Rolling Hills has received a $1 million grant to help the city place utility lines underground, reducing the potential of sparking wildfires in the area.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn last week presented a $1 million check to Rolling Hills officials, which will be used to underground utilities on Eastfield Drive.
The grant comes from California Public Utilities Commission Rule 20 Program, which funds undergrounding utilities, according to a press release from Hahn’s office.
“Undergrounding utilities boost aesthetics of neighborhoods and increase property values,” the release said, “while reducing fire risk and easing the maintenance of utility wires.”
To receive the grant, according to the CPUC website, an ungrounding project must meet “public interest criteria,” including aesthetic and traffic-based guidelines.
The $1 million grant gets Rolling Hills to the $3.6 million total it needs for the entire Eastfield Drive project, said City Manager Elaine Jeng. Besides the CPUC grant, the city also received nearly $2 million from a federal grant and $657,000 in local matching funds.
Rolling Hills residents, Jeng said, could form their own underground utility assessment district like those in Manhattan Beach. But, she said, the last time that came up for a vote, in March 2021, the initiative failed miserably, with only 10% of residents in favor.
“But from a safety standpoint, (Rolling Hills) was concerned about wildfire potential,” Jeng said, “and there were grant opportunities.”
So the city applied for and received the grant money, Jeng added.
The design phase of the Eastfield undergrounding project is underway with utility companies, Jeng said. It is expected to take three years to complete the entire project.
The city had initially been given one year by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as a condition for receiving the federal grant, and was required to complete the project by May 2023, Jeng said.
But because the undergrounding requires a lot of coordination with multiple utility companies, that wasn’t even enough time to complete the design phase, Jeng said. So the city recently asked for and received an extension from FEMA until April 2025.
The Eastfield Drive project isn’t the only undergrounding in Rolling Hills. The city, for the past two years, has been working to underground utilities on Crest Road East, from Wideloop Road to the eastern end of the city. That project is funded by a $1.15 million grant, which had to be matched with $381,000 from the city, Jeng said.
Because the Palos Verdes Peninsula is an area designated as an elevated fire-threat, sparks from power lines can ignite a wildfire more quickly there. The last major fire on the Peninsula was August 2009; that blaze burned about 230 acres, threatening homes and forcing more than 1,200 people to evacuate.
In October, Rancho Palos Verdes approved the installation of wildfire-detecting cameras in four areas of the city that would also help detect fires in neighboring cities.
Council representatives from the four Peninsula cities, along with Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, announced a $1.5 million allocation from the state’s budget to help fund the wildfire detection cameras in November.
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