Public Gets Peek at Proposed DWP High-Voltage Line

About two dozen people attended a public meeting Thursday night to learn more about proposed routes for a high-voltage underground transmission line that would stretch from Playa del Rey to West Los Angeles.

The new 230kV (kilovolts) is called the Scattergood-Olympic Transmission Line Project and will connect the Scattergood Generating Station in Playa del Rey with the Olympic Receiving Station near Olympic Boulevard and Bundy Drive, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said.

The new transmission line could vary in length from 12 to 15 miles depending on which streets the lines is buried underneath. Construction costs for the project would be about $5 million to $6 million per mile.

The 230kV line would provide power for about 250,000 homes on the Westside. There is an existing Scattergood-Olympic transmission line, but it was built in 1974 and testing has shown deterioriation of its insulation. The new line would provide backup in case of outages on the older line and put the transmission system in line with regulations set forth by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which sets reliability standards for the electricity grid.

Questions were raised at the meeting about electromagnetic field exposure to residents from the high-voltage line. Charles Holloway, manager of environmental planning with LADWP, said electromagnetic field exposure would be mitigated by burying the transmission lines in deep trenches and that the project would follow state electromagnetic field management plans.

There is no preferred route and the alternative routes could run along busy streets such as Lincoln, Jefferson, Culver and Sepulveda boulevards or along smaller streets. The alternative routes include streets that run through Playa del Rey, Del Rey, Mar Vista, Venice and Culver City.

The routes take into account sensitive land uses such as the presence of hospitals, child care centers, parks, residential neighborhoods, schools and wetlands. Other criteria that will determine the route are existing infrastructure in roadways, such as gas pipelines, power lines, water lines, sewers and telecommunications cables.

Environmental studies will be conducted over the next several months and a draft Environmetnal Impact Report will be prepared by the fall. The LADWP board probably will consider approval of the final EIR in early 2012. Construction is expected to start in mid-2012 and will take approximately two years to complete.