BORING VS. DITCHING: East Columbia neighbors protest city utility move

COLUMBIA, 8/10/11 (Beat Byte) -- A Columbia Water and Light effort to bury power lines underground in east Columbia has drawn howls of protest from the Woodridge Neighborhood Association.

At a recent meeting on the issue, neighbors claim Water and Light engineer Dan Clark told them that where feasible, city workers would use a boring method to bury the lines south of Berrywood Dr., during which a drilling tool would bore a long canal through the ground. Boring does much less environmental damage than ditching. Instead, workers have been digging a ditch from above.

Rugged terrain and a fallen tree may have prompted the ditching, but neighborhood association members worry that boring has been ditched permanently.

City officials say the concerns are premature. They've informed neighbors that while crews will dig open trenches in steep terrain, they will switch to boring as the terrain levels out.