BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1650
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ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 1650 (Portantino)
As Amended May 25, 2012
Majority vote
UTILITIES & COMMERCE 13-0 APPROPRIATIONS
17-0
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|Ayes:|Bradford, Buchanan, Fong, |Ayes:|Fuentes, Harkey, |
| |Furutani, Gorell, Roger | |Blumenfield, Bradford, |
| |Hernández, Huffman, | |Charles Calderon, Campos, |
| |Knight, Ma, Nestande, | |Davis, Donnelly, Gatto, |
| |Skinner, Swanson, Valadao | |Ammiano, Hill, Lara, |
| | | |Mitchell, Nielsen, Norby, |
| | | |Solorio, Wagner |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
| | | | |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY : Requires the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC)
to establish standards for disaster and emergency preparedness plans
within an existing procedure. 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 :
AB 1650
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1)The PUC would incur first-year special fund costs of $250,000-for
a full-time utility engineer and a half-time administrative law
judge to develop standards and to conduct a rulemaking in order to
revise the commission's General Order 166 regarding electrical
corporations' emergency plans-and ongoing costs of about $110,000
for the utility engineer to review emergency plans, update
standards, meet with utility staff and local officials, and attend
public meetings required by the bill. ÝPublic Utilities
Reimbursement Account]
2)Minor reimbursable costs for each city and county within the
service territories of the electrical corporations to designate a
point of contact with the electrical corporation, who would
presumably meet with the corporation and provide comments on any
draft emergency plan.
COMMENTS : 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 infrastructure needs. There was an inappropriate lack of
communication about an unprecedented wind storm and its resultant
damage."
Background : 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 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."
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
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a major outage, therefore the emergency response plans were not
required to be deployed.
Windstorm outages : 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). PUC does
not currently require emergency response plans for regulated water
utilities.
Analysis Prepared by : Susan Kateley / U. & C. / (916) 319-2083
FN: 0003946