BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 1650 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 1650 (Portantino) As Amended August 24, 2012 Majority vote ----------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |78-0 |(May 30, 2012) |SENATE: |38-0 |(August 28, | | | | | | |2012) | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Original Committee Reference: U. & C. 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. The Senate amendments remove a state-mandated local program to require every county and city, county, or city and county within the electrical corporation's service area to designate a point of contact for the electrical corporation to consult with on emergency and disaster preparedness plans. Amendments also remove a mandate to require a county participating in a meeting to inform each city within the county of the time and place of the meeting. A technical amendment changes the proposed Public Utilities Code Section for the bill's provisions from Section 769 to Section 768.6. AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill is substantially similar to the version passed by the Senate. FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs. AB 1650 Page 2 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 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. AB 1650 Page 3 Analysis Prepared by : DaVina Flemings / U. & C. / (916) 319-2083 FN: 0005778