I’m not going to argue with you there. I’m with you on that.

However, if the infrastructure had been put underground to start with, recurring maintenance costs due to inclement weather, natural disasters and animal/human accidents would be dramatically less than it is now. A bonus to that situation would be better protection against EMP discharge or terrorist attack.

If you think about it, all of our other services are underground - waste (for obvious reasons), water, propane, natural gas, etc. Why not our power grid?

From a historical perspective, I believe the decision was made to utilize the existing telegraph structures to transfer electricity because it was cheaper and faster to install. I’m not a historian, so don’t quote me on that - it’s just conjecture.