BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1650
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Date of Hearing: April 9, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Steven Bradford, Chair
AB 1650 (Portantino) - As Amended: April 9, 2012
SUMMARY : This bill would require the Public Utilities
Commission (PUC) to establish standards for disaster and
emergency preparedness plans. Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires regulated electric and gas utilities to develop,
adopt, and update an emergency and disaster preparedness plan
every two years.
2)Requires regulated electric and gas utilities to meet with
cities and counties in their service areas when updating
utility emergency and disaster preparedness plan.
3)Requires utilities to preposition personnel in advance of
anticipated severe weather.
EXISTING LAW
1)Provides the PUC authority to establish regulations and
practices that fix adequate standards for, among other things,
quality, for all electrical, gas, water, heat, railroad, and
cable television corporations.
2)Requires gas utilities to prepare emergency response and
disaster preparedness plans.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
1)According to the author, "current law does not require
electric utilities to prepare emergency preparedness plans and
to meet with local counties or cities to discuss plans for
emergencies. In December of last year there was a wind
disaster that caused major damage throughout the San Gabriel
Valley. This damage included the loss of electricity to tens
of thousands of utility customers, many for well over a week
in duration. Utility customers and local governments were
largely kept uninformed as to the status of the power outage
and were thus unable to plan for alternate housing or local
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infrastructure needs. There was an inappropriate lack of
communication about an unprecedented wind storm and its
resultant damage."
2)The PUC currently enforces General Order 166 requiring
electric utilities to annually file updated emergency response
plans, including notifying state and local governments of its
annual emergency response exercise. The author may wish to
consider leaving the current annual updates in place.
3)The General Order defines that a Major Outage "occurs when 10
percent of the electric utility's serviceable customers
experience a simultaneous, non-momentary interruption of
service. For utilities with less than 150,000 customers within
California, a major outage occurs when 50 percent of the
electric utility's serviceable customers experience a
simultaneous, non-momentary interruption of service."
4)General Order 166 does require training and planning for
deployment of personnel in anticipation of an event that may
result in a major outage, however it does not currently
require deployment in the event of anticipated severe weather.
In mathematical terms, the Southern California windstorm
outage did not meet the definition of a major outage,
therefore the emergency response plans were not required to be
deployed.
5)Although there were no serious adverse consequences, in both
this Southern California windstorm outage and the widespread
outage that occurred in the Pacific Southwest region in
September 2011, drinking water supplies were impaired due to
lack of electricity at pumping stations. In San Diego,
California, bottled water supplies were distributed as a
public health safeguard due to a sewage spill in the vicinity
of drinking water suppliers (the water supply was later tested
and found to be safe). The PUC does not currently require
emergency response plans for regulated water utilities. The
author may wish to consider adding a requirement that water
companies regulated by the PUC, also file emergency response
plans.
6)Current law requires gas corporations to develop emergency
response plans. The author may wish to consider removing gas
corporations from AB 1650 to remove redundancy with current
law.
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7)This bill proposes consulting with appropriate city and county
representatives. The author may which to consider specifying
local fire chiefs as the appropriate emergency response
representatives to clearly require emergency response planning
with the community incident responders. In addition, the
author may wish to consider requiring that utilities provide a
written comment period for fire chiefs to provide comments on
draft emergency plans .
8)The bill proposes a publicly noticed meeting to provide an
opportunity to participate in the emergency response planning.
Such a meeting could inadvertently create security risks in
that the emergency response plans could become publicly
available to persons or entities that wish to do harm. The
author may wish to consider removing requirements for publicly
noticed meetings to review emergency response plans.
9)Summary of Proposed Committee Amendments
a) Remove references to gas utilities
b) Designate fire chiefs as the point of contact for
utilities to consult with on emergency response plans and
provide fire chiefs an opportunity to provide comment on
draft plans
c) Remove public meetings and review of draft emergency
response plans
d) Require emergency response plans for regulated water
utilities
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) (if amended)
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Susan Kateley / U. & C. / (916)
319-2083
AB 1650
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