Norco Residents, Business Owners Continue Push To Underground RTRP

Dozens of Norco residents and business owners made the trip to Bellflower this week to ask the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to reconsider the city’s request to underground electricity transmission lines set to go through the city as part of the Riverside Transmission Reliability Project (RTRP).

“This project is similar to what’s being investigated as a possible cause of the Eaton fire,” Norco Councilmember Fia Sullivan said at the October 9 CPUC meeting. “Undergrounding projects like the RTRP should be a standard in California, not a fight.”

Sullivan was just one of about 30 people who spoke in support of the effort to bury the lines. Others included Don Pettinger and Aaron Williams, who highlighted the risk associated with wildfires in an area where so many people keep large animals.

“It would take just one spark to start a fire from a transmission line, and it could be deadly for many of the communities surrounding us,” Pettinger said, noting that the CPUC has the authority to require that the project be constructed entirely underground. “Just think of how hard it is to get people out of a community when everything is burning, it’s twice as hard with animals.”

Williams said earlier this year he helped to load animals from his property, a task that he said took six hours just to get all of the animals into trailers and ready to go, and that was without the added safety concerns of a wildfire.

“Massive evacuations are not something that happen quickly where we live,” he said. “There’s people here [who] have been building their homes there for 70 years, a lot of them are not going to leave their animals. It’s a very dangerous situation.”

Another argument from those who spoke at the meeting said fighting fires with aerial equipment would also be made more difficult by the proposed overhead transmission lines, a claim SCE spokesperson Jeff Monford said was “unfounded,” in an interview with The Riverside Record.

The Record reached out to the CAL FIRE Riverside Unit for comment on the issue but did not hear back prior to publication.

Pettinger said in an interview with The Record that he felt it was important for residents to bring their concerns to the CPUC in light of recent deadly fires across the state, like the Eaton and Palisades fires.

“All those fires were brutal,” he said. “Living in Norco, and along our riverbed, we get winds up to 97 mph that could spread a fire way quicker than any of those communities.” 

The public comments were just the latest action in the community’s longstanding effort to oppose the construction of the proposed aboveground high voltage electricity transmission lines, which ramped up last month after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a $77 million lawsuit against Southern California Edison (SCE) which alleged that the utility’s negligence caused both the Eaton and Fairview fires.

“SCE and Riverside need to heed the warning of this lawsuit addressing SCE’s alleged responsibility for devastating wildfires triggered by major overhead transmission lines,” Mayor Greg Newton said in a city press release after the lawsuit was announced. “We continue to see above-ground transmission lines lead to destructive and deadly wildfires in communities just like Norco. It is the definition of insanity to repeat the errors of the past and expect a different outcome.”

Newton, who was not able to make it out to the CPUC meeting, said in an interview with The Record that the city’s well-documented issues with high winds and wildfires were just the start of problems that would be exacerbated by the above-ground transmission lines.

“The problems that we’re having with homeowners getting insurance, companies leaving the state, canceling insurance — and that whole area is a high risk — and now you throw in above-ground transmission lines,” he said. “Good luck having home insurance.”

It was an issue Janelle Ingram brought up to the CPUC, sharing her own experience trying to secure insurance for her home after receiving a non-renewal notice from her previous provider.

“I applied for the California FAIR Plan, and they sent me a letter, basically begging not to use them and to try to find insurance elsewhere, which is becoming increasingly difficult without paying an extreme amount of money,” she said. “All our homes are like tinderboxes, and obviously, you’ve heard from many people already of how windy it is there, but yet we’re still fighting to live there. We love the area.”

Monford said in an interview with The Record that the cost of undergrounding the project was not justified given the results of the extensive study done on the area’s wildfire risk as part of the project licensing and environmental review processes.

“Our rough estimate, based on similar work in Jurupa Valley, suggests that Norco’s full underground proposal would cost hundreds of millions [of dollars],” he said. “The slight wildfire benefits of fully undergrounding the RTRP do not warrant such a steep cost increase for customers.”

Monford said that in areas with particularly difficult terrain or sensitive areas, such as the Santa Ana River corridor and its surrounding floodplain, above-ground transmission lines were the best option to serve customers.

“The state-approved project is the environmentally superior approach,” he said. “It safeguards against needless undergrounding costs and allows the project to move forward expeditiously.”

Another difference between the two cities was that Jurupa Valley granted SCE what’s called a “superior easement right,” to bury the transmission lines. That allows SCE not only to lay the lines, but also prevents the city from deciding to do something else with the land that would require the utility to remove and replace the lines at the company’s expense.

Those who spoke with The Record said they felt Thursday’s meeting was one of the last times they would be able to get in front of the CPUC to try to push the commission members to reconsider undergrounding the lines.

“The CPUC represents the people and represents the community, and they’re the ones that our elected officials have appointed to represent the best interests of us, the taxpayers, the community, not Edison, not the utilities, not other government entities,” Rudy Gatto, who also spoke at the meeting, said in an interview with The Record. “They’re our advocates, and so I’m hoping that they see how passionate our community is about this and that they understand they’re fighting the fight for us.”

SCE is still involved in active litigation with at least one property owner in Norco, Matt Blackburn, who said both in his comments to the CPUC and in an interview with The Record that the utility sent him an offer to buy the property that included a pamphlet of how eminent domain works.

“We never even had a chance to talk to them or negotiate anything,” Blackburn said in an interview with The Record. “And then 60 days after their offer, it might have even been less than 60 days, I was served a lawsuit where they’ve started the eminent domain process to take the property because they’re trying to fasttrack now.”

Monford said the utility was following “regular legal procedures” on the matter to keep the project moving forward, noting that delays in securing the necessary easements could increase the cost to customers.

Those who spoke at the meeting and with The Record, including Blackburn, said they were in full support of the project to provide the city of Riverside with a second power connection to the state’s electric grid, but just wanted the lines to be buried.

“We want to do the right thing, but it has to be fair all the way around, and it has to be safe for the communities,” Blackburn said, noting that with the suit pending he felt there was still time to push for the wires to be buried. “It’s worth fighting, you know?”

The members of the CPUC did not respond to the comments at the meeting since the item was not agendized, but in a statement to The Record said the commission’s decision was carefully considered.

“The CPUC’s 2020 decision followed careful consideration of safety, cost, and long-term sustainability, as well as comments from Norco’s residents and representatives,” the agency said in a statement emailed to The Record. “Our focus remains on overseeing the safety and reliability of utility services for customers.”