Editor,
UndergroundLagunaNow.org reads “Above ground utilities are the single biggest threat to our public safety. ”
The proponents of undergrounding use fear to motivate voters to approve the ballot measure. The proponents want to bury SoCal Edison’s 19th century power lines and pass the costs onto property owners and Laguna’s retail sector through bond measures approved by voters, but their headline is false and unsubstantiated.
Statistical data show the top three greatest threats to public safety are falls, poisonings and motor vehicles not utilities, the occasional gas-burp from Bluebird Substation notwithstanding.
As long as property owners are asked to pay for a $200 million, 30-year commitment to dig a hole and bury obsolete utilities, it is prudent to review what to bury in the hole. Over time technology shifts are disruptive and largely unpredictable like the smart car, the smart phone, like distributed renewable power. How these technologies play out is uncertain, but the future will arrive and now is the time to study how renewable power will enter the value chain, define operating models and business in Laguna Beach. Solar energy systems worldwide have been consistently underestimatedby the EIA (US Energy Information Administration). In Laguna solar power utilities were not considered when undergrounding city-wide.
The annualized cost of $200 million to underground power lines at 3 percent for 30 years is $10.2 million per year – alternatively this funding could be directed to build Laguna’s sustainable energy future for 2050. If Laguna became a clean power producer and sold power back to utility companies, SoCal Edison would happily bury their power lines at their cost not ours. UndergroundLagunaNow should propose a modern power utility rather than bury obsolete utilities, propose sustainability not creative financing, motivate voter approval with facts, not public fear.
Les Miklosy, Laguna Beach
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Convert your house to solar (approx $40,000 before tax breaks, never pay for electricity again) or get taxed $40,000 by your assessment district to take down poles and continue to pay your electric bill including all future rate increases forever. If Laguna goes all solar most if not all the power lines can be taken down.
Cost to Underground non-evacuation route neighborhoods: $190 million / 4000 properties = $47,500 per property. The $135 million is just for the canyon and evacuation routes! You are still on the hook for $47,500 for your neighborhood after paying for the evacuation route undergrounding, if you are not on an evacuation route! Go solar?
Great LTE Les. Its way past time that this City think out of the box and into the future, embracing newer, cleaner and renewable energy sources like solar, rather than spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to underground soon to be obsolete methods of delivering power from a central grid, owned by a private utility company (SCE). Where’s the ROI on that? Zilch. Stop Taxing Our Property Laguna City Council! NO new taxes to pay for the under grounding boondoggle. No slush funds.
This dreamy ecotalk of “sustainability” sounds so warm and fuzzy because all of the proponents overlook the environmental costs of manufacturers, and installers driving millions of collective miles to gather materials, fabricate the magical solar panels at considerable environmental expense, before putting them on individual roofs and carports. How many people are going to go to such enormous expense when the payback extends so far into the future that you will never be around then. My electric bill is under $200 a year. How does that sound compared to $40,000 to install solar panels which compromise my roof?
John Jager – the city is going to charge you $40,000 to put the power poles in your neighborhood’s assessment district underground and you’re still going to have a $200 a year electric bill. Wouldn’t you rather have solar power and $0 a year electric bill for probably less than $40,000 if the whole city gets behind solar?
My annual electrical power bill is about $156 per year. Or is it? Major industries like transportation, utilities and electronics externalize their costs of production because without it, consumers could not afford the product or service at the time of sale. Even Apple externalizes their cost of production to bring us $600 smart phones, obsolete every 3 years. The cost of decommissioning Edison’s SONGS is roughly $3.2 billion without producing a single Watt of power, every penny will be absorbed by consumers. And what will be the cost of burying 1630 metric tonnes of high-level nuclear waste on the beach at San Onofre? What will be the externalized cost of Fukushima? Climate Disruption? Ask your grand kids now, it will be their mess to clean-up. Laguna has an opportunity now to get undergrounding right, to study the power utility options long before a fire-and-fear campaign to fund it.
JT, liberalism, or socialism light, is so great that you have to pass laws making everyone do your bidding, at very substantial cost.
More government means less freedom. Why do liberals, aka “progressives” (sic) hate freedom so much? Thousands continue to flee ultraliberal California for states that tax and spend less, and impose much less government control and mandates on residents.
God help our children and grandchildren, as these enormous burdens are passed on to them, and they are brainwashed in high school and universities to left-wing extremism.
I think you have fallen off topic John. Saving and not wasting tax dollars on soon to be obsolete utilities is not a non-partisan issue. Offering different newer solutions what has become a major issue for Laguna Beach is very necessary in the attempt to stop our city from wasting more tax dollars. They continue their fear tactics and less then transparent advertising at the taxpayers expense. Ask a city council member why they wont earmark the tax dollars to their agenda. Because perhaps it’s a smokescreen for their real agenda.
This under grounding issue is just an unfounded, unnecessary tax and spend expense. Laguna Canyon is a less than efficient transportation corridor which will not save the population from leaving the City due to a fire! Preposterous! Driving up the PCH to Newport Coast or PCH south is a far more efficient way to leave the City. This under grounding of a now obsolete utility power pole system is a WASTER OF TAX PAYERS’ money. The cost of solar panel installation has been greatly reduced! Check it out. My vote is to put an efficient solar panel system on my roof with a battery to distribute my power at night time; then get off the electric grid to the extent allowed by law. I will be happy to have my tree service remove the poles up and down Laguna Canyon for a greatly reduced cost!