Following two major storms in late 2015, KEC received $8.5 million in special grant funding from FEMA to convert approximately 50 miles of the most problematic overhead lines to underground. The majority of the outages resulting from the 2015 storms were caused by trees growing outside of our managed easements falling into energized lines. The lines most heavily impacted were in areas of dense forest growth and are therefore remote, difficult to patrol and access, and vulnerable to fire. The benefits of undergrounding these lines include greatly improved service reliability. The FEMA grant requires the conversion work to be completed in late 2019. The work is divided into 22 separate construction projects. The map below provides project locations and estimated timelines.
For questions about a project, please call our dedicated FEMA project hotline at 208.292.3299.