It seems everywhere you look in the Vilano and North Beach areas utility crews are working. A couple of weeks ago I noticed Powercon digging trenches along the west side of A1A around Villages of Vilano north to about 15th St. They said they are laying conduit to bury the overhead electrical lines. I have not gotten this information verified by FPL, however. Powercon did not know when the actually burial of the lines would occur, but the conduit is in place.  They were contracted for 6000 ft. along A1A. They are not doing the east side due to safety issues of being able to have their equipment off A1A while doing the work.

AND... the big news:  The poles are coming down in the Vilano Beach Town Center as I type this. This has been happening this past week and will continue. It shouldn't be long now. The Vilano Beach Town Center is looking good.

UPDATE- we've got a small snag to removing the poles---AT&T. Hopefully AT&T will get going soon and we can get the poles removed.

The grand opening of the streetscape will be in mid September. We'll know more in July as to the actual date. Stay tuned for more info or call me at 904-823-0027 or e-mail me at Barbara@BarbaraJenness.com

As chair of Scenic & Historic Corridor Management Council and President of A1A Scenic & Historic Coastal Byway, I am frequently asked about burying utilities along our scenic highway. We get push back from Florida Power and Light (FPL). So in an effort to once again understand this issue, I went to FPL's website and found:

http://www.fpl.com/environment/lines/brighter_future.shtml

FPL maintains, "The reliability of overhead and underground lines is comparable...The key difference between underground and overhead lines is that it typically takes more time with underground lines to diagnose the problem and make repairs. This difference in repair time is best characterized in days rather than hours." Additionally FPL states on their website: "Compared to overhead transmission lines, underground transmission lines take longer to repair and are five to fifteen times more costly to construct...FPL may only bury lines when another entity agrees to pick up the differential cost between underground and overhead construction."

Doing some quick research on the Internet, I found this report that states that underground lines are considerably more reliable than overhead, but again more expensive to bury. So, as we all suspected, it comes down to money.

http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/energy_infrastructure/distribution/UndergroundReport.pdf

In the above Edison Electric report, on page 11 it says, "The Florida House of Representatives requested that the Florida Public Utility Commission prepare a proposal to underground all electric facilities in the state following the unprecedented landfall of four major hurricanes in Florida in 2004."

We need to find the referenced proposal. I found it: http://www.psc.state.fl.us/publications/pdf/electricgas/Underground_Wiring.pdf