Eaton fire could have been prevented, utils fought removal of old power lines | Hacker News Reader

Eaton fire could have been prevented, utils fought removal of old power lines

latimes.com

>Amid opposition from the utility companies, the Public Utilities Commission studied the proposal for several years, ultimately watering it down to allow the old lines to remain up until executives decided they were “permanently abandoned,” records show.

So the commission is a joke. They should be held partially liable for the cleanup.

Why are utilities privately owned when the public is ultimately left holding the bag?

Because some people are left holding the bag with all the profits.

The main benefit/purpose of privatized utilities are that you can privatize the profits while socializing the losses.

The utilities know that as soon as they give up these lines, they will never get that right of way back, and both need the backup capacity and have been administratively prevented from bringing them up to modern standards by the requirements for new environmental review.

Your claim is that these utility companies are just itching to spend many millions of dollars modernizing unused power lines, if only those darn environmental regulations weren't so burdensome? Is this missing a /s?

It sounds like you're complaining that these utilities aren't able to bring these lines up to modern standards because it's necessary to actually check to see what needs to be done to bring them up to modern standards (e.g. environmental review).

If you think a company would happily spend money on lines they aren't using just in case they need to use them in the future but they're prevented from doing so due to onerous regulation, you're definitely not familiar with privatized utilities. These companies won't spend a dime on these lines until the last possible second, at which point they'll complain about how much work they need to do as a result of leaving things until the last possible second.

https://archive.ph/8nouv

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