MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The cost to put Memphis’ electrical lines underground would run into the billions, but it’s an option worth studying, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said in his weekly statement Friday.
The underground option would cost between $6 billion and $8 billion, which could be funded through either rate hikes or a sale the city-owned utility provider, Strickland said.
“I want to be perfectly clear—I’m not advocating for this yet, but it’s something we as a community must thoroughly review. These storms happen too frequently, and we need to explore options to reduce their impact,” the mayor said.
City Councilman Chase Carlisle has also called for more underground power systems.
MLGW Chairman and CEO JT Young said 60 percent of the city’s lines are overhead and 40 percent underground. He said the utility will look for more opportunities to run systems underground, but called the cost to run all those lines underground “untenable.”
“I don’t think it’s something customers would be able to shoulder, but we’ll look at the range,” Young said.
Mayor Strickland’s comments Friday afternoon came as utility provider MLGW struggled to restore power to the final 7,500 customers before a self-imposed midnight deadline. A winter storm last week knocked out power to 1 out of 3 MLGW customers at its peak.
Winter Storm Landon, as it’s been dubbed, caused MLGW’s second-largest power outage of the past 20 years, the city said. About 275,000 customers were left without power last week. By comparison, Hurricane Elvis in July of 2003 knocked out 339,000 customers.
Strickland, speaking earlier this week on WREG’s “Live At 9” show, advocated for a fix to the city’s power problems.
“I think we ought to have a robust community-wide conversation about the true fix to this issue and that is burying the lines underground,” he said.
The city provided these figures on how many MLGW customers were impacted by storms in the past 20 years:
