Southern California Edison found itself the target of litigation following unanimous approval from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on May 1 to contract with the law firm Baron and Budd to prepare and handle a lawsuit filed on behalf of the county, along with its fire protection, flood control, and water conservation districts.
On April 18, supervisors met in closed session and authorized the initiation of litigation against the utility company for damages incurred during the December 2017 Thomas Fire and the resulting Montecito mudflows. County staff reports say the lawsuit is being pursued in order to shield taxpayers from bearing the “burden of those damages over the next several years.” The utility company is being blamed for not shutting off power in areas that experienced high wind, which led to downed power lines and allegedly caused sparks that ultimately triggered the massive conflagration.
The most recent report from staff stated that if the county were unable to recover its out-of-pocket expenses and loss of tax revenue from the two disasters, “residents would face multi-year cuts to county services.”
Santa Barbara County CEO Mona Miyasato wrote in a board agenda letter on March 13 that the county’s estimated unreimbursed expenses, without including revenue loses, was roughly $12.3 million.
Staff expects that figure to rise over the next few years due to increased costs of watershed management after “pronounced loss of soil stability” and future unreimbursed costs for preparing for and responding to other potential debris flows “that would not have occured” if not for the Thomas Fire.
Andy Caldwell, the executive director of the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture, and Business (COLAB), called the pending litigation “distressing.”
Caldwell told the supervisors he understood “going after deep pockets” to pay for the disasters, but he suggested they should consider suing the federal government for allowing the fuel loads in the mountains to exceed more than 100 years. He said the old trees should have been cleared out years ago and that if the work had been done the fire would not have been as destructive.
“So you have a spark from Edison, but what about the fuel loading by the federal government, are they not equally culpable?” Caldwell said.
Caldwell warned the supervisors that breaking down the vertical integration found in utilities like Edison would “undermine the value of serving” the region.
“If they can’t be vertically integrated, then really what they are doing is maintaining lines for other people’s power to be delivered here,” he said. “Well guess what, if those lines are such a liability, why bother [owning and maintaining them]? What if [Edison] goes belly up and their stockholders say, ‘You know, it’s not worth serving the Central Coast: they are at the very end of the line, there are dangers to those lines, they’re high maintenance, and we’re not assured of any market at the end of the line.'”
COLAB’s executive director then asserted that if Edison lost the suit, the supervisors’ constituents would be the ones stuck footing the bill with higher costs for utility services.
“There’s no such thing as free money, there’s no such thing as one company holding the bag for all the culpability having to do with that disaster, and we wish you’d really think this stuff through before you pull the trigger,” Caldwell said.
Supervisor Peter Adam, while admitting he agreed with Caldwell for the most part, said the price tag was simply too big a burden for the county to bear.
“The amount of money here is really significant and, given our financial circumstances, I think it’s warranted enough that I just go along with this�”and I feel a little dirty�”I’ll just say that, but it’s a lot of money,” Adam said.
This article appears in May 3-10, 2018.