After Hurricane Ida, California wildfires, debate over putting electric lines underground resurfaces

Nationally, there are 160,000 miles of high-voltage transmission traces and, in keeping with one estimate, 5.5 million miles of native distribution traces. Mike Beehler, nationwide spokesman for the Energy Supply Intelligence Initiative, a commerce group advocating the undergrounding, or burying, of traces, says that in many of the nation placing a line underground is simpler and cheaper than in California. “The price of underground is coming down,” he stated.