Renewed effort to underground utilities in Newport Heights is underway
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Mike Henn has gotten efforts to underground utility lines in Newport Beach off the ground before.
While serving on the City Council, he helped lead a successful undergrounding campaign on the Balboa Peninsula, where he lived in 2010. A city map shows dozens of converted peninsula assessment districts.
For the record:
10:05 a.m. Aug. 17, 2026A previous photograph showed utilities poles outside of Newport Heights. It has since been replaced.
Henn’s current home in the Newport Heights neighborhood is also the site of his latest undergrounding effort — one that he hopes will fare better than a decade ago when property owners voted to reject the move.
“There are three reasons to consider undergrounding: safety, reliability and aesthetics,” Henn said. “While I think the aesthetic improvement is important, safety and reliability are, by far, the important issues to me.”
Central Balboa Island buzzes with activity as $33-million utility undergrounding project moves ahead
Central Balboa Island is teeming with construction activity as a project to underground utilities continues in the endeavor to move overhead power lines out of sight in Newport Beach’s Assessment District 124.
Safer Newport Heights, a resident group where Henn serves on the steering committee, sent a July 18 letter in favor of undergrounding to protect against fire and other safety risks.
The letter was delivered to property owners in the neighborhood’s assessment district.
“Nearly all of Newport Beach has already undergrounded its utilities or approved plans to do so,” it read. “Newport Heights is one of the last large neighborhoods still living under the poles.”
Safer Newport Heights is circulating a petition that needs support from 60% of about 600 property owners in the assessment district. Once verified, city officials will conduct a cost assessment and engineering report, with results distributed to property owners.
In a process overseen by the city, a final vote on undergrounding would then need a simple majority to pass.
The potential cost could prove pivotal. The petition states an estimated cost of $30 million, an average of about $50,000 per parcel.
“What’s the price of safety for myself, my family and my home?” Henn said. “The right answer is to make this place safer and, along the way, if there’s an aesthetic benefit, that’s great.”
A coalition of Newport Heights residents opposed to undergrounding has launched a competing website, which criticizes the potential cost, arguing the effort is more about cosmetics than safety.
While Safer Newport Heights invokes images of the Palisades and Eaton fires on its website, the neighborhood does not appear in the most recent state map of wildfire hazard zones.
“We agree with [Southern California Edison’s] Above Ground Initiative, [which] states for areas not at high risk for fires, ‘above ground components are safer and more reliable,’” the Newport Heights No Undergrounding Coalition’s website argues.
Whatever the reason, the price tag played a role in the effort’s defeat in 2016.
“I just don’t have spare money to spend on this,” Simone Wilson, a Newport Heights resident, told The Pilot that year. “I can respect people’s opinion who want this, but there are plenty of people who just can’t afford it. Morally, it’s not OK to force them.”
Henn argues that installment plans would make the costs more feasible.
Proponents add the City Council is considering a program for low- and fixed-income residents.
A movement to place utility lines underground in Newport Heights, which has sparked tensions among neighbors for more than a year, has been extinguished.
Despite vocal opposition, Henn reports that his group has made “substantial progress” in the petition effort and hopes to meet the required signature threshold in a month or two.
“There’s a real possibility that the majority of people this time around understand the benefits, despite the cost,” he said.
Opponents allege that irregularities have plagued the petition process.
Letters sent to city officials last month claimed that advocates stapled “deceptive promotional materials” on top of the official petition being circulated. The coalition opposed to undergrounding also charged that proponents have digitally altered photographs.
The latest claim is that Safer Newport Heights sent a mailer with only the petition signature page included. Allegedly missing were two pages from the city document explaining what residents were being asked to sign.
Henn is aware of what’s being alleged and said his group has discussed the matter with city officials.
“When we talk to people, we usually have a package that includes the petition,” Henn said. “We’re confident that we will prevail over any and all of these allegations.”
