State utility regulators on Thursday, March 21, rejected Norco’s request to make Southern California Edison bury transmission lines for a long-awaited Riverside power project that will run along the Santa Ana River.

Norco is now eyeing a legislative fix. City manager Lori Sassoon said they’re working with Assemblyman Bill Essayli, R-Riverside, to introduce a bill that would suspend the power project until an updated environmental study is completed.

If that bill isn’t approved, the unanimous decision by the California Public Utilities Commission likely closes the door on the local chapter of a complicated debate that’s playing out in California right now, as a broad push to locate power lines below ground due to increasing wildfire risks clashes with rising electricity rates and a need to quickly add capacity to the state’s power grid.

The state approved Riverside’s $521 million transmission project four years ago to give the city a second connection to the regional electric grid. That plan includes adding steel poles and towers that would soar up to 180 feet and cut through the Hidden Valley Nature Center, where shorter above-ground power lines already exist.

In October, Norco asked the commission to reconsider that decision, noting in its petition that wildfire risks and other conditions have changed in recent years. The city and its supporters, including a bipartisan group of elected officials, argued that those changes justify the added cost and work involved with putting the planned transmission lines underground.

“Since March of 2021, there has been a significant increase in the number of wildland fires within and around the city of Norco,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, told commissioners on a call during the commission meeting. “Installing new overhead projection for power transmission lines brings additional fire risks and does not make any sense for this fire-prone area.”

However, after the CPUC’s 3-0 vote to reject Norco’s petition, Commissioner Karen Douglas said the conditions Calvert and others have raised were already taken into consideration during environmental reviews and prior votes on the Riverside Transmission Reliability Project.

“We take our role in addressing the risk of utility-involved wildfire seriously,” Douglas said. And given requirements for Edison to build equipment that can withstand the area’s high winds, to keep vegetation in the area away from power lines, and to take other precautions, Douglas said the commission determined “the project poses a less than significant risk of wildfire.”

Edison spokesman Larry Chung called the decision “really huge” for moving the project forward. He said the utility is now just waiting on approval from the city of Riverside to start work again, then they’ll begin soliciting construction bids in hopes of breaking ground by the end of this year.

The Riverside project has been in the works for nearly two decades. City leaders say having just one connection to the grid leaves residents vulnerable to power outages, and that the situation could limit both the city’s growth and its transition to electric transportation and buildings. Edison and Riverside proposed a plan to tie into the grid near the 15 freeway in Jurupa Valley and carry power to Riverside along 9.3 miles of high-voltage wires that would cut through a corner of Norco.

Jurupa Valley filed a lawsuit over the project in 2016, arguing that overhead lines would hurt property values and residents’ views. So when the CPUC voted to approve the project in March 2020, it included plans to bury the 4 miles of power lines that run through Jurupa Valley’s borders. But the remaining 5.3 miles of high-voltage transmission lines are approved to remain above ground.

While Norco raised concerns about that plan years ago, it didn’t file a formal petition over the project until October. Since that was more than two years after the protest window had closed, the city had to justify having the utilities commission reopen the case.

Norco’s main argument in its petition was that there’s been a dramatic increase in the risk of catastrophic wildfires since the project was approved four years ago. But the commission wrote in a decision published before this week’s meeting that Norco’s petition “does not raise a fire risk that was not previously evaluated and addressed” and that the city “failed to justify” missing the appeal window by more than two years.

“We are furious that the commission would refuse to grant Norco a hearing,” Sassoon said after the vote. “It defies logic, especially for a commission that is supposedly concerned about fire safety and environmental justice.”

The commission received a handful of comments during its meeting and through its online portal that supported Edison’s plan for above-ground power lines.

Justin Scott-Coe, former chair of Riverside’s Board of Public Utilities, wrote that “undergrounding has been found to be more disruptive to the environment than overhead powerlines.” He also argued that the new transmissions lines wouldn’t increase fire danger in the area when compared to the shorter power lines that already exist there.

“California and the nation need to invest billions of dollars in new powerlines for our electrified future,” which Scott-Coe wrote makes additional costs of “unnecessary undergrounding” the rest of this project “infeasible.”

But roughly nine in 10 of the comments the CPUC received were from area residents who want the transmission lines to be below ground. Most cited concerns with fire risks, while many also raised concerns about impacts on property values, home insurance and views in the area.

“My family recently finished building a house in Norco and we were required to purchase and install certain materials on our home due to it being in a fire zone,” resident Heather Snow wrote. “If we as citizens are required to spend extra money and take care due to fire risk, then the governments that run our cities should also be required to spend the extra money needed and take care due to fire risk.”

The city of Norco issued a press release Saturday, March 16, claiming Edison wasn’t doing a good job at keeping power lines that already exist in the area clear from vegetation and that the utility needed to “take immediate action.”

“This lack of vegetation management is extremely concerning and presents peril to the Norco community,” Mayor Kevin Bash wrote.

State regulations require utilities to inspect around power lines every six months and to trim any vegetation that gets within specific distances. Fires can happen if vegetation isn’t properly cleared and comes into contact with live lines. That’s what the federal government claims happened to trigger the 2020 Bobcat fire that tore through more than 100,000 acres in Los Angeles County, with a lawsuit against Edison and its tree trimming contactor still pending.

But Chung said the utility is in full compliance with the state’s vegetation maintenance regulations in Norco.

While Edison isn’t required to visit the area for another month, Chung said they sent crews back out on Monday, March 18, after receiving Norco’s letter. And he said they didn’t find any vegetation that had gotten past the state’s mandated distance from contact with transmission lines.