Might utility gear set your neighborhood on hearth? California threat maps are 8 years outdated

By Malena CarolloCalMatters

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Weeks after lethal fires swept via Los Angeles County, the state regulator accountable for overseeing utility firms declined a request that might have required California’s largest utilities to replace maps displaying excessive hearth menace areas.

Shopper advocates argued for extra up-to-date maps that might assist assess threat to communities and impose extra stringent necessities for utility infrastructure inside high-threat areas.
The maps present the danger of a wildfire attributable to tools 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 gasoline in a given space. Initially filed eight years in the past, the maps haven’t been up to date as a complete. As a substitute, 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, based on 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 assist from the three massive energy firms – Pacific Fuel & Electrical, Southern California Edison and San Diego Fuel & Electrical. However in late January, the fee voted towards the proposal, with 4 commissioners in opposition and one, who beforehand led Cal Advocates, who recused himself.

“The CPUC is focused on monitoring utilities’ compliance with numerous rules and programs directing their activities in high fire threat areas of California,” Adam Cranfill, spokesperson for the fee, mentioned. “We cannot comment today on a potential future vehicle about the fire maps.”

As investigators study the causes of the current fires in Los Angeles County, Southern California Edison, which serves the world, has come beneath elevated scrutiny. The utility mentioned in a regulatory submitting that its tools 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 tools 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 in regards to 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 telephone, she mentioned the corporate internally critiques the fireplace threat in its service space utilizing a number of components.

“Should that analysis determine that changes to the CPUC maps are warranted, SCE will file a petition to modify the map with the CPUC,” she mentioned.

The fee’s hearth threat maps sprung out of a regulatory response to a collection of fires in late 2007 in Southern California, a number of of which had been attributed to utility tools. 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 establish potential areas the place utility tools 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 be presently 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 continuously 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 recent mapping was in dire need of updating,” Cal Advocates mentioned in its 2023 request. “This suggests public safety needs would be better met if utilities across the state update their wildfire risk mapping every five years.”

All three of the utilities with mapping necessities supported Cal Advocates’ place, which might permit 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 12 months.

Mussey Grade Highway Alliance, a Ramona neighborhood advocacy group, pushed again on the proposal in Might 2023 due to the discretion it will 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 a way wind impacts the fires. The annual common of wind in an space doesn’t account for the short-term, important gusts that had been related to massive fires each not too long ago and inside 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 towards “wind speeds, historical fire data, fire modeling and more.” The utility will file to replace the maps if it “identifies a need for updates,” Welling mentioned.

“Identifying the most dangerous areas for appropriate mitigation is important and continues to be important,” Mitchell mentioned.

This text was initially revealed on CalMatters and was republished beneath the Inventive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.