Newsom's California refuses to remove unused power lines to prevent wildfires

A California state bill that would have required Southern California Edison, as well as other private investor-owned utilities, to remove unused power lines to reduce wildfire risk has failed to advance in the legislature. 

The measure, introduced earlier this year by State Senator Sasha Renee Perez, followed reports raising concerns from investigators and experts that a decommissioned transmission line in Eaton Canyon may have been the ignition source of the destructive January fire. The Los Angeles Times reported that Edison knew some electrical towers under investigation were overdue for upkeep and had been classified as an “ignition risk.”

Perez’s bill would have required Edison and other utilities to submit plans to remove decommissioned lines that are considered a liability. A spokesperson for the senator told the Los Angeles Times that the bill would have increased “California’s electrical infrastructure and wildfire resilience by improving wildfire mitigation planning, enhancing emergency response efforts, undergrounding power lines, and requiring closer collaboration between utilities, emergency services and local communities to prevent wildfires.” 

Perez called the bill her top legislative priority of the year and said it was “disappointing” that it failed, particularly considering the safety concerns at hand.

“I’m very frustrated because, when are we going to have accountability? When are we actually going to start reducing fire risk and ensuring utilities are reducing fire risk?” Perez said.

The state senator also pointed to reporting where Edison International Chief Executive Pedro Pizarro acknowledged that “the possibility that an idle, unconnected Southern California Edison transmission line somehow [reenergized] on Jan. 7 is ‘a leading hypothesis’ for what started the destructive Eaton fire.”