FOLLOWUP: Short online meeting reviews key points of two years of work ahead for Seattle City Light’s long-planned Brace Point underground-cable replacement

Seattle City Light has finally published the video and slide deck from last week’s online meeting about the long-planned, finally under way Brace Point underground-cable replacement project. We monitored it as it happened last Thursday; an hour was allotted, but attendees ran out of questions and the meeting ended after 35 minutes.

The project premise is fairly simple, though the work is not – SCL needs to replace underground cables that have been failing, plunging hundreds of households into multiple outages. The project was originally slated to start in 2020; SCL gave a variety of reasons in 2022 why it didn’t. Then this past spring the project went out to bid again, a contractor was chosen, and work is starting now.

Leading off the meeting, SCL communicator Grant Barton began with a project presentation, including the project team:

Barton then went into a glossary of sorts, defining “electrical vaults” and “electrical conduits.”

He explained that the SCL service area has 590 miles of underground cable, some of it – like the Brace Point cables – buried without conduit protection, mostly back in the ’70s, and that’s put it more at risk of damage and resulting outages, as has happened here. Communications consultant Natasha Wheeler picked it up from there, explaining what the project entails:

She said work will have some traffic effects, and there’ll be flaggers when needed. The work will include some planned outages, likely in spring 2027. That work will involve transferring power service “from the old cables to the new cables” once everything is in place. Here’s the construction timeline:

Q&A included daily construction hours and a specific question on behalf of a condo building in the construction zone which needed to ensure access would be possible for a specific activity (the reply was to be sure to directly talk with the project team to arrange logistics). Another question was about whether above-ground poles would be removed; team member Francis Sammy said no, there are no plans to bury lines that are currently above ground. And then there was a question about whether some curbing and sidewalks would be added; the project team said generally not – their focus would be on “restoring” what they’d have to dig up. But, at least one type of addition is likely in some places – if they’re working at an intersection, restoration would have to be ADA-compliant (regardless of whether the intersection had been so before), which means curb ramps, for example. Barton also said the question suggested they need to include more information on the project website about what “restoration” work will entail. They also were asked about a large redwood tree, and SCL said they have tree protections in the plan. Also, some streetlights will be replaced, they said in response to another question.

P.S. If you’re interested in comparing, here is our report from a similar meeting when the project was about to launch under a different contractor four years ago.

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