utility

Southern California Edison sued Los Angeles County, water agencies and two companies including SoCalGas Friday, saying their mistakes contributed to the deadly and destructive toll of last year’s Eaton wildfire.

Edison now faces hundreds of lawsuits by victims of the fire, which claim its transmission line started the devastating fire that killed at least 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena. The cost of settling those lawsuits could be many billions of dollars.

Doug Dixon, an attorney who represents Edison in the fire litigation, told the Times that Edison filed the lawsuits “to ensure that all those who bear responsibility are at the table in this legal process.”

The utility’s two legal filings in L.A. County Superior Court paint a picture of sweeping mismanagement of the emergency response on the night of the fire.

Edison blames the county fire department, sheriff’s department and office of emergency management for their failure to warn Altadena residents west of Lake Avenue to evacuate.

The Times revealed last January that west Altadena never received evacuation warnings, and orders to evacuate came hours after flames and smoke threatened the community. All but one of the 19 who died in the Eaton fire were found in west Altadena.

Edison also sued L.A. County for failing to send fire trucks to the community. A Times investigation found that during a critical moment in the fire, only one county fire truck was west of Lake Avenue.

The electric company also filed suit against six water agencies, including Pasadena Water & Power, claiming there were insufficient water supplies available for firefighters.

“Compounding the unfolding disaster, the water systems servicing the areas impacted by the Eaton Fire failed as the fire spread, leaving firefighters and residents with no water to fight the fire,” the lawsuit states.

Another lawsuit aims at SoCalGas. Edison says the company failed to turn off gas lines after the fire started, making the disaster worse.

“SoCalGas did not begin widespread shutoffs for four days—until January 11, 2025—in the area affected by the Eaton Fire,” the complaint states. “In the meantime, the Eaton Fire continued to spread fueled by natural gas.”

“ The risks and deficiencies with SoCalGas’s system that led to it spreading the fire were long known to SoCalGas, and yet it nevertheless failed to adequately account for them in designing, building, and maintaining its system,” the complaint said. “The result was catastrophic.”

Edison also sued Genasys, a company that provides the county with emergency alert software.

In addition, the utility sued the county for failing to remove brush, which it claims made the fire hotter and spread faster, causing more damage.

In March, L.A. County filed suit against Edison, claiming that its transmission line sparked the blaze, requiring the county to incur tens of millions of dollars responding to the fire and its aftermath. The county is seeking compensation for destroyed infrastructure and parks, as well as for cleanup and recovery efforts, lost taxes and overtime for county workers.

Edison’s new cross claims will be heard in the consolidated Eaton fire case in Superior Court, which is also handling the lawsuit that the county and other public agencies have filed against the electric utility.

Officials from the county and water agencies, as well as from the two companies, could not be immediately reached.

The water agencies that Edison sued also include the Sierra Madre City Water Dept., Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Canyon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company and Lincoln Avenue Water Company.

The government investigation into the fire, which is being handled jointly by L.A. County Fire and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has not yet been released.

Edison has said that a leading theory is that its unused, century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon somehow became re-energized on the night of Jan. 7, 2025 and sparked the blaze.

The fire roared through Altadena, burning 14,021 acres and destroying more than 9,400 homes and other structures.

Helen Dalton often winces when she opens the water and power bill for her lushly landscaped home on half an acre in Sherman Oaks. The charge for the latest two-month period was $300.

Hotter months have sent her bill into the $500 neighborhood.

Dalton, a retiree on a fixed income, plans to vote against San Fernando Valley secession–in part because she worries that a municipal split would bring higher and higher utility rates. “It’s a concern,” she said.

As the debate over carving up Los Angeles enters its final month, the anti-secession campaign led by Mayor James K. Hahn is intent on making water and power rates a breakout pocketbook issue. Secessionists are just as determined to paint Hahn as a fear-monger who distorts the facts on utility rates to distract attention from City Hall’s broader shortcomings.

Both sides know that water and power pack a punch with voters still jittery from the state’s electricity crisis and forever sweating the next drought.

The message of the Hahn forces is stark: If the Valley and Hollywood cityhood proposals win at the polls on Nov. 5, residents of the new municipalities could lose the relatively stable rates and plentiful supplies offered by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Sprinkling the lawn and cranking up the air conditioner would soon become expensive luxuries.

Secessionists contend that Hahn has grossly misrepresented the state-mandated terms of a breakup. They note that the Local Agency Formation Commission, which approved both cityhood measures for the ballot, has directed the DWP to continue serving an independent Valley or Hollywood at rates no higher than those charged in Los Angeles.

Under LAFCO’s formula, the DWP would become a contractor for the new cities, unless they chose to buy their water and power from other providers.

“I see no chance that we would not get water on the same terms and conditions as the rest of the city,” said Richard Close, an attorney who heads the secession group Valley VOTE.

Question of Authority

The anti-secession camp, however, insists that LAFCO overstepped its authority by including that utility-rate provision in the secession proposals. Hahn and other Los Angeles officials say the state Constitution and the City Charter give the DWP sole power to set rates. And opponents argue that the laws require the DWP to provide the cheapest possible service to its Los Angeles customers, even if that means higher costs for Valley and Hollywood cities.

They say it already costs more to serve the Valley, which has generally larger home lots and higher temperatures than the rest of the city, placing more demand on the DWP.

Legal challenges over utility rates are considered likely if secession prevails. LAFCO itself has suggested the courts might have to resolve the matter.

“It’s absolutely inevitable that it will end up in court,” said Steve Erie, a water expert and political science professor at UC San Diego.

Water originally brought the Valley and Los Angeles together. In 1915, the Valley agreed to be annexed by Los Angeles in exchange for access to the then-2-year-old Los Angeles Aqueduct. The aqueduct piped snowmelt from the eastern Sierra to the parched Valley floor, irrigating farms and later making possible the explosion in home building.

Secession leaders say that the Valley is now entitled to future DWP service at reasonable rates because the region has paid its share of building the utility’s infrastructure for 87 years. The secessionists initially demanded that an independent Valley get an ownership stake in the DWP, but LAFCO rejected that arrangement as unworkable.

The agency determined that, unlike streets and parks and city buildings, the DWP’s massive generation and delivery systems are too complex to divide up between Los Angeles and the Valley, not to mention Hollywood.

LAFCO decided that Los Angeles would continue to own the system, but could not jack up rates for the Valley or Hollywood if secession passes.

The DWP already provides water by contract to other cities and communities, including West Hollywood and Universal City, but charges them higher rates. That’s because the DWP acts as a middle agent for those cities, buying supplies from the Metropolitan Water District and delivering them on Los Angeles-owned pipelines. MWD water costs as much as 25% more than water from the L.A. Aqueduct, and the DWP passes those higher rates along.

Contract Arrangement

Anti-secessionists say the DWP could demand a similar arrangement with a new Valley or Hollywood city. That would mean steeper bills in the breakaway areas.

“I can’t see the DWP violating the City Charter and selling its cheapest water to an outside agency, such as a Valley city,” said Larry Levine, who heads the anti-secession organization One Los Angeles.

Hahn echoed that view. “We don’t think LAFCO has the ability to supersede water law or the City Charter,” the mayor said.

“We think if our cost goes up, we ought to be able to recover the cost…. There is a risk. Why take the chance of higher water and higher power rates?”

The City Charter says Los Angeles’ water rights cannot be sold, leased or disposed of without the approval of two-thirds of the voters, according to a former DWP attorney, Kenneth Downey. He said a simple majority vote on secession does not supersede that requirement.

Former DWP General Manager S. David Freeman, now the state’s power czar, said Los Angeles is also unlikely to give the Valley or Hollywood the cheapest electricity the utility generates, which comes from its hydroelectric plants. Instead, the DWP would probably sell the secession areas more expensive power from inefficient, gas-fired plants, Freeman said.

“It’s against human nature” to do otherwise, he said.

Fight for Business

Competition could play a role in stabilizing water prices. A Valley or Hollywood city could look elsewhere for water and power–to private utilities, for example–if the rate ceilings the commission imposed on the DWP were thrown out by the courts.

Secessionists say that would give Los Angeles a financial incentive not to raise rates for the breakaway cities.

“The city of Los Angeles needs the Valley as customers,” Close said. “It’s like Ralphs saying they don’t need 40% of their customers. They would be shutting down stores if they said that.”

Hahn concedes that Los Angeles would be hurt if the secession regions ditched the DWP. But he adds that such a scenario is another argument against a breakup, because rates would rise for DWP customers in a smaller Los Angeles.

“Clearly there are economies of scale, so if a significant customer base was removed somehow, those costs would have to be absorbed, and the only way I can see that is if we pass higher rates for the remaining customers,” Hahn said.

In the state’s recent energy crisis, the DWP was able to supply relatively cheap power and avoid the market gyrations and blackouts that afflicted other parts of California.

Citing that experience, Hahn said it is unlikely that Valley and Hollywood residents would want to turn to private utilities, such as Southern California Edison, because the deregulated rates of those utilities are much higher than the DWP’s.

Secessionists, though, say the new cities would be free to negotiate lower electricity rates.

And some cities in Los Angeles County already get better water prices than those charged by the DWP. A 2001 survey by the engineering firm Black & Veatch Corp. found that DWP’s residential customers were billed an average of $29.88 a month. In comparison, Long Beach averaged $27.28; Redondo Beach, $23.68; Santa Monica, $23.64; and Pasadena, $13.73.

Santa Monica got 82% of its water from MWD and Pasadena received 60%.

Phyllis Currie, a former DWP official who heads the Pasadena utility, said its low maintenance costs have kept prices low. Los Angeles ratepayers must subsidize costly DWP improvements.

Gerald Gewe, who oversees the water side of the DWP, said other cities can charge less because they have access to cheaper groundwater supplies. He said the groundwater under the Valley is owned by Los Angeles, and a Valley city would have to build a water collection and distribution system if it went somewhere other than to the DWP for water. That would increase rates, Gewe said.

Hahn and DWP General Manager David Wiggs said they have no plans to raise water and power rates as a knee-jerk reaction to secession. But they predicted that major rate-paying institutions, such as large businesses and colleges, might force the issue.

“If rates go up for customers because of secession, I think it would be very likely that customers who believe their rights are jeopardized will seek their legal remedies in court,” Hahn said.

One factor that could trigger a court fight, city officials say, is that the current rate structure allows Valley properties to use more water before they exceed the threshold for basic rates and are charged higher prices. A decade ago, the DWP adjusted rates to allow more water use by customers who live in areas with higher temperatures, including the Valley.

Wiggs says that rate-relief formula might be challenged if the Valley becomes a separate city. “I certainly think that is an issue that can be and probably would be raised by customers,” Wiggs said.

The result, he added, could be higher rates in the Valley.

Another wild card is whether the new cities would move to charge the DWP a franchise fee for providing them water. Wiggs said Los Angeles would have to determine if such a fee should be paid by ratepayers only in the secession areas or in the remainder of Los Angeles.

Lawsuit Doubted

But Richard Katz, co-chairman of the Valley Independence Committee, said secessionists have no plans to impose a franchise fee. He also expressed doubts that major DWP customers would sue over rate equity.

“That would only happen if the DWP was out there stirring things up,” said Katz, who serves on the state Water Resources Control Board.

He dismissed the anti-secession rhetoric on utility rates as “scare tactics.”

“Aside from all the lawyers arguing about everything,” Katz said, “once the city is created, a lot of this rhetoric goes away. Because the bottom line is the cities will cooperate more than fight.”

State regulators ordered Southern California Edison to identify fire risks on its unused transmission lines like the century-old equipment suspected of igniting the devastating Eaton wildfire.

Edison also must tell regulators how its 355 miles of out-of-service transmission lines located in areas of high fire risk will be used in the future, according to a document issued by the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety on Dec. 23.

State regulations require utilities to remove abandoned lines so they don’t become a public hazard. Edison executives said they did not remove the Eaton Canyon line because they believed it would be used in the future. It last carried power in 1971.

The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety said Edison must determine which unused transmission lines are most at risk of igniting fires and create a plan to decrease that risk. In some cases that might mean removing the equipment entirely.

While the OEIS report focuses on Edison, the agency said it also will require the state’s other electric companies to take similar actions with their idle transmission lines.

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Monday that the company already had been reviewing idle lines and planned to respond to the regulators’ requests. He said Edison often keeps idle lines in place “to support long-term system needs, such as future electrification, backup capacity or regional growth.”

“If idle lines are identified to have no future use, they are removed,” he said.

Johnson said that since 2018, Edison has removed idle lines that no longer had a purpose seven times and provided a list of those projects.

The investigation into the cause of the Eaton wildfire by state and local fire officials has not yet been released. Edison has said the leading theory is that the dormant transmission line in Eaton Canyon briefly reenergized on the night of Jan. 7, sparking the fire.

Unused lines can become energized from electrified lines running parallel to them through a process called induction.

The Eaton wildfire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes and structures in Altadena.

After the fires, Edison said it had added more grounding equipment to its old transmission lines no longer in service. The added devices give any unexpected electricity on the line more places to disperse into the ground, making them less likely to spark a fire.

The OEIS issued its latest directives after Edison executives informed the agency they had no plans to remove any out-of-service lines between now and 2028, the report said.

State regulators and the utilities have long known that old transmission lines can ignite wildfires.

The Times reported how Edison and other utilities defeated a state regulatory plan, introduced in 2001, which would’ve forced the companies to remove abandoned lines unless they could prove they would use them again.

In its report the OEIS noted it would require Edison and other electric companies to provide details of how often each idle line was inspected and how long it took to fix problems found in those inspections.

Edison has said it inspected the unused line in Eaton Canyon annually before the fire — just as often as it inspects live lines. The company declined to provide The Times with documentation of those inspections.

In the OEIS report, energy safety regulators said they expect to to approve Edison’s wildfire mitigation plan for the next three years despite the problems they found with the approach.

For example, the report noted that Edison is behind in replacing or reinforcing aging and deteriorating transmission and distribution poles. The regulators said the backlog “includes many work orders on [Edison’s] riskiest circuits.” A circuit is a line or other infrastructure that provides a pathway for electricity.

Officials said the company must work on reducing that backlog. They also criticized Edison executives for not incorporating any lessons they learned from the Jan. 7 wildfires into the company’s fire prevention plans.

Johnson, Edison’s spokesperson, said the company already improved the backlog of pole replacements. He said the company also planned to tell regulators more about the lessons it learned after the Eaton fire.

Under state law, the OEIS must approve a utility’s wildfire mitigation plan before it can issue the company a safety certificate that protects the company from liability if its equipment ignites a catastrophic fire.

The OEIS issued Edison’s last safety certificate less than a month before the Eaton fire — despite the company having had thousands of open work orders, including some on the transmission lines above Altadena, at the time.

Edison is offering to pay for damages suffered by Eaton fire victims and a handful already accepted its offers. The utility says that because it held a safety certificate at the time of the fire it expects to be reimbursed for most or all of the payments by a $21-billion state wildfire fund.

If that fund doesn’t cover the damages, a law passed this year enables Edison to raise its electric rates to make up the difference.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers passed laws to create the state fund and safety certificate program to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their equipment starts costly wildfires. Critics say the laws have gone too far, potentially leaving utilities financially unharmed from fires caused by their negligence.

Edison is fighting hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims of the Eaton fire. The company says it acted prudently in maintaining the safety of its system before the fire.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, told The Times this month that he believed the company had been “a reasonable operator” of its system before the fire.

“Accidents can happen,” Pizarro said. “Perfection is not something you can achieve, but prudency is a standard to which we’re held.”