PressEthic

It used to be just signs blocking up the scenery. When events cause power outages to become prevalent in the headlines usually the story meanders toward seeking blame. Someone, the power company, must be to blame when the lights go out. Every summer as power grids strain at capacity to supply all the juice being demanded the papers usually grab a few stories about America's insatiable appetite for power. Is that a problem? No, I don't think so. How that power is generated, delivered and sustained in America, now there's a problem.

Try this, outside of the urban setting, as the car glides down the road lift your eyes up and look - really look - at the lines dipping and curving alongside the asphalt, or crossing it, or criss-crossing it, hung and connected and mounted to wooden poles. Now, think about that. This is 2006. You are reading a blog. Technology, communication and commerce are moving at incredible speed. Yet, for all of these things to work properly we rely on power lines stapled to wooden poles that are susceptible to the wind blowing too hard. The threat of terror attacks on American soil is considered daily. Just one crew of evil intentioned, foreign-trained woodsmen with chainsaws could really do a number on America.

I have long believed that this demands rectifying. Power conduits should be mandated with federal dollars toward any new or improved road construction. We need to rid our streets and country of the outdated wooden poles carrying electricity, phone and cable. Well engineered conduits, able to withstand water, freezing, movement in the earth and other possibilities should be built underground. It is amazing to me that we rely on such an outdated system.