May 1--ASH, N.C. -- The town of Ocean Isle Beach is negotiating with Brunswick Electric to bury the transmission line that goes from Causeway Drive and N.C. 179 to the island, a task that when completed will have all the island's electric lines underground.

The setup is preferable to overhead lines along the coast because it means fewer power interruptions in hurricanes and other storms, but also less wear and tear on the electric grid resulting in less maintenance.

The job on Ocean Isle will cost about $300,000, estimated Chip Leavitt, chief executive of Brunswick Electric. The town is hoping to keep the cost off its ledger with an exchange of town-owned land inland where the electric company can build a substation.

Earlier in this decade, said Brunswick Electric spokeswoman Judy Gore, the company got a $6.2 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to bury the power lines on all of Brunswick's islands. That was completed a couple of years ago, and now it is time to look inland.

But not too far inland, Leavitt said.

It doesn't make financial sense to bury lines more than about a mile inland of the Intracoastal Waterway.

There, he said, the triple whammy of wind, salt and sand can corrode electric power components in a fraction of time as would happen under conditions farther from the coast.

For instance, Leavitt said that a transformer that would be expected to last 20 years inland might be devoured by the elements in 2 1/2 years.

Leavitt said electric lines buried on islands have also cut down the time it takes to restore power after outages.

On Oak Island, he said that with electric lines running along adjoining backyards, it could take the electric company three to five days to fully restore power after outages. Now that the lines are buried, there are not only fewer outages, but they can be fixed in a matter of hours.

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith said she hopes that negotiations with the company on burying the line to the island can be completed so that the work can be done late this summer or early this fall.

Contact STEVE JONES at 910-754-9855.

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