Poll: Pepco's Storm Recovery Fell Short

Following the devastating derecho storm that struck the region in late June, there's been renewed talk of burying power lines to reduce the risk of outages during storms. But support for that idea drops when the cost estimates come up, according to a new poll from the Washington Post. 

The Post's poll found that a majority of D.C. residents rated Pepco's power restoration efforts during June's storm as unsatisfactory. But there was little support to pay for a widely debated plan to bury power lines throughout the city, an endeavor that could cost anywhere from $1.5 billion to $6 billion. 

One-third of the D.C. residents polled don't want to pay for the undergrounding at all. The other two-thirds said they might stomach an increase of between $2 and $20 per month, but at these rates, it would take nearly 30 years and cover less than one-third of the total cost. 

To fully pay for the burial of the power lines, a typical Pepco bill would need to go up by $100 a month over the next 30 years, according to company estimates from 2010.