When will hydroelectricity companies in eastern Canada and the northern United States get the message: It’s time to weatherproof the electrical grid! Especially in rural areas.

It seems every time there are strong winds or freezing rain or heavy snow, many homes and businesses in both urban areas and country settings lose their electricity. As would be expected, power company crews tackle the more populated areas first, then move their crews to the isolated country areas.

As someone who lives in a forested area, I’ve seen power go out after tempestuous weather in this region several times since I moved here in the late 1990s, for up to a week at a time. I mentioned my idea once — bury the lines — to a Hydro-Quebec crew person who was restoring power in this area after a wind storm, and he surmised that it would be “too expensive.”

No doubt it would cost a fair bit to weatherproof the entire electrical grid, especially in urban areas, but it probably wouldn’t cost all that much to bury the lines in rural areas, given that there aren’t a lot of power lines in these parts to begin with. It’s simply a matter of digging trenches in the earth — no concrete here — and transferring the lines from above to below.

As for the costs of weatherproofing the electrical grid, make federal government pay for it. As a service to the people. After all, the politicians are there to serve us — they should use their positions of power to ensure that the people who elected them have a reliable power grid that won’t buckle under bad weather conditions.

So, spare no expense — get it done!

Power to the people!

Jillian