Four Seasons Residents to Get New Power Lines

Residents of Four Seasons will be getting new underground power cables later this year, as part of a plan by Baltimore Gas & Electric to improve service in the community. 

The cables will be replaced in an area impacting roughly 100 homes in a community that has suffered frequent and lengthy power outages following recent storms. 

Officials from BGE outlined the company's plans at a community meeting Tuesday and said work could begin this spring and will take several weeks to a month. 

The area getting new lines is located on the south side of Waugh Chapel Road, roughly between Wintergreen Way and Maytime Drive, including April Dawn Way. Officials said the work will require the digging up of existing lines, but that customers should not experience a loss of power during the replacement.  

Four Seasons has been unusually hard hit by power outages in recent years. Last year, BGE customers there lost power for several days after the derecho storm and Hurricane Sandy, and some residents complained of outages lasting more than a week. One resident noted that he had two power outages of longer than a week, representing nearly 2 percent of the entire year. 

BGE officials cautioned that the new cables will not prevent all power outages from occurring, especially after severe storms. But they acknowledged that many power outages have been the result of "cable faults" which can happen as power lines age or become damaged due to water, heat or other stresses. 

BGE officials also noted that while power lines in the community are largely underground, feeder lines from the Waugh Chapel Substation are not. BGE said some outages were the result of trees impacting above-ground power lines stretching along Waugh Chapel Road. 

"Almost all communities are supplied by overhead lines somewhere," Michael Garzon, a supevisor with BGE Customer Relations Support. 

Garzon said BGE will also send a forester to examine trees in the area for health and sturdiness. He said the company is gathering more intelligence about trees to determine which are more likely to fall onto power lines and which require the most maintenance.