Since the pause the City has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on reviews by consultants, all of whom failed to identify a better alternative, and all of whom one way or another confirmed the need and the route. Yet Council previously has been unwilling or unable to put construction of the line back on track.  It now has another opportunity to do the right thing, and allow the construction of the line along the Nifong/Vawter School Road to move forward.

The delay has been costly to the public, and further delay will only cost us more. In addition to the consulting costs, we lost millions in sunk costs. We incurred significant costs associated with work to strengthen various points in the system some of which may not have been necessary had the line been built. And in the interim, the costs of construction have also increased. Although it is hard to quantify all of the additional costs incurred, some can be clearly captured. These include:

Sunk costs lost due to “pause”:	$4,400,000
Ameren Study	$    10,000
Quanta Study	$    97,500
Burns & McDonnell Study *	$   95,000
Siemens Study	$  358,000
Black & Veatch 2025 estimates	$  133,650
Increased costs of construction (line only)**	$12,108,934
Total for this subset of the costs of delay	$17,203,084

The pause has also raised our risk, and eroded the reliability of the system. You can read more about that in the next post.

The Nifong/Vawter School route is not only the best route from an engineering perspective, it is estimated to cost $10,592,899 less than the alternate Chapel Hill route also being considered by Council. And that is only taking into account the costs of the transmission line itself. When the costs of moving and building associated distribution is taken into account, the Nifong/Vawter School route is $21,163,959 less than the alternate route.

Let’s stop wasting our money. Build the transmission line on the Nifong/Vawter School route.

*Note that neither the Quanta nor the Burns and McDonnell studies, both of which affirmed the need for the line, were discussed by the Council at a public meeting despite the fact that public presentation to the Council was part of each contract.

** This is the difference between the current Black & Veatch estimate for the Nifong/Vawter School route of $30,108,934 and the original cost of $18,000,000 at the time bonds were issued.