City paying premium to bury Elgin power lines

Elgin Street won’t be cluttered with hydro poles after it’s rebuilt between now and 2020, the city said, because the wires they hold will be buried instead.

Buried hydro wires make for a cleaner streetscape, but they ’re also much more expensive than wires run overhead from pole to pole. As a rule, the city won’t pay the premium even when a street is being completely rebuilt.

But in a memo to city councillors Monday, infrastructure manager Alain Gonthier said planners and Hydro Ottawa have decided that in this case, burying the wires makes more sense. As it happens, Elgin Street itself is coming due for an overhaul at the same time as the existing wood poles are wearing out, which is unusual.

“Early in the detailed design process for Elgin Street it was identified that the new road geometry required the poles to be placed in a non-linear alignment, resulting in the need to use extensive support systems, for which the new road configuration provided insufficient space to install,” Gonthier told council. “The direct impact of this non-linear option would compromise the complete design vision and functionality for Elgin Street and would impact the ability to meet current provincial accessibility requirements.”

The direct impact of this non-linear option would compromise the complete design vision and functionality for Elgin Street ...

They could have used concrete poles, which wouldn’t need cables, but those need deep underground foundations and are much more expensive than the standard wood. Overhead wires would be closer to buildings than Hydro Ottawa likes anyway, so buried wires are the solution.

Doing this will cost $3.1 million, Gonthier said in the memo. (That’s much less than the ballpark $8-million figure the councillor for the area, Catherine McKenney, said she was quoted when she began pushing to bury the wires well over a year ago.) Hydro Ottawa will cover $1.9 million and the city will pay $1.2 million. There’s enough in the reconstruction project’s $36.3-million budget to cover it, Gonthier said.

Parts of Elgin have already been dug up and re-covered this year for advance work, particularly by Bell. The major reconstruction job is to start in January, though, and will keep the road on Elgin closed from Gloucester to Isabella streets for all of 2019. It’s to reopen to traffic in 2020 with landscaping and finishing touches still underway.