Ratepayers would pay to bury power lines: premier

If Nova Scotia Power ratepayers want power lines to be buried, they have to understand that they will be required to shoulder the cost, Nova Scotia’s premier says.

Premier Stephen McNeil was asked about the possibility of burying power lines in a postcabinet teleconference and scrum with reporters Thursday, in the wake of recent widespread storm-related power outages.

Thousands of Cape Bretoners were left without electricity last week due a storm that included high winds.

“That’s a very good option and that’s what the Utility and Review Board is there for,” McNeil said. “The Utility and Review Board makes the determination on whether or not the cost benefit outweighs the cost to you and every other consumer in the province where they’re burying them.”

There are some regions of the province where new subdivision construction has taken place where utility lines are buried, making them much less susceptible to the elements.

The prospect of burying lines has been raised in the past by critics of service provided by Nova Scotia Power Inc.

“We live in a very harsh climate, when we get the storms that are coming in, and depending on the path they’re coming, with winds that are over 100 kilometres an hour, with the kind of vegetation that we have in this province, we’re seeing the kind of interruptions that we’ve seen,” McNeil said.

Burying lines could make service more reliable and could prevent the inconvenience of outages for residential and business customers of Nova Scotia Power, but it’s not an inexpensive proposition.

“If they (the Utility and Review Board) tell the utility to bury them, they’ll bury them, but the cost is always borne by those of us who are the ratepayers,” McNeil said.

The most recent storm was particularly harsh on the province’s main population centre, he added, so that large numbers of people were affected by outages.