He Comes Not To Praise Cable But To Bury Cable

Hey Molinaro — where are we supposed to throw our sneakers once this happens? But you probably weren’t even thinking of that:

On the heels of this summer’s power outages, Borough President James Molinaro wants to revisit an old debate on the placement of Staten Island’s power cables: Above or below.

In a letter to the Staten Island Growth Management Task Force, City Planning Director Amanda Burden and Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster, Molinaro has requested a regulation requiring all new houses in the borough to have underground utility cables.

Doing so, he said, would protect the cables from the elements and also help preserve the charm of neighborhoods by eliminating the “unsightly, clothesline-like mess” of overhead cables.

“I don’t expect this can be done for every new home, but 95 percent of the time you can do it,” Molinaro added. “It’s safe, it’s reliable and it looks better.”

. . .

The gradual shift to an underground system likely would require a massive coordination effort with all of those city agencies, the state Public Service Commission, Consolidated Edison, Verizon and legislation by the City Council. While a state law already mandates the utility companies to install underground cables for multiple-occupancy dwellings and subdivisions of five homes, it does not apply to single-family homes.

Industry experts say the cost — and the Island’s topography — could make such a move prohibitive.

Underground cables can cost up to $1 million per mile, or about 10 times more than their overhead counterparts, according to estimates from Consolidated Edison.

The massive 10-day blackout in Queens, which interrupted service to as many as 100,000 people — was also a glaring reminder of how difficult it can be to diagnose and repair problems with underground cables.