Many businesses on the Cape were shut down for nearly a week following the Blizzard of 2026, mainly because of power outages. Over 150,000 customers on the Cape were without power at the height of the blizzard, and there are still even a handful of outages on the Outer Cape two weeks later, as of Friday morning.
All this is renewing calls for improved utility services.
The head of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, in statements made on social media and state news outlets, called the region vulnerable to these increasingly intense storms, particularly because utilities are above ground. The sandy soil and large scrub pine and white pine trees on the Cape that are vulnerable to snow and winds makes matters only more dire.
Chamber chief executive officer Paul Niedzwiecki said the Cape needs a plan to improve the Cape’s connection to the grid.
“How do we make the Cape Cod grid more resilient, and it’s not just burying the lines, and it’s not burying lines for every home on the Cape? But we need a plan and we don’t have one,” Niedzwiecki told CAI news.
“You see the tree damage after these storms and it’s just incredible,” he added. “The thought that we have power lines above ground, and some of our internet [infrastructure] is also above ground, just makes us an incredibly vulnerable community.”
The Chamber Chief Executive said that the Cape has rallied around other large infrastructure challenges and upgrading the grid’s resilience is another important issue it should rally around. He used the example of Cape towns coming together to address wastewater pollution in local estuaries and the creation of the Cape’s 208 water quality plan. Towns have begun to address that decades-old issue.
Rather than just calling for better service, Niedzwiecki wants to create a task force made up of different stakeholders which could include the Cape Cod Commission, Eversource, and state officials.
In response to the idea of burying lines, Eversource told CAI in a statement that putting cables underground can range from $3 million to $6 million a mile.
“Replacing overhead electric lines with underground infrastructure is a complex and costly undertaking,” the statement read. “Overhead lines cannot simply be placed underground; an underground system requires entirely different equipment, engineering, and construction. Building that new infrastructure is a significant investment.”
Eversource also said that there are other challenges with burying cables. If there is a problem in the line, recovery efforts can be more challenging and take longer to address.
Meanwhile, in other storm related coverage, towns across the Cape, South Coast, Islands and the Plymouth area are tallying up damage reports with the hopes of earning funding from the state or even federal government to offset costs.
Cape and Islands state Sen. Julian Cyr said he expects the estimates from municipalities to be high.
“The impact of this storm, what it took to recover from it and the costs to our municipalities and a whole host of other organizations. I really suspect it will be quite staggering,” Cyr told CAI this week.
“It’s coming at a time where towns are winding down in their fiscal year,” the state senator added. “I’ve heard from a couple managers that this storm is going to make them broke.
Costs to local cities and towns include paying overtime hours to open and staff warming shelters, tree cleanup, and moving historic amounts of snow.
