kind of authority, parties involved said it could ultimately take an act of the Legislature.

The other options for the utilities could include assessing the costs to residents of specific municipalities -- like the cities of Henderson and Las Vegas or Clark County. Such assessments would be possible since the utilities already assess franchise taxes on bills specific to those jurisdictions.

Some also have suggested levying charges on bills of specific neighborhoods, but Simmons said the power companies' costs to create so many unique charges would be prohibitive.

Simmons, however, said the municipalities could pay the utilities and recover the costs through special assessment districts that would be collected through property taxes.

Whatever the answer, the decision about burying the big power lines could get plenty of attention as these types of debates become more common as services struggle to keep up with an expanding population.

"With the growth, we're going to see more and more of these kinds of issues bubble up," Simmons said.

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