Some Utility Lines Are Doing Disappearing Act

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees, or the skyline for the power lines. But the skyline is getting a little clearer around the county, neighborhood by neighborhood.

That is why the regional manager of Southern California Edison takes pride in burying--he calls it undergrounding--unsightly utility lines 3 feet deep.

“It can beautify, to take an old section of a town and make it a scenic street or highway,” Fred Trueblood said.

People can become so inured to lines of listing telephone poles holding slackly strung telephone, cable TV and high-voltage electrical wires that it is a shock to see nothing but sky or trees above the buildings, he said.

Such lines are disappearing.

Burying power lines is not new in Ventura County.

“Most of the areas built up after 1975 will already have been undergrounded, such as Camarillo and Moorpark,” Trueblood said.

But the county’s older cities still have a ways to go.

This week, above-ground power lines are being buried and encased in cement on the Ventura County Fairgrounds near Ventura’s Amtrak station and near the beach on Oxnard’s 5th Street. Several blocks on Thompson Boulevard and Ventura Avenue in west Ventura were completed in March.

Those who might wonder why their street hasn’t been cleared of cables and creosote-covered telephone poles are probably not living in the right area.

The most likely neighborhoods are commercial redevelopment areas already targeted for upgrade by a redevelopment agency, such as downtown Ventura, or for beach beautification, such as Oxnard Shores, Trueblood said.

“It’s seldom done in a residential area,” he said. “What we try to do is create the most public benefit. The [state] Public Utilities Commission establishes what area is and isn’t eligible, then works together with the cities to decide what areas will deliver the most bang for the buck as funding becomes available.”

The funds don’t come free, of course. Cities and utility companies pay for the beautification through taxes or utility rates.

In Ventura County, Edison is burying electrical, phone and cable lines.

“That’s 95% of it most of the time,” Trueblood said. “We even bury the lines in order of importance; electrical lines get buried the deepest, phone lines on top of that and cable on top.”

In addition, workers build ducts for future expansion--those utility lines the public doesn’t even know it wants yet.

“Because we only want to do this once,” Trueblood said. “Our biggest headache is doing it in an area with lots of traffic and facilities.”

After all, a contractor can’t just dig a trench along the side of a street. Lurking below are water, sewer and gas lines. And the lines must never intersect.

Power, phone and cable lines aren’t laid and encased in cement in the same trench with the other three utilities, Trueblood said, but they occasionally crisscross. “So you have to know what you’re doing down there.”

It’s possible that the telephone pole is on its way to becoming an anachronism, a collectible on a par with 33 1/3 records.

But the poles can be recycled, Trueblood said. As they are removed, they are usually sold to landscapers; if not, they are cut up and hauled to a landfill.

Perhaps only the crows will miss them.