Utility lines going under the ground

Lolita Harper

The unsightly orange cones and annoying traffic delays on 19th

Street are necessary evils for bringing the city a long-awaited

utility project that rids the Westside of towering utility lines.

Bill Morris, the city’s director of public services, said the

project will improve aesthetics on the Westside and free up a lot of

sidewalk space where the poles once stood. The project provides the

kinds of improvements residents wouldn’t necessarily notice until

they were done.

“Visibly it is very noticeable, or I should say not noticeable,”

Morris said.

The $2.3-million project, designed to place all phone, cable and

energy lines underground on 19th Street and Placentia Avenue, is

underway after various problems between the city and a financially

strapped energy company worked themselves out.

The result is a highly anticipated collaboration between Pacific

Bell, AT&T; Broadband and Southern California Edison -- which are

funding the project with money from rates charged specifically for

underground projects -- to put their overhead lines out of sight in

time for a street rehabilitation project for the same area, Morris

said.

The initiation of the utilities portion of the improvements paves

the way for a subsequent street repair project, for a Westside

facelift to cost about $10 million, Morris said.

City Councilman Gary Monahan said he was pleased to see the

fruition of a longtime council goal and hopes it would be the start

of a general trend of progress on the Westside.

“It’s taken some time with the problems with [Southern California]

Edison to finally get it started but it’s a great project,” Monahan

said. “Then the public area improvements will be finished and

hopefully that will roll into some private enhancement also.”

If the city was unable to coordinate plans to move utilities

underground on 19th Street and Placentia by June 30, 2003, it stood

to lose $2.95 million in federal grants.

Two years ago, the City Council approved two expensive projects:

the moving of utilities underground and the rehabilitation of areas

on 19th Street and Placentia.

The projects were seemingly unrelated, except that they would both

tear up the same areas of the streets. Officials said they wanted to

put the utilities underground before they rehabilitated the streets

so they could avoid cutting up streets they would have just spent

millions to fix.

The trouble stemmed from the schedule of each project’s funding:

Each was covered by different sources, with Southern California

Edison fronting about $2.1 million for the utility work, cable and

phone companies offering their piece and the subsequent street

improvements coming from federal grants and matching city funds,

officials said.

The city had secured its federal funding, competing against other

cities in the region for money allocated through the Orange County

Transit Authority, Morris said. However, the state’s energy crisis

put Southern California Edison in a poor financial position and, for

a time, the company was unable to commit to the project.

With its financial woes lessened, Edison recommitted to the work

and joined the phone and cable companies to provide the funding for

the work being done now.

Arizona pipeline was hired to do the construction required to

complete “the considerable amount of work,” Morris said. Workers will

wire new underground cables for the phone, cable and power company,

at which time each service provider would need to switch its systems

to use those channels, and then the existing overhead lines and poles

would be taken down.

Morris said the city will time its street rehabilitation project

to start accepting bids just as Arizona Pipeline is finishing up the

utility portion of the recabling.

* LOLITA HARPER covers Costa Mesa. She may be reached at (949)

574-4275 or by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.