Cities bury power lines to halt wildfires,
but state slows progress
by John Seiler | November 14, 2025
California’s wildfires burned more than a half-million acres this year, with the Pacific Palisades and eaton wildfires counting among the nation’s most devastating wildfires ever. While some wildfires are inevitable in such an arid place, many could have been prevented by more the rapid replacement of aging power cables or, better yet, “undergrounding” them. As a result of that delinquency, cities are taking action by themselves. Here’s a list of four of them, followed by a legislative review and update.
San Diego. According to a March 21 report by the city’s Utilities Undergrounding Program:
Funding for undergrounding projects took a big hit when the California Public Utilities Commission decided to sunset the statewide Rule 20A program which has existed since 1967. In response, the city has been working with SDG&E to ensure that remaining Rule 20A work credits will be used to bring to completion those Rule 20A projects that were already in construction when the decision took effect.
Pasadena. On July 14, the City Council approved the Path Two Cable Replacement project, a $43.95 million contract with Anixter, Inc. to replace aging cables.
Los Angeles.
In July, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power released its plan, “Rebuilding the Pacific Palisades Electrical System.” It showed these two dramatic before and after pictures:
The explanation:
“Power lines and service lines will be placed underground. New homes will be required to install an underground conduit from the customer electrical panel to the street. Transformers will be relocated from poles to above-ground pads on private property or public right of way.”
Images © SCE 2025.
Used with permission of SCE.
The city “will have moved all of its city-owned power lines in its highest fire-risk areas underground by 2026, a milestone in the city’s multi-decade effort to harden its utilities and reduce the risk of sparking a wildfire,” reported The Orange County Register on August 29.
A Question of Priorities: High Speed Rail v. Undergrounding
The questions: Why wasn’t all this done before? And why isn’t more being done? In addition to the loss of life and property, wildfires spew massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, negating whatever carbon-neutral programs the state has advanced, such as wind and solar power or the High-Speed Rail project.
Every budget decision is about priorities and choices. Reprograming bullet-train dollars to undergrounding would be a wise choice given that the train is touted as a means to battle climate change, but undergrounding would far better achieve that goal.
In 2020, the California Air Resources Board produced a report showing total state yearly CO2 emissions varied widely by year, such as negligible amounts in 2019, but 110 million metric tons in 2020. Yet according the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2024 Sustainability Report, only 142.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide will be saved in the project’s first 50 years of operation.
The whole project’s latest cost estimate is $128 billion, more than triple the 2008 estimate of $40 billion. So far, about $13 billion has been spent. And the Legislature just passed a commitment for $1 billion a year through 2045 to keep the project rolling. Yet the authority’s August 2025 Project Update Report projected just the first segment, in the Central Valley, won’t be completed until 2032. And in July President Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy canceled $4 billion in federal funding.
According to a tally by Renewable Energy World, “Based on an average cost of $3.8 million per circuit mile of conversion for undergrounding distribution infrastructure across the state’s three investor-owned utilities, the ratepayers would be required to pay $559 billion to convert all 147,000 miles of overhead distribution lines in the State, per CPUC’s estimations.”
That’s a lot of money. Averaging three estimates, we get $724 per foot or $3.82 million per mile. Extrapolating, the $13 billion spent so far on the chimerical rail project could have grounded 3,405 miles of power lines. And the total $128 billion cost of the HSR comes to 33,510 miles undergrounded. The obvious thing to do would be to end the troubled rail project and earmark the funds to underground the most dangerous power lines.
Legislature’s Failure to Underground
Which brings us to the Legislature. In 2016, state Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, sponsored Senate Bill 1463. It would have required the Public Utilities Commission to push the utilities for significant fire mitigation efforts. It passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously, then was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
In 2018, by which time I had become his press secretary, Moorlach sponsored a new, and different, Senate Bill 1463. It would have required the California Air Resources Board to give $600 million from the state Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to reduce greenhouse gases through fire mitigation. The bill was incorporated into Senate Bill 901, by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa. The allocation was reduced to $200 million a year from the fund for “forest health, fire prevention and fuel reduction.”
Three bills in the last legislative session addressed future wildfire risk.
Senate Bill 256 by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena would have instructed the Public Utilities Commission “to update a general order to require each electrical corporation to remove all permanently abandoned facilities.” And “for areas affected by wildfire that require electrical distribution infrastructure to be rebuilt, to consider the undergrounding of electrical distribution infrastructure if it is determined to be cost effective compared to other wildfire mitigation strategies.” It died in the Assembly.
Senate Bill 616 by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, would have created “an independent Community Hardening Commission within the California Department of Insurance to develop fire mitigation/community hardening standards, and generate guidelines to enable the creation of a wildfire data sharing platform,” per the Senate analysis. It was vetoed by the governor.
In sum, the Legislature still has not passed comprehensive legislation to reduce wildfire risks for all hazardous zones. For that, cities remain on their own, but it’s encouraging that some of them are trying to take on the challenge.
