Power-Line Study Finds Staggering Cost

CHARLOTTE — In December 2002, an ice storm struck North Carolina and knocked out power for about 2 million customers across the state. Some homes were without power for more than a week. In the wake of the storm, numerous officials at both the state and local levels called for more power lines to be buried instead of strung overhead from poles, and thereby made less vulnerable to ice and falling trees. But a new study found that to put everything overhead now underground would be an “impossible task,” a spokesman said, taking 25 years and costing $41 billion to bury all lines.