Global Courant 2023-04-26 05:42:04
Top Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials on Tuesday blamed poor oversight and poor planning to explain why utility poles and other utilities flagged as unsafe have not been repaired in recent years.
The Times reported this week that about three weeks ago, the department made an effort to repair 1,600 of the utility’s most dangerous power poles. Some have wood that has been severely compromised — either in the posts or cross arms, which hold high-voltage wires in place — while others have electrical equipment that needs to be replaced, officials said.
The overdue repairs came under scrutiny following a lawsuit against the city over a downed DWP power line that killed a father and daughter in Panorama City in 2021. The city recently agreed to settle the case for $38 million.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the board that oversees the DWP, utility officials said the utility had 753 outstanding Priority One tickets as of Saturday. That classification means “there is an imminent safety and/or reliability risk,” according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
The DWP’s own standard is to fix a priority one ticket within 24 hours or make a temporary fix and reclassify it with a lower priority, officials said.
In explaining the backlog, DWP officials told the board that a contractor had been brought in to help the utility’s 2021 inspection program.
In its first year, the contractor identified five times the number of problems the utility reported last year, officials said. But at the time, the utility was focused on replacing poles, not priority tickets.
Priority one tickets aren’t necessarily assigned to pole replacements, but could also be assigned to crossed arms or other items, Brian Wilbur, senior assistant general manager, told the committee.
Cynthia McClain-Hill, chair of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners, asked Wilbur if priority one tickets “just weren’t a priority?”
“That’s right,” Wilbur replied.
DWP General Manager Marty Adams told the board that the department had not used the list of most urgent repairs to determine the order of work. “We’re trying to figure out exactly how that decoupling (had to) happen,” Adams said.
Officials told the commissioners that 695 Priority One tickets had been closed by the end of March. Of that group, 519 work requests were completed, 157 were classified in a different priority, and 79 tickets were canceled, either because the ticket was a duplicate or because work was completed on another request.
Board members expressed frustration with the revelations about the repairs and asked for reports on the planned repairs. Others also worried about the utility’s separate backlog of priority two tickets, which could also cause problems.
“Plus, we wonder what else is being missed?” Commissioner Nicole Neeman Brady said. “This is a huge problem in itself. And we need to get into how and why it was missed.
Crews work seven days a week and contractors are brought in to clear the backlog, officials said. The backlog of priority one repairs is expected to be cleared by May 16, officials said.
At the same time, the utility receives up to seven new Priority One tickets every day, officials said.
McClain-Hill questioned DWP staff about the lack of oversight, citing a 2014 Daily News story about the utility’s failure to replace aging poles and associated equipment.
Three years earlier, the state utilities commission checked the DWP’s operations and concluded that the utility has not inspected its overhead wires often enough to ensure they are in good working order.
“We’ve been here before, more than once,” McClain-Hill said.
