Maine is making substantial progress toward reducing carbon emissions through the strategy of becoming reliant on a single source of energy: electricity – and distributing that electricity from the main energy corridors to homes and business through a highly vulnerable network of wooden poles located right next to our roads.

I have watched with initial puzzlement and now growing alarm that nowhere am I seeing actions or even discussions about a statewide change of the location and physical underpinnings of our grid. That change would involve moving it farther back from the road’s edge, away from trees and the risk of vehicular damage, and changing our reliance on wooden poles.

I make no claim to be an expert on electrical grids. However, I have worked with more than a dozen towns on grid-related issues. And I have seen how vulnerable above-ground pole and wire distribution systems can be when I served as a wire chief and radio chief for 19 months in Vietnam. It doesn’t take an artillery or rocket attack to knock out power and pole-based communication systems. High winds or heavy rains can and do cause major disruptions.

Maine’s secondary distribution grid depends upon wooden poles located on the edge of our roads, a technology developed for stringing telegraph wires about 170 years ago. It is a testament to the skill of our utility workers and the incredible flexibility and strength of wood that we have gotten away with relying upon this technology for so long. But by 2050, when the power goes out because a pole or the wires between poles gets thrown to the ground by a falling tree or high winds, snow, ice or wildfire, what today may be a mere inconvenience will be a major disaster.

By 2050, there will probably be no gas stations where one could go to purchase gasoline or diesel fuel for a standby generator – if such devices are even allowed. Lamp oil may no longer be available. Wood stoves may by then be prohibited. And the internet, which depends increasingly upon fiber optic cables strung from those same vulnerable poles, and which is increasingly essential for communication and for controlling our allegedly “smart” world, would also crash.

I recently drove around the entire perimeter of Sebago Lake, and then from the Raymond/Windham town line into Portland along Route 302. Then I went from Portland on a loop to Gorham and back to Windham. I estimate that at least 70% of the utility lines and poles outside of the urban areas of Portland are adjacent to trees: trees that are at high risk of being damaged or destroyed by the increasing intensity of weather events.

Our utility companies spend a great deal of time and money each year timing branches that are a direct threat to the poles and lines, but it is the trees behind the poles and lines that are the more substantial threat to a secure all-electric Maine.

In the past 10 years the amount of weight being carried by these poles in many parts of the greater Portland area has increased by close to 50%. Along Route 302 in North Windham, as in many other parts of this region, the response to increased demand by the utility companies has been to put in bigger wooden poles, but still on the side of the road and still adjacent to trees.

Typically when a town, such as Windham, where I live, considers relocating poles or moving the lines onto the surface or underground, they are told it will cost between one million and two million dollars per mile, and the idea is usually dropped. Interestingly, those same figures were used in the 1980’s when I was part of discussions about putting utility lines underground in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

Utility companies don’t want to change the location or pole-based design of the grid, for good reason. When the poles and lines are next to the road, repair vehicles have easy access. It is relatively easy to repair, easier to add additional capacity, and easier to switch out lines when technology changes, such as the move from copper wires to fiber optic cables. And wooden poles are still used because they are so strong, so flexible. I am impressed by the technology and skill now used to replace or upscale poles.

The problem is that those new thicker and higher wooden poles, and the heavier wires and cables strung between those poles, are still too vulnerable to high winds, tree falls, vehicular accidents, and snow and ice storms.

I contend that this 170-year-old technology is no longer capable of providing Maine with secure and resilient energy. Not now, nor in the future.

So how can Maine’s grid be improved? As an example, the town of Windham is about to embark on a major new road project, one that will use approximately $150 million of federal and state funds, in addition to local monies, to construct two ring roads around the North Windham section of Route 302. That is now one of the busiest north-south roads in Maine, especially in the summer. This project would be a perfect opportunity to move utility poles off of the edge of Route 302, relocating this portion of the grid into a new utility corridor created as part of the ring road construction. The new grid could be underground, or on the ground in some form of durable, safe, secure yet accessible utility sheath screened with landscaping.

The state, in cooperation with universities and the private sector, should provide towns with grid design options gathered from other Maine towns, from communities across the country, and from around the world, where this problem has been dealt with for decades. And when state or federal funds are not available, towns could work in cooperation with new development or redevelopment projects, creating tax-increment financing zones to pay for establishing electrical and internet resilience.

If every federal and/or state-funded transportation project included matching funds and technical assistance for grid relocation and redesign, Maine could, step by step, project by project, ensure that we are able to actually rely upon electricity when it becomes the only game in town.