CITYWATCH Burial of powerlines by India Point not yet a done deal BY BRIAN C. JONES

Following tenacious efforts by the Friends of India Point Park and Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, the campaign to bury heavy-duty electrical power lines across the Providence and East Providence waterfronts is almost – but not quite – complete. An agreement with the Narragansett Electric Company in May, and a bill approved in the closing hours of the General Assembly session in June, provided key steps to burial of the mile-long network of lines. However, remaining money issues could frustrate the plan:

• The electric company has still not firmed up construction costs, and its current guesstimate – approaching $17 million -- is higher than the $12 million discussed earlier.

• Electricity customers in Providence and East Providence are being asked to give up electricity rate rebates valued at nearly $5 million to help pay for line burial. It’s not clear whether both city councils need fresh resolutions diverting the money – a potentially ticklish political issue.

So far, momentum seems to be on the side of the burial advocates, especially since Democrat Lynch and Republican Governor Donald L. Carcieri – who have feuded on other issues – are working for the underground plan.

The issue has been pressed particularly hard by the Friends of India Point Park. The park is an East Side greenway reclaimed from scrap yards, between Interstate 195 and the waterfront, and between the Providence and Seekonk rivers. The big power lines, draped across a row of 15 steel towers, cross both the rivers and the park, as part of a 16-mile line between generating stations in Providence and Somerset, Massachusetts. The Friends say the power lines are an ugly throwback to the industrial era, and will undermine efforts to reclaim waterfront areas for multi-billion-dollar recreational, commercial, and residential development.

When Narragansett Electric was required to slightly move the power lines as part of the $450 million relocation of I-195, David P. Riley, co-chair of the Friends, organized an intense lobbying campaign, saying it would be a once-in-a-century chance to hide the cables. Meanwhile, Lynch and the AG’s office, which has long represented consumer interests in utility rate setting, added their legal and political muscle. The hitch has been that burying the lines is far more costly than building new overhead towers, and Narragansett balked at having its customers or shareholders pay the difference.

The state Energy Siting Facility Board approved a May 25 settlement endorsing line burial – if the attorney general’s office can arrange financing by January 15, 2005.

Another milestone came in the closing hours of the General Assembly session, when Providence legislators succeeded in passing a bill providing new funding. The measure requires the state Public Utilities Commission to order allocation of $2 million from a utility "storm contingency fund" for burial. It also directs Narragansett to ask regional utility officials to pay as much as $3 million, on the theory that all New Englanders benefit from the transmission lines.

Finally, the law – signed by Carcieri on July 2 – says that nearly $5 million in rebates to power-company customers in Providence and East Providence could be diverted to burial – if the city councils approve. The rebate money would come from a process unconnected to the power lines’ controversy: a method of electric rate-setting in which the electric company and its customers share in efficiency savings from the merger of Narragansett with the Blackstone Valley and Newport Electric companies.

That plan would return $22.8 million to utility customers through credits on their bills, over a year’s time. The electric company estimates that the average residential customer will get back $1.65 a month, about $19.80 total. Bigger power users, including businesses, would get more. Another part of the new rate proposal would give an additional five years’ of rate reductions to customers – estimated at $1.19 a month for householders – which could cushion the rebate forfeiture.

Still, utility rates, like taxes, are always a concern for householders, especially in cities with low-income residents who annually lose electrical service for non-payment of back bills. It was unclear as of this writing whether past Providence and East Providence city council resolutions endorsing burial have authorized the rebate diversion.

Lynch, in a telephone interview, says he thought previous resolutions might suffice, but also that it might be necessary to "memorialize" the moves with fresh votes. Adrienne G. Southgate, Providence’s deputy city solicitor, in an e-mail, says she believes, "The city council must pass an implementing resolution." Meanwhile, Lynch said he is angered that the electric company keeps increasing its estimates for the burial project, once pegged as low as $9.4 million and more recently at $12 million.

Frederick L. Mason III, a Narragansett spokesman, says the estimate is now approaching $17 million, although engineers are still working out the costs. He says the price is rising in part because the low-cost method of burial, using oil-filled conduits, is being discarded after oil leaked from a similar line in Rochester, New York, and the alternate method, "solid di-electric cable," costs more. "We are going to do everything we can" to make the burial alternative work, Mason says.

If the AG’s office isn’t able to guarantee payment of burial, the Siting Board settlement requires consideration of an overhead alignment that would steer the wires out of India Point Park and across the Seekonk River to East Providence, north of the Washington Bridge. Mason said the estimate for that is $3 million.

Finally, there’s another wrinkle. The state DOT will pay about $1.5 million to temporarily move the lines to keep the I-195 relocation on schedule, and that will come out of money that DOT originally pledged to burial. But James R. Capaldi, DOT director, tells the Phoenix that he plans to use the unspent money from the original pledge, plus some unused state bond funds, to contribute $2.1 million to burial.

At this point, burial advocates have made considerable progress. But a lack of money still could short-circuit the outcome.