Utilities on a portion of Silver Strand Highway will be undergrounded using $2.8 million in available funding through San Diego Gas and Electric.
The stretch of highway between the Crown Cove Aquatic Center and Coronado Bay Road will be slated for undergrounding, an area that was slated because of the funding’s stipulations.
The funds are coming from the California Public Utilities Commission’s Rule 20 program (specifically, Rule 20A). To qualify, projects must be standalone and nonresidential, along with a few other factors.
Based on that criteria, Leon Firsht, the city’s director of public services and engineering, said the chosen stretch of Silver Strand Highway made the most sense. While First Ave. may have qualified, its complexity was a deterrent. There are utilities on both sides of the street, but a 20A project must be standalone in nature, raising the question of which side to prioritize.
The city had until Dec. 1 to decide how to allocate its funding, and the City Council voted unanimously on the recommended site at its Nov. 19 meeting.
Undergrounding is not just an aesthetic move: birds fatally crash into the lines, some of them endangered. Council Member Carrie Downey requested to hear a staff report on the matter at the council meeting, saying she wasn’t unsupportive of the project, but that she wanted to understand the reasoning behind its determined boundary when undergrounding less populated stretches of the highway might better protect wildlife.
“It’s also about protecting the endangered species that nest on the beaches along the highway,” Downey said. “And since we are only doing it by the Aquatic Center, we’re not doing it in some of the other areas where it would actually be more beneficial for the endangered species, the question is, at this point, we selected that portion … when you could have chosen anywhere along that highway.”
Firsht said, the particular stretch of Silver Strand Highway chosen was best because much of the highway transverses land owned by the United States Navy. If the remaining stretch of land were all federally owned, it might better position the city to later qualify for federal grant funding to underground the rest.
The city has been trying for four decades to underground its utilities. In June 2019, the City Council at the time voted to allow residents to form their own underground assessment districts. At least 60% of property owners from a minimum of 65 adjoining properties would have to agree. The city would match half the cost, with the rest collected by assessment within the district.
Mayor Richard Bailey, whose time in office is drawing to an end, encouraged incoming leaders to push harder for utility undergrounding during their tenures. Prior to allowing self-formation of assessment districts, a consultant had divided the city into 12 recommended districts, and Bailey said he thought the city should have taken the consultant’s recommendations.
“Some things take a long time,” he said, “and some things take a lot longer than they should. One of my biggest regrets that I’ve communicated to staff is that I didn’t do a good enough job keeping this a priority, and I wish I had been more persuasive in encouraging the council to maintain those 12 areas as Harris & Associates recommended, because I think we would have been further along.”
Council Member Casey Tanaka acknowledged that other areas of the city also need undergrounding, but that the 20A funding had limited scope.
“If we don’t spend this money that’s been pooled, we’re going to lose it in 12 days,” Tanaka said. “We don’t have any other projects that fit it. I’d be interested to look at some of the groups we’ve promised for decades, like Pomona (Ave.) but we’re not ready to do that. I don’t want to lose that, because like (Bailey) said, so many councils have tried to be thoughtful about where this money goes and when, and now we’re at the point where we have 12 days to pull that trigger.”
