Weeks after lethal fires swept via Los Angeles County, the state regulator accountable for overseeing utility firms declined a request that will have required California’s largest utilities to replace maps exhibiting excessive hearth menace areas.
Client advocates argued for extra up-to-date maps that would assist assess danger to communities and impose extra stringent necessities for utility infrastructure inside high-threat areas. The maps present the chance of a wildfire attributable to gear owned by the state’s three main investor-owned utilities; they’re separate from Cal Fireplace’s maps that present the potential for fires primarily based on gas in a given space. Initially filed eight years in the past, the maps haven’t been up to date as a complete. As an alternative, the utilities voluntarily file piecemeal updates to mark areas as in danger for hearth, or not in danger, as they decide this with inner fashions.
Even with these additions, the maps badly want updating, in accordance with Cal Advocates, which represents ratepayers earlier than the California Public Utilities Fee.
A proposal from the company would have required instantly up to date maps and a shorter replace interval going ahead. Initially filed in 2023 by the California Public Advocates Workplace, a state entity tasked with representing client pursuits, it had help from the three massive energy firms – Pacific Fuel & Electrical, Southern California Edison and San Diego Fuel & Electrical. However in late January, the fee voted in opposition to the proposal, with 4 commissioners in opposition and one, who beforehand led Cal Advocates, who recused himself.
“The CPUC is targeted on monitoring utilities’ compliance with quite a few guidelines and applications directing their actions in excessive hearth menace areas of California,” Adam Cranfill, spokesperson for the fee, mentioned. “We can’t remark as we speak on a possible future car concerning the hearth maps.”
As investigators study the causes of the current fires in Los Angeles County, Southern California Edison, which serves the realm, has come below elevated scrutiny. The utility mentioned in a regulatory submitting that its gear could have performed a job in beginning the 799-acre Hurst Fireplace within the San Fernando Valley, and the corporate is investigating whether or not its gear could have been concerned within the 14,021-acre Eaton Fireplace that burned Altadena and elements of Pasadena.
Southern California Edison spokesperson Gabriela Ornelas declined to reply particular questions concerning the utility’s hearth maps and whether or not up to date maps would have helped forestall or extinguish the current fires or its response. In an announcement learn over the cellphone, she mentioned the corporate internally opinions the hearth danger in its service space utilizing a number of elements.
“Ought to that evaluation decide that modifications to the CPUC maps are warranted, SCE will file a petition to change the map with the CPUC,” she mentioned.
The fee’s hearth danger maps sprung out of a regulatory response to a sequence of fires in late 2007 in Southern California, a number of of which have been attributed to utility gear. Consequently, Pacific Fuel & Electrical, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Fuel & Electrical, which serve the overwhelming majority of the state, submitted maps in 2017 to determine potential areas the place utility gear might trigger fires.
The three utilities are required to replace their maps each 10 years, however each Pacific Fuel & Electrical and Southern California Edison have up to date sections of their maps because the unique submitting. Southern California Edison can also be at the moment in search of approval to replace a portion of its maps. San Diego Fuel & Electrical has not up to date its maps since 2017.
However Cal Advocates argued in its preliminary 2023 proposal that the maps want each a whole replace and to be up to date extra ceaselessly than as soon as a decade. When Pacific Fuel & Electrical filed an replace in 2023, for instance, the brand new inclusions amounted to about 4.5% of its service space.
“Even its most up-to-date mapping was in dire want of updating,” Cal Advocates mentioned in its 2023 request. “This implies public security wants can be higher met if utilities throughout the state replace their wildfire danger mapping each 5 years.”
All three of the utilities with mapping necessities supported Cal Advocates’ place, which might enable the utilities to replace the maps primarily based on their very own inner fashions. In an announcement, Pacific Fuel & Electrical spokesperson Matt Nauman mentioned the corporate updates its inner hearth maps yearly and expects to file up to date maps with the fee on the finish of this yr.
Mussey Grade Highway Alliance, a Ramona group advocacy group, pushed again on the proposal in Could 2023 due to the discretion it could give the utilities to decide on what counts as dangerous, which Cal Advocates later agreed with.
With the mapping comes extra regulatory scrutiny, in addition to extra stringent necessities for inspecting and sustaining utility infrastructure in high-risk areas.
The advocacy group’s Joseph Mitchell mentioned the maps lack adequate modeling for the way wind impacts the fires. The annual common of wind in an space doesn’t account for the short-term, vital gusts that have been related to massive fires each not too long ago and throughout the final decade.
San Diego Fuel & Electrical comes the closest to accounting for this, he mentioned.
Alex Welling, spokesperson for San Diego Fuel & Electrical, mentioned the utility repeatedly compares its maps in opposition to “wind speeds, historic hearth knowledge, hearth modeling and extra.” The utility will file to replace the maps if it “identifies a necessity for updates,” Welling mentioned.
“Figuring out probably the most harmful areas for applicable mitigation is vital and continues to be vital,” Mitchell mentioned.
This story was initially printed by CalMatters and distributed via a partnership with The Related Press.
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