Council asks whether burying lines is practical as DTE warns undergrounding raises costs and outage-repair time

When residents asked whether the city could bury overhead lines in chronic trouble spots, DTE representatives said undergrounding is used selectively and is expensive. The utility said a Detroit pilot showed undergrounding costs can be roughly three times the cost of overhead work and that locating faults on underground lines typically takes longer. "When we are doing these projects, we would move the lines to front of the house ... Every home would have to provide an easement," a DTE representative said.

Council members pressed DTE on feasibility for neighborhoods with repeated outages; DTE said undergrounding is sometimes practical in new subdivisions but that in established neighborhoods the presence of water, sewer, driveways, and other buried infrastructure can make undergrounding costly and disruptive. DTE also said restoration of underground faults can take longer because crews must perform fault locating rather than visually spotting line damage. City staff and DTE offered to follow up on specific addresses where outages are recurring.