Dive Summary:
- On the same day that USA Today's editorial board argued that New York needs extensive infrastructure upgrades, Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn wrote an opinion piece praising utility workers and pointing the importance of public-private partnerships in responding to disasters.
- Kuhn believes that the utility industry's voluntary mutual assistance program made 67,000 workers associated with 80 companies responded to the Superstorm Sandy situation and called them "heroic."
- He stated that "no amount of infrastructure spending could have inoculated us from Sandy and its massive storm surge," but called $35 billion that utilities are expected to invest in distribution and transmission systems in the coming year "an essential investment."
From the article:
"... Storms like these inevitably raise questions about undergrounding power lines. The reality is no amount of infrastructure spending could have inoculated us from Sandy and its massive storm surge. Undergrounding protects systems from falling trees but cannot protect them from flooding. Drying, repairing and testing the system to ensure safety is complex and time-consuming.
This year, utilities are projected to spend nearly $35 billion updating and reinforcing distribution and transmission systems. ..."
