High-wire act

NEWTON -- Lois Biener lives a double life. In her day job, she researches tobacco control campaigns. Nights and holidays, she worries about overhead wires.

Biener is on a mission: She wants to give a decent burial to the aerial web of utility, telephone, and cable TV wires.

''People get upset if kids write on the walls, or on public facilities," said Biener, chairwoman of the Newton Task Force on Undergrounding Utilities. ''So why not start paying attention to this?"

The task force is looking at burying wires along Needham Street as a test case.

Biener took up the cause in earnest about a year ago after aldermen supported a resolution to investigate the feasibility of burying wires throughout the city. She had gotten hooked years before when she began to see wires intrude into her neighborhood.

Biener lives in Newtonville on Prescott Street, two blocks long and lighted with gas lamps. Utility lines had been strung through the backyards, virtually invisible in the historic neighborhood.

About 20 years ago, she saw a single wire at the intersection of Prescott and Central streets. Since then, the wires have proliferated. Now there are nine, she said.

''They have huge cables and associated paraphernalia," she said. ''It's just grotesque."

Biener is uniquely suited to her drive now to beautify her streetscape and others. A senior research fellow at the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, she has the skills to scope out the costs, legalities, politics, and feasibility of her cause.

She is up against the powerful utility, telecommunications, and cable TV industries, as well as a concern about public safety, since the poles carry municipal communications.

Biener also faces widespread apathy. Unlike the movements on which she cut her teeth -- civil rights, the Vietnam War, feminism -- this is a cause without a consensus.

Slowly, however, people are coming around. With an ally in Mayor David B. Cohen, who enlisted several city employees in the task force, she is stirring up interest.

Recently, the Newton Conservators, an environmental group, joined her with a front-page story in the winter edition of its newsletter about companies lopping off tree branches to make way for the wires.

The task force is trying to form neighborhood survey teams to document places with double poles, low-hanging wires, and excess coils of cable outlawed by city ordinance.

''If you just stop and think about it, you can see that more and more wires are going up, but there are no wires coming down," Biener said. ''Poles are leaning over because of the weight of the wires. If somebody doesn't say something, it's not clear when this will end or what our neighborhoods will look like."

No one disputes there are some advantages to burying wires.

Underground wires have fewer outages from hurricanes and other destructive storms, although the damage that can occur takes longer to fix, according to a 2004 report by the Edison Electric Institute.

The report also found that burying wires increases property values and reduces motor vehicle accidents (no poles to hit), electrical outages, maintenance costs, electrocutions, and the risk of brush fires.

But one big advantage -- aesthetic -- generally isn't part of the cost-benefit analysis.

''What right do they have?" Biener said. ''Where did they get the nerve to say that what they do to our streets, to our neighborhoods, will not be taken into consideration?"

Still, the biggest challenge Biener faces is convincing people that a gain in aesthetics is worth the very considerable costs of burying the lines.

The Edison study, citing data from the North Carolina Utilities Commission, says that it would take 25 years and $41 billion to bury overhead wires in that state. To pay for it, rates would have to climb 125 percent.

In Massachusetts, Michael Durand, spokesman for NStar, said the ballpark cost is $1 million per mile, but it could run much higher depending on the location.

Verizon spokesman Cliff Lee said phone customers would ultimately have to pony up for underground installation.

Customers of cable TV, which leases space on overhead poles and wires, would see a separate increase in their bills as well.

''I don't see any way around it," said Paul Cianelli, , president of New England Cable Telecommunications Association.

High costs and possible surcharges for customers make city officials wary of rushing ahead to bury wires.

''We are supportive of underground wiring where possible," said city spokesman Jeremy Solomon. ''However, the cost of doing underground wiring is of concern. It really takes a community effort for these types of projects to take place."

That could mean a buy-in from the business community, Solomon said.

The test case on Needham Street might prove one way to handle the financing.

City officials are planning to reconstruct 6,100 feet of the street for traffic improvements beginning in 2008, according to Robert Rooney, the city's commissioner of public works.

Estimates for the cost of burying 4,500 feet of that stretch during the reconstruction are $2.8 million from NStar and $950,000 from Verizon, Rooney said.

Rooney said he and Michael Kruse, city planning director, both task force members, have begun canvassing Needham Street businesses to see if they're willing to help foot the bill.

Biener spends about one day per month working on the wire effort, not counting the monthly task force meetings and phone calls. She has the attitude of many social reformers: ''Maybe we would get more done if I spend more time on it," she said.

Her family is tolerant of her passion.

''My husband does applaud it, although he doesn't want me to point out every time we go out what's happening with the wires," she said.

Her daughter, Amanda Navarroli, who is studying environmental management at Duke University, said her mother has her looking up more often.

''When she kept drawing my attention to it, I was surprised," Navarroli said. ''I had absolutely noticed the wires, but it hadn't been something I noticed as much as she does. And now I notice it everywhere."

That's exactly what Biener hopes will happen to everybody.

For more on the Newton Task Force on Undergrounding Utilities or to join a neighborhood survey group, visit www.newtonundergrounding.com.

Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.