THE UNDERGROUND INSTALLATION OF UTILITIES 371 



the day when people can look upon a landscape free from trans- 

 mission towers, but without paying an exhorbitant cost for that 

 freedom of view. 



One thing you must keep in mind is that, unlike the problem of 

 distribution where you can ask the home owner to share in the cost of 

 improving his home by putting the distribution lines underground, 

 it is very difficult to make a fair allocation of the costs and burdens 

 of undergrounding transmission lines, because a relatively few land- 

 owners may benefit, but hundreds of thousands or millions of power 

 consumers may be picking up the tab. I think not only the land- 

 owners, but the power consumers should be consulted. 



I have heard landowners say, "It is worth it. I am willing to pay 

 a few cents more for electricity to get rid of the towers." They 

 say this even though the company involved is not the company that 

 serves them with electricity. They say this even though not only 

 they, but millions of other power consumers, would have to make 

 a contribution a large contribution, not a few pennies to spare 

 them the necessity of looking upon transmission towers. 



I think we can all work toward a solution to this problem. In 

 the meantime the industry should do everything possible to minimize 

 adverse scenic effects of overhead transmission. 



The Federal Power Commission recently created an advisory 

 committee on underground transmission for the purpose of survey- 

 ing all the possibilities of the present technology, and of suggesting 

 how we might press for improvements in the future. We expect 

 that report before the end of the year. I think it will make a sub- 

 stantial contribution to advancing the day when we will have free- 

 dom of choice in the kind of transmission without severe economic 

 penalty. 



Mr. DYCKMAN. I think there has been, in all of this discussion, a 

 remarkable neglect of the planning perspective. I hope that I can 

 speak as a planner, if not as an expert on utilities. 



It seems to me that with remarkably few exceptions the issues 

 which we have been discussing or have heard being discussed this 

 afternoon take as given, the entire present pattern, both of the dis- 

 tribution of customers and the distribution of services. It seems 

 to me, this is not at all a necessary state of affairs. 



I don't want to paint a picture for you of an entirely new system 

 today, because I don't know now what the new system will be like. 

 I just want to point out that the present one is changing very much. 



