Downtown power grid out of date, aging
PROMENADE — Business and property owners Tuesday demanded the city’s energy provider produce a detailed plan to replace the aging power grid following a recent outage that left stores and restaurants here without electricity for several days.
As a crew worked nearby upgrading a portion of downtown’s electrical infrastructure damaged by the July 22 outage, officials with Southern California Edison promised they would deliver a capital improvement schedule to give businesses a better idea of what upgrades have been made and where the power provider plans to focus its efforts in the near future.
The agreement was reached dur- Hypnotherapy can help you turn on the no-smoking sign for good ing a meeting of the Land and Asset Committee of the Bayside District Corp., a public-private management company that oversees operations and advises City Hall on issues related to downtown.
The meeting, which was well attended by property owners and city officials, was called in advance of the power outage, in which underground equipment failed because of excessive demand by customers trying to beat the record heat.
Bayside members requested a face-to-face meeting with Edison officials to address what they said have been several outages over the last five years that have cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost merchandise and sales.
Some, including city officials, blame an ancient energy infrastructure and Edison’s slow pace in replacing key components.
“It does feel as if we only get attention when things blow up,” said Rob York, a consultant for Bayside who has worked extensively with merchants in revitalizing downtown. “Downtown should be a priority. It is rapidly changing (and) with recent development, particularly residential, I think (Edison) needs to build a little bit ahead of the demand curve.”
Edison officials promised that upgrades are, and will continue to be made — $9 billion worth over the next five years statewide — but progress has been slow because of bureaucratic red tape at City Hall,where it can take weeks, and in extreme cases, months to secure a permit that will allow Edison crews to make significant improvements to the power grid.
“The city has been very cooperative with this latest emergency,” said Edison spokesman Mark Olson. “But as the community has pointed out, when there isn’t an emergency, there’s a lot of red tape in Santa Monica to get things done.”
Edison officials said some business owners complain when asked to shut down power for improvements.
Officials from City Hall said Edison shouldn’t point fingers, as they have failed time and time again to provide city planners with a detailed, capital improvement plan outlining when and where work requiring permits would take place.
“There doesn’t seem to be a … plan in place,” said Craig Perkins, City Hall’s director of environmental and public works management. “The issue here, frankly, is in the past there has been insufficient investment in infrastructure in Santa Monica.”
Perkins estimates Edison generates roughly $100 million in revenue a year from Santa Monica customers.
“We are trying to see that there is an equitable amount of investment,” Perkins said.
City Hall spends 20 percent of revenue generated by the use of utilities to maintain and upgrade infrastructure, Perkins said.
Bola Ayorinde,a district manager for Edison who works in Santa Monica, said the utility company is governed by the state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates how much money Edison can spend in a particular area.
Upgrades are determined by engineering studies of equipment, with resources dedicated to those cities where they are needed the most, Ayorinde said.
That includes parts of Santa Monica,where Edison has spent the last few years replacing some of the 50 circuits serving the city. Work also included the replacement of 18 switches, 14 underground transformers, 18 electrical poles and the renovation of a power substation at the corner of Lincoln Boulevard and Colorado Avenue, Ayorinde said.
Crews from Edison will be working until the end of the month in the Second Street alley near Santa Monica Boulevard — the site of the most recent outage — replacing damaged equipment and adding new cables and capacity so that in case of another power failure, emergency power can be restored quickly, Ayorinde said.
“We have been doing a lot of work before (the recent outage) took place,”Ayorinde said. “This is not a Band-Aid approach. If it was, we would have been out of here weeks ago.”
Commerce isn’t the only thing at stake when talking about improvements to the power grid. When the latest outage occurred, an overloaded system caused equipment to melt, sparking an explosion that shot a manhole cover some 15 feet into the air. No one was injured, but Bayside board member Barbara Bryan, operator of the Interactive Cafe on Broadway, said something needs to be done before a deadly accident does happen.
“This is the third time a manhole cover has blown off because of an explosion,” Bryan said.“By the grace of God no one was hurt, but it’s only a matter of time.”
Bryan said she has spoken with Edison crews in the past about repairs and they have said, “like a chorus,” that it is hard to do construction work in Santa Monica, particularly in portions of downtown where new sidewalks have been paved because of the Transit Mall.
“There shouldn’t be this antagonism between Edison and the city,” Bryan said.
With that in mind, Perkins and Olson pledged to meet regularly in the coming weeks to prepare a report on the infrastructure needs of Santa Monica and present that to the Bayside board on Sept. 12.
“I will personally commit to expedite any work that needs to be done,” Perkins said.
Bayside executive director Kathleen Rawson and Kathy Dodson, president of the Chamber of Commerce, said they too would work more closely with businesses to inform them of Edison’s work and be facilitators for when future upgrades are planned.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 9, 2006. Read the original PDF.