SCE announces plans to underground wires, raising many concerns
After years of fruitless urging from Malibu residents that seemingly fell on deaf ears at the time, Southern California Edison has announced plans to finally underground wires in several Malibu areas. But the first community town hall last week to outline the process quickly turned into a grievance hour for angry residents who’ve endured tremendous loss to confront SCE with complaints and concerns.
SCE Executive V.P. of Corporate Affairs Caroline Choi first remarked, “It is heart-wrenching to see the devastation that has occurred in the community and our hearts really are with all of you who are going through this difficult time.” Choi and her colleagues then outlined SCE’s plans to underground 80 miles of power lines in the area in an effort to reduce the risk of wildfires. Work is underway seven days a week on Pacific Coast Highway and in some Malibu canyons.
Undergrounding at private properties, however, will require easements, which is a big concern according to speakers at the town hall who spoke of disruptions at their properties, worries over maintenance, and other impacts. SCE is offering $500 compensation. SCE also needs 100% participation for the project to move forward and stated non-responsiveproperty owners will delay construction, but some property owners complained that with mail disruption post-fire, they have not received notices.
Other issues voiced were undergrounding yet still keeping poles used by telecom companies above ground and thendigging trenches later to underground telecom. That didn’t make sense to many, including Terry Davis, who commented it would be more efficient to underground all the companies’ wires at once. “They could come in and be part of a onetrench,” said Davis, who then confronted SCE about “the lack of communication. We’ve had someone working with our community as a liaison who basically had no information. When I specifically asked for information to work with SCE from our community so we could work together (on securing easements), SCE was basically noncommunicative and said they couldn’t give any of that information to me.
“I understand you wanting to do this work right now when the damage is out there. But take a little bit more time. Let us work with you putting pressure on the telecoms. We want those damn holes down. It happened to have been a telecom line that kept the fire department from going up Big Rock and the cost of that was about 170 homes.”
Scott Dittrich questioned, “Most of our big fires come from somewhere else? Palisades didn’t start in Malibu. Woolsey, it started across the 101. Do you have plans to underground the circuits that most endanger us?”
Jefferson Wagner informed the town hall that the community of Topanga has a one-trench-only ordinance for all utilities and asked if that can happen in Malibu.
A moving plea about Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) was made by a local nurse who works with area seniors “who are disabled, can’t get out of their house, or are in bed, they don’t feel safe. They live in fear.” She spoke of the frustration trying to reach SCE by phone and getting accurate information about qualifying for a medical baseline program SCE offers to people reliant on medical equipment. “If we can set the precedent here, we can trickle around to other communities because in the Paradise Fire, the Palisades Fire, and the Eaton Fire, the majority, 90% of those people that died, their average age was 75 to 80. They had no means out,” she said.
Then Hans Laetz tore into SCE asking, “How can we expect a company with such a p**s-poor record of maintaining its overhead wires to maintain its underground wires any better?” He then informed the town hall, “Southern California Edison, a division of Edison International, your parent company, earned $1.06 billion last quarter in three months. We hear from you that you’re not going to be able to put the power lines in all of Malibu underground until a GRC (general rate case) goes through. You’ve glossed over the point in which case you are asking the entire Edison rate-paying base to pay increased power rates to underground power lines in high fire areas such as Malibu others. How are you going to do that? Why are you inferring that these power lines are going to be undergrounded when you’re asking Compton to pay Malibu’s undergrounding costs?”
Laetz continued, “Every time you do a PSPS you’re required to file an after-action report with the California Public Utilities Commission … Edison has blacked out Malibu multiple times this fall, and I read those reports like a hawk. You file the same boiler plate thing every time and you gloss over facts.”
Laetz charged the reports as being inaccurate concerning the number of customers affected and wind speeds being too low to require a PSPS. “You are filing misleading after action reports with the state,” he said.
Choi responded “We believe they are accurate post-event reports,” and “We only de-energize with actual weather conditions. I don’t think we are disingenuous about our post-event reports and we are working to improve our PSPS performance.”
Readers can view the meeting here.