pay tens of thousands of dollars<\/a> to connect their homes to the buried lines.<\/p>\nResidents have also found the crews digging under the town\u2019s oak and pine trees that survived last year\u2019s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.<\/p>\n
Amy Bodek, the county\u2019s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that \u201cutility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison\u2019s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,\u201d the residents wrote.<\/p>\n
They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.<\/p>\n
Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.<\/p>\n
The work \u2014 which costs an estimated $4 million per mile \u2014 will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.<\/p>\n
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.<\/p>\n
But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,\u201d Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. \u201cIncurring the additional burden of financing SCE\u2019s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other fire survivors complained of Edison\u2019s lack of planning and coordination with residents.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won\u2019t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,\u201d wrote Gail Murphy. \u201cSo apparently I\u2019m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line \u2014 1-800-250-7339 \u2014 is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.<\/p>\n
Residents can also go to Edison\u2019s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena\u2019s neighborhood power lines had been buried.<\/p>\n
The blaze ignited under Edison\u2019s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company\u2019s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.<\/p>\n
The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory<\/a> is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.<\/p>\nThe fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eaton wildfire survivors\u2019 anger about Southern California Edison\u2019s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5759,1804,4300,27653,120898,1073,285,48,52,51,47,50,49,120899,53581,288,120900,40264,13795,120901,120897],"class_list":["post-281068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-altadena","tag-company","tag-eaton-fire","tag-edison","tag-electric-wire","tag-home","tag-homeowner","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-overhead-line","tag-pedro-pizarro","tag-resident","tag-scott-johnson","tag-town","tag-tree","tag-trench","tag-undergrounding-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}