Who needs the drama? Get rid of the utility poles

It’s hard to count the number of utility poles on Laguna Canyon Road when you’re driving because they fly by so fast.

Every 50 yards or so, they stand defiant, like a grizzled middle finger, daring you to do something.

There are, in case you’re wondering, 78 of them on the right side of the road as you drive out of town until you reach El Toro Road. If you turn around and head back, you will see 93 on the right. That makes 171 problems.

The reason there are so many more on the undeveloped side of the road is that they are shorter, which means they need to be closer together so the lines don’t fall to the ground.

But of course the lines do fall, pretty regularly actually, because cars fly by and hit them.

The drivers are often drunk or texting. And then you have the windstorms.

These poles, by the way, are sometimes so close to the road that you can almost reach out and touch them.

When a pole falls, it’s like throwing a hot match into a fireworks stand, especially now. The conditions in the canyon are so brown and brittle that everything looks dead. You want to spit just to help the drought.

Every pole downing becomes like one of those movie scenes where there’s a car accident and a small fire starts. The music crescendos and everyone wonders if the trapped actor will get out of the car in time before it blows.

The car always blows.

Unfortunately, Laguna Beach tries hard to be cinematic.

Remember it was just over a year ago that a tree fell into a power line on Arroyo Drive and burned about 15 acres.

Everyone pretty much freaked out — and rightfully so. Laguna has the dubious distinction of being in the top 10 nationwide for costliest fires, thanks to the 1993 catastrophe.

Fires caused by power lines happen about every other year in Laguna, according to the city, but accidents involving poles in the canyon happen about every couple months.

Given those odds, how would you like to live in the canyon when the next live wire drops?

Last week saw another dramatic example. A driver snapped a pole, and the canyon shut down. The thick, high-voltage wires lay on the ground like a cranky black mamba.

It makes you wonder whether the Southern California Edison crews ever bicker among themselves: “You move it.” “No, you move it.” “I don’t want to move it.”

City officials, meanwhile, say they can’t force SCE to pay for undergrounding. They’ve tried. SCE is doing a small undergrounding of 11 poles near Big Bend, but it will barely make a dent.

“SCE simply will not pony up the money, and there’s nothing legally we believe that can be done about that,” said Laguna Councilman Steve Dicterow.

Dicterow said there is an effort to increase the hotel bed tax so that the city can build up enough of a base to float a bond. In the meantime, the canyon will remain exposed.

“There’s no way we will ever have, on a year-to-year basis, enough revenue to do that kind of undergrounding comprehensively,” he said. “And so if the town really wants to do it, it would have to vote.”

Also, even if the city comes up with the money to fund such a project, there’s a misconception that everything would be underground, Dicterow said.

The several poles that carry electricity from surrounding areas needed to power homes and businesses in Laguna would remain because of the higher undergrounding costs associated with these larger structures, according to a city staff report. The smaller, more easily removable poles are mostly for telephone cables.

“Those poles are not in danger of being knocked down by a car,” Dicterow said of the larger poles. “They’re just too massive. But I want the public to understand that even with a comprehensive, total undergrounding, there’s still going to be some high towers and wires out there.”

Meanwhile, neighborhoods around Laguna are continuing their efforts to put the wiring underground, forming special districts to fund the projects.

Which raises the question: Why is an uncluttered ocean view more important than a potential canyon fire that could destroy half the city?

Undergrounding needs to be a citywide effort. Piecemealing the pole removal won’t solve the problem. Plus, it will take too long to finish.

Put it this way: The 1993 fire, which was a brushfire not started by downed wires, consumed thousands of acres and caused $528 million in damage.

But all it takes is one pole to cause a devastating fire, and we have 171 of them.

In March, the city’s planning staff told the City Council that it would take $50 million to $90 million to underground the utilities in the canyon.

Let’s see, $50 million or $500 million … $50 million or $500 million.

In case you’re still calculating the cost, do you know where the first power line outside the village is located in the canyon?

Directly in front of the Boys & Girls Club.

--

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.