(Credit: Julie Lane)
On his last day as president and CEO of the Long Island Association (LIA), Kevin Law sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) requesting federal help for the so-called “undergrounding” of electric lines on Long Island. Mr. Law knows the situation well. Before becoming the head of the LIA in 2010, the region’s largest business organization, Mr. Law was president and CEO of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) which owns those lines.
Many if not most of Long Island’s roads are lined with trees and the region has a near dependence on transmitting electricity through lines on poles. Getting hit with a big storm means outages. More extreme storms can be expected as a result of climate change, and thus even more wide scale outages.