Billion-dollar power line burial plan wins approval from D.C. utility commission

Pepco employee James Tarantella climbs out of a bucket after fixing a blown fuse on a power outage call on Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in Rockville, Md. (Matt McClain/For The Washington Post)

A billion-dollar plan to bury the District’s most outage-prone power lines has won a key blessing from the D.C. Public Service Commission, paving the way for work to begin early next year.

The approval order, dated Wednesday and announced Thursday by the commission, approves the first three years of the undergrounding plan and provides for one of two charges that will appear on Pepco bills to finance the work. It comes after 10 months of study by a task force convened by Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) in the wake of the devastating June 2012 derecho, and after a series of hearings held by the three-member commission over the past five months.

A companion $375 million financing package remains under review by the commission; it will be considered at a Nov. 21 meeting. Under the plan submitted to the commission, the undergrounding charges would together add about $1.50 to the average monthly residential bill initially, rising to about $3.25 after seven years.

Under Wednesday’s order, Pepco and the city transportation department are authorized to proceed on three years of work, encompassing 21 projects in five wards.

The first projects, set to break ground in the second quarter of 2015, will be located in wards 3 and 7; maps below illustrate the particular blocks affected. Pepco and the city are required to create an “education task force” to keep residents and businesses informed about the scope of the work, its timing and the extent of the disruptions involved.