Placing wires underground in conduits is affordable when done right. In Concord - served by a municipal electric utility, not NStar (see www.massmunichoice.org) - 40 percent of the electric network is already underground and another 1.5 miles of wires are moved underground each year.
The cost to electricity consumers? Effectively zero. The Concord utility spends $600,000 per mile to transfer wires underground, but charges 40 percent less than NStar for the same electricity.
Instead of disfiguring trees, NStar needs a long-term undergrounding plan to improve the aesthetics of the communities it serves and to improve service reliability - falling tree limbs don’t cause power outages when wires are underground.
Patrick Mehr
Lexington Electric Utility Committee 
