PORT TOWNSEND — The Jefferson County Public Utility District will place electrical wires underground starting in December.

The multi-stage project to bury overhead electrical wires underground along downtown Port Townsend began in 2016, said Will O’Donnell, communications manager for the Public Utility District (PUD).

“Undergrounding all the utilities just makes it more reliable” and reduces liability, O’Donnell said.

The PUD has already laid conduit under Water Street, and transmits the electricity through those wires. Now the team is working with Port Townsend city officials to expand into some streets off Water as city officials replace sidewalks and repave roads, O’Donnell said.

The PUD plans to install conduit under Adams Street from Washington Street to Water Street starting Dec. 5.

O’Donnell predicts the work will take a week to complete. During the work, the road will have one lane open for traffic to pass through, he said.

Initially, the plan was budgeted to cost the PUD $1 million and be only under Water Street, but that budget has expanded to between $1.5 million and $1.75 million as the PUD works with the city’s upgrades, O’Donnell said.

“As the city tears up and expands sidewalks, it has given us the opportunity to lay more conduit,” O’Donnell said.

Starting after Jan. 1, the PUD will begin taking down wires along Water Street, beginning on the south end near the Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry terminal.

“We were going to start earlier and decided to wait until after the holiday season,” O’Donnell said.

Construction will move down Water Street one block at a time, he said. PUD workers will remove the top wires and take down street lights and about half the height of each power pole.

The sidewalks in the working zones will be closed for a few hours each morning of the construction, O’Donnell said.

The top wires are already inactive as the underground infrastructure for Water Street is operating and utilizing on-the-ground transformers that are scattered along Water Street and Washington Street, O’Donnell said.

PUD officials hope to have the power poles completely removed by the fall of 2020. CenturyLink and Wave use the poles to run their services so they can’t be removed until those wires have been buried as well, O’Donnell said.

CenturyLink and Wave both have agreed to move the lines underground, so it’s a matter of scheduling the work, O’Donnell said.

In addition to taking down the poles, the PUD will replace the street lights with LED lights that will appear more decorative and “historic,” O’Donnell said, adding that some will have outlets so as to allow holiday lights decorations.

In the past when the top wires were “live” with electricity, business owners who needed to do work on the fronts of their buildings facing the lines would ask the PUD to shut off electricity for that block so they could complete the work, O’Donnell said.

Placing cables underground has alleviated that problem, he said.

The project has been conducted in stages in fall and winter since 2016. It is paused during the peak tourist seasons of Port Townsend, O’Donnell said.

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Jefferson County reporter Zach Jablonski can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 5, or at zjablonski@peninsuladailynews.com.