Northeast Corridor Infrastructure Improvement Project (NCIIP)

We as a nation need to acknowledge that climate change and aging electrical and communications infrastructure will hamper our economic situation at the worst possible time; during a national weather disaster.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/22/politicians-urged-climate-change-sandy

As a former utility employee (and many more will tell you), we need our most precious feeder cable plant buried, so as to most effectively reduce outages. Many "shortcuts" have been taken over the years in the north atlantic region particularly which have been made under the assumption of much more benign weather patterns. With new information given to us by the national weather service, we need to consider ways to "motivate" the public service and private sector utility companies to firstly officially take responsibility for identifying weaknesses, and secondly develop plans to vastly improve reliability in adverse conditions. Penalties should be sufficient to ward off non-compliance and simply, "paying the fine." as seems to be customary these days. The Board of Public Utilities need to ackowledge this manner of dodging responsibilities, and punish the offenders to a degree which the penalty suits the size of the infractor, not the size of the crime (IE: bigger fines for bigger Corporations).