CPUC Ignored State Law Requiring Public Wildfire Planning
Written by 991KBU on December 11, 2018
Southern California Edison told the state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday an outage of its equipment before the Woolsey Fire may have been caused by a guy wire and a jumper making contact.
The official cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Now … the state’s news media have finally discovered that the California Public Utilities Commission has totally blown it on a state law that requires Utilities to draft wildfire action plans.
For more than two years the CPUC has sat on a state law that requires Southern California Edison … PG&E and San Diego gas and electric to come up with public plans on how it would they would prevent wildfires.
The law was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2016.
It required the California Public Utilities Commission to review the filings every year, … and then comment on the material and audit the companies to make sure they were being followed.
Los Angeles times reports today that more than two years after the legislation was enacted, state regulators have yet to direct issue directives for the utilities to write the plans, let alone discuss or examine them for compliance.
As for Edison … the first hearing on its wildfire mitigation plan has been set for this Friday … in San Francisco.
A commission spokeswoman tells gave you you news but the logistics were not convenient to have a meeting in Los Angeles … despite the fact that Southern California Edison Service territory ends 200 miles south of San Francisco.
Tye L A Times reports that … in the time that the CPUC delayed enforcing the new law, wildfires caused by overhead powerlines killed at least 125 people.
They also destroyed 18,000 buildings and charred hundreds of square miles of the California landscape.
Edison says it has several plans in place to prepare for and to mitigate the impact of potential wildfires.
And it blames the CPUC for not having the plan required by the 2016 state law
Meanwhile … the company has filed a 583 million rate increase request … based in fire hardening costs that have not been subject to the type of public review required by the 2 year old law that was never enforced.
