ANN ARBOR, MI - In the aftermath of a

major windstorm

that knocked out power to more than a million homes, businesses, schools and other buildings across Michigan, state Rep. Yousef Rabhi says there has to be a better way to deliver electricity and prevent these types of blackouts in the future.

Why not bury the power lines?

That's one question Rabhi is asking.

Yousef Rabhi

Rabhi, a Democrat, represents Ann Arbor, among the areas hardest hit by the March 8 storm, which left many people without power for several days. It even knocked out power to traffic signals in some areas.

Rabhi is among those left frustrated by the situation, saying it just demonstrates the frailty of the electrical infrastructure upon which residents and businesses rely, with strong winds able to topple overhead power lines.

"This is ridiculous to me," he said. "People should not be going without power for five and six days in the middle of winter. That's just not acceptable, and we should be demanding better from our system. This should not just be a normal part of life. This isn't normal. People deserve better, so I'm trying to look at solutions."

Rabhi said he knows it would cost a significant amount of money to bury power lines, but he thinks utilities should start incrementally moving in that direction and make it a goal to bury overhead lines over the next 25 to 30 years.

"I understand if we were to bury all the power lines tomorrow, the price tag would be huge, but I don't think anybody's advocating for that," he said.

RoNeisha Mullen, a spokeswoman for DTE Energy's distribution operations, said DTE has buried power lines underground in all newly built residential neighborhoods since the 1970s, but there are challenges to going back and burying lines in neighborhoods that were built before 1970.

The Detroit-based electric utility, which has about 2.2 million customers across southeast Michigan, reports it has about 44,000 miles of power lines, roughly 30,000 are which are overhead and 14,000 of which are underground.

Mullen said considerable time and disruption would be involved in trenching through existing roads, landscaping and lawns, and existing trees and their root systems would be impacted, undermining the health and stability of the trees.

Maintenance of underground lines also is more difficult, Mullen said. Because the lines are hidden from view, she said, diagnosing and locating problems on the system becomes more challenging, so outages can take longer to fix.

Generally speaking, during a power outage caused by a cable failure, DTE says an underground cable will take much longer to fix because the utility has to test the cables to locate the problem, then dig up the cable to make repairs.

Burying lines also costs six times more than building overhead lines, making service more expensive for customers if lines are underground, Mullen said, adding underground lines also have a shorter life span.

Lines that are buried can last about 30 to 40 years, while overhead lines can last about 60 years, according to DTE.

"There are challenges to achieving the right-of-way to construct underground cables, as they have to run through private commercial and residential properties and public property," said Randi Berris, another DTE spokeswoman.

As for the argument that burying lines can negatively impact trees, Rabhi argues that's already the case with overhead lines.

"Above-ground power lines are equally, if not more, damaging to trees because (the utilities) have to come in and trim, and you see these mangled trees that they've cut around power lines, which is damaging to the trees," he said.

Rabhi said he hopes to see utility companies in Michigan start gradually modernizing their infrastructure, including burying lines.

"It's sort of hard for me to understand what the resistance is other than DTE doesn't want to have to pay a huge bill, and I understand that argument," he said, again suggesting burying lines could be done systematically over many years.

Rabhi said he hopes to sit down with utility companies to discuss the issue. He said he's also focusing on the concept of energy freedom, making it easier for people to generate their own alternative energy.

"I want to try to make it easier for people to do that and right now we have a system that is discouraging people," he said, adding he also wants to change state law so that adding solar panels to a home doesn't increase a homeowner's property assessment, which has been a concern for some in Ann Arbor.

Getting more people to go solar, Rabhi said, helps mitigate the impacts of global warming, which leads him to another point about burying power lines.

"Wind storms like we saw will only get more severe as climate change accelerates and we're going to see more disastrous weather events like this," he said. "That's what science tells us. So we have to be prepared for that by both modernizing our infrastructure and being prepared to generate our own power."