The exchange of letters regarding power outages has been interesting and informative to read.

Lynn Long writes (“Distribution lines cause most power outages,” Dec. 4) that distribution line failures cause more than 90 percent of the power outages on Bainbridge. She claims that a better job of tree trimming would eliminate most of our power outages.

Ya think? Talk about an understatement. Take a drive around the island and check out the armies of trees towering over the distribution lines. When the wind blows (as it tends to do in the winter), any particular power grid is only as good as the nearest weakest tree.

Have our city fathers and mothers ever seriously considered burying the power lines?

I’ve read of other island communities that have done so and power outages are now pretty much a thing of the past. As Tom Petty said, “We don’t have to live like refugees.”

But then again, after observing the Bainbridge Island bureaucratic process over the last few years, I have a pretty good idea how things would go:

First, there would be a study of the project’s environment impact. This would be estimated to take four months to complete.

Two months into the Environmental Impact Study, the city engineer in charge would quit after being hired by another city out of state that offered better pay and less stress.

Another less qualified engineer would take over.

When the inconclusive results of the EIS came in over-budget and six months late, a divided City Council would then demand a Financial Feasibility Study of the Environmental Impact Study.

A new interim manager would be appointed to complete the study of the study. In the interest of speeding the project along, a lawsuit would then by filed by Bainbridge Island Concerned Citizens for Energy Redeployment (B.I.C.C.E.R.).

Then the interim manager would go on early disability citing stress from trying to do his job in a hostile work environment.

A counter lawsuit would then be filed by a city taxpayer watchdog group called Bainbridgers Against Redeployment Funds (B.A.R.F.).

After months of rancorous yet inconclusive debate by an increasingly dysfunctional City Council, the proposal to bury the island’s power lines would then be indefinitely shelved.

And it would stay there until a Follow-up Study of the Financial Feasibility Study of the Environmental Impact Study could be scheduled, hopefully sometime before the end of the next decade.

Never mind. Think I’ll go price some generators.

Dave Richards

Bucklin Hill