Records and interviews show that the abandoned power lines that allegedly lit the Eton fire may have been removed under rules proposed by state Utilities Commission staff, but the regulations have been undermined amid opposition from Southern California’s Edison and other utilities.
State regulators have long known that old power lines can cause wildfires. In 2001, we proposed safety rules that would force Edison and other electric companies to remove abandoned lines unless they could prove it would be used in the future.
Amidst opposition from utility companies, the utility commission has studied the proposal for years and can ultimately withstand it to maintain the old line until it determines that it has been “forever abandoned,” records show.
One of these old power lines, Edison’s mesa-Silmer Line, which last served during the Vietnam War, is at the heart of dozens of lawsuits claiming it ignited a devastating Eaton fire on January 7th.
Edison states that the main theory of fire causes is that the lines of the old century are somehow temporarily revitalized, creating the arc that caused wildfires. The investigation continues.
Electrician Raffy Stepanian, a member of the committee’s safety team, who proposed defeating the 2001 regulations, said committee members dialed and dialed regulations under intense lobbying by state utilities.
“There was a lot of pressure on us to agree with all the utilities,” Stepanian said, adding that the utilities “almost wrote these rules.”
Currently retired from the committee, Stepanian lives in Altadena. His home survived the fire in Eton, but the house adjacent to his property was destroyed.
“This fire could have been prevented,” he said.
Responding to a Times question, Edison said the company held the Mesa-Sylmar transmission line in place because it thought it would need a line in the future. It last transported electricity in 1971.
“We are pleased to announce that Shinjini Menon, senior vice president of systems planning and engineering at Edison, said:
Menon said the company will inspect and maintain dormant lines to ensure safety.
Commission President Loretta Lynch said she remembered coming to her in 2001 when the changes were proposed, and that she remembered the safety staff coming to her and explaining why the rules should be strengthened. But the effort was consistent with resistance from utility executives, she said.
Ultimately, the committee allowed the utility to discuss the rules in dozens of workshops over two years.
The weakened proposal was approved in 2005, less than two weeks after Lynch’s term expired. Lynch’s departure was only three left on a five-person committee chaired by Michael Peay, former president of Edison International, the parent company of Edison in Southern California.
“People who were trying to improve safety were drawn into the back room when there were a lot of industry participants, and what happened was a final decision with repeated safety regulations,” Lynch said.
In an interview this week, Peevey acknowledged that in 20 years of hindsight, the committee may have been acting differently in an era when utilities repeatedly caused some of the state’s biggest wildfires.
“If we had known what we now, we would have probably come to another conclusion,” he said.
Another commissioner who approved the rules was Susan Kennedy, the chief of staff of former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jeffrey Brown, the lawyer and cousin of former government Jerry Brown. Brown said he couldn’t remember the details of the vote. Kennedy didn’t immediately have any comments.
Since the committee’s 2005 decision, abandoned power lines continue to pose a threat, with hundreds of miles of unused power lines running like a spider network through California.
In 2019, investigators tracked the Kinsade fire in Sonoma County, leading to an abandoned line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric.
After Eton Fire Department, PUC executive director Rachel Peterson was called before the Congressional Utilities and Energy Committee to address the way agents monitor the power lines.
“If you want to know where all the inactive lines are, is there a place where you can get that information?” asked MP Rhodesia Random (D-Tracy).
“As today, council members,” Peterson replied. “And I’m sure I’m not going to have a registry of certain elements, or not, because the service area is so large, there’s so much fragments of equipment, but I’ll take that back and see it.”
“Are there any timeline requirements for them to remove abandoned lines?” asked MP Pilar Clarita.
“There’s no timeline,” Peterson replied.
Commission spokesman Terrie Prosper wrote in an email that the committee hopes the company will inspect its dormant line and keep it safe, just like anyone who is energized by the company.
“Requiring power lines to be removed prematurely is shortsighted and could significantly raise the invoices of utility customers,” writes Prosper. She refused to make officials available for interviews.
Edison said earlier this year that Eton Canyon’s unused transmission lines could have been energized by induction, a process in which the magnetic field created by nearby live lines electrocuts the dormant lines.
The company has built two transmission lines running parallel to the dormant mesa-Silmer line. They were energised when the video filmed the Eton Fire, which was igniting at one of the Mesa Schirmer Transmission Towers.
After the 2019 Kincade fire, PG&E said it had agreed to a committee to remove a 262-mile line that has no future use. The company said it would prioritize removing people at high risk of induction.
“In the right conditions, if an idle facility fails, there can be major wildfires and safety risks,” PG&E wrote in its plan to remove the line.
Edison says there is a 465-mile idol transmission line in the territory. Edison spokesman Kathleen Dunleavy said the company cannot disclose the location of these lines because it is “deemed confidential.”
How to define “abandoned”
The state’s utility rules have long said that “forever abandoned” lines must be removed. This will not cause public nuisance or risk to life or property.
However, the utility and committee safety staff sometimes challenged which lines were abandoned.
In 2001, when the committee and its staff proposed to strengthen the rules, Edison was challenging the agency’s discovery that it had violated the failure to remove the electricity line at the destroyed Lancaster home. According to committee documents, the man who said Edison was trying to steal the equipment said he was trying to climb the porcelain.
Edison told safety staff there were pending orders for services to be reinstalled at the facility, claiming it had not been abandoned. A committee’s investigation into death revealed that staff later found no such work orders.
To strengthen the rules, the committee said in January 2001 that it would define a voluntary line as how it will be used in the future “unless the owner can demonstrate appropriate documents.”
Edison and other utilities are opposed to the proposal and the changes to the 12 other rules, opposed to the changes to the 12 other rules proposed by the committee, and are calling for plans to be discussed at the workshop, the documents show.
Ultimately, the committee’s administrative law judges allowed a 50-day workshop over two years. The judge also allowed Edison and other utilities to pay $180,000 to select and hire consultants to facilitate the workshop, according to committee documents.
According to committee documents, the goal of the workshop was to “collect the opinions of the parties and try to narrow the differences.”
During the workshop, one or two of the committee’s safety staff defended the proposal while listening to comments from dozens of employees from utility companies and telecommunications companies, according to the utility industry website that they requested the development.
Companies were not just unwilling to discuss changes to rules proposed by the committee. The documents show that businesses have proposed 50 other changes to safety regulations, including those that significantly weaken them.
Former chairman Lynch called the workshop “the worst way to discover the facts what is needed to ensure safety,” and said utility-salary facilitators have “unprecedented” authority in drafting workshop notes built into the committee’s final decision.
In the final wording, leaving the proposal was a requirement to document how the utility planned how it would use the dormant line in the future. Instead, the language revised the rules to define a permanently abandoned line as “determined by its owner to not make foreseeable future use.”
That definition allows utility companies to maintain old, unused lines indefinitely if executives believe that it may be used in the future.
The committee’s vote “has “inverted the entire intent” of the proposal intended to strengthen the rules, Lynch said. Instead, the committee’s final decision reduced safety requirements.
“It’s very Orwellian,” she said. “Up is down.”
In an interview in July, Connor Flanigan, managing director of Edison’s state regulatory operations, noted that committee staff were given the authority to block company proposals at public workshops.
“When the committee filed these cases, they try to be very transparent,” he said.
The document outlines the committee’s final decision, including quotes from Edison executives who praised the workshop process.
“Like most involved, SCE has achieved changes to the rules they are seeking, not all,” the executive said.
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