The overhead wires and utility poles along Kenyon Road will soon begin to disappear.
They'll be replaced with underground cables in a bid to improve the looks of one of the main corridors through Fort Dodge.
Already, crews are burying some fiber-optic and coaxial cables for Mediacom Communications Corp. Late next month, the process of placing electrical lines underground will begin.
When everything is done next year, about two miles of electrical cable will be beneath the ground on the north side of Kenyon Road, according to Toby Foster, a distribution engineering supervisor for MidAmerican Energy.
All the wires will be buried between Avenue E near the entrance to Trinity Regional Medical Center and Tower Drive.
''It's just a very big project,'' Foster said.
Mediacom's construction workers are about halfway done with their task, according to Phyllis Peters, a spokeswoman for the company that provides cable television, Internet and telephone services.
Peters said there may be some service interruptions in the early morning hours while the switch to the underground cables is underway. Those interruptions would occur between midnight and 6 a.m., she said.
Mediacom will not add the project's costs onto it customers' bills, Peters said.
Cheryl O'Hern, the general manager of Frontier Communications in Fort Dodge, said the telephone company isn't sure yet just which of its lines will have to be relocated. She said that usually some phone lines have to be moved whenever electrical lines are relocated.
O'Hern said Frontier will not pass its relocation costs onto the customers.
Foster said managers of the utility company wanted to have construction underway earlier this year, but the project was delayed by bad weather. MidAmerican Energy's portion of the work, he said, is now scheduled to start next month and be completed in late spring or early summer of 2011.
Burying the power lines is estimated to cost $1.6 million, according to Foster. The City Council voted on March 8 to have the utility company add the cost to the bills of its customers. Foster said the average residential customer can expect to pay $3.58 per month for one year to pay off the project's costs.
Those customers are now paying a fee of about $5 on their monthly bills to finance the last underground power line project, which was completed in December 2009. That work buried the wires along Fifth Avenue South between 21st and 29th streets. It also was part of the Corridor of Commerce initiative that includes the Kenyon Road work.
Relocating the power lines along Fifth Avenue South cleared the way for the current street-widening project there. City leaders also hoped to spruce up the area's appearance by moving the wires out of sight.
Along Kenyon Road, the wires are going underground for aesthetic reasons and to make room for a future trail.
Foster said underground power lines beautify an area and eliminate any chance of vehicles crashing into utility poles.
There is one disadvantage, he said.
''It takes longer to repair if there's a failure,'' he said.
Contact Bill Shea at (515) 573-2141 or bshea@messengernews.net
