The Norco City Council last month adopted an ordinance that will require all future utility installations to be constructed underground.
“As we have seen over the past five years, there can be no question that large, high-voltage above ground power lines are a hazard to the public, to firefighters, to construction personnel, to houses, horses, people, animals,” Colin Burns, city attorney, said at the June 19 meeting. “They do catastrophic damage, as we’ve seen throughout California, and there can also be no question of the aesthetic harm.”
The move came less than a month after the Riverside City Council directed city staff to request Southern California Edison (SCE) reinitiate the complete construction and operation of its portion of the Riverside Transmission Reliability Project (RTRP), which includes the construction of power lines through Norco.
The city previously asked the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to require the portion of the RTRP that goes through Norco to be undergrounded, but the commission voted 3-0 to deny that request, prompting the city to consider potential legal and legislative action to force SCE to underground the lines.
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“The city has long recognized the impacts of above-ground power lines, and it has banned them for decades,” Burns said. “Exempted in our ordinance, however, are two things: Power lines of 40,000 volts and above and those where there is an existing above-ground power line.”
The new ordinance, approved unanimously by the council on its first reading, removes those exemptions. It also removes the exemption for utility lines that do not provide direct service to subdivisions, building sites and structures, like the RTRP.
According to Burns, city staff was reviewing a letter from SCE about the ordinance that he said was “indicative of basically a decade of what this council has endured by SCE.”
“Letters, lawyers, threats, damages, attorney fees, political pressure,” he said. “This council has fought this for a decade.”
Despite the letter of opposition from the utility, the council voted to move forward with the new ordinance. It will have to be brought back before the council for final adoption at a future meeting. If approved, it will go into effect 30 days later.
A full recording of the meeting can be found here on the city’s YouTube channel.
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