Transmission Towers

The tall metal towers look like giant legs striding across seemingly endless deserts, tramping up and over lofty mountains, marching through towns and cities. And, if you look closely, sometimes you see in the distance tiny dots climbing or clinging to the glistening soaring steel, like spiders on enormous webs in the sky. The animate specks are the linemen who erect, maintain and repair the 100- to 250-foot-high electrical transmission towers. These high-wire acrobats of the utility world stroll nonchalantly across iron beams 100, 200, 250 feet in midair, hang sideways and upside down from their precarious perches securing huge bolts with giant wrenches.

Facing enormous costs and fierce opposition from environmental groups, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on Wednesday announced that it has dropped plans to build an 85-mile-long "green" power transmission line across desert wilderness preserves and scenic ridgelines. Controversy surrounding the proposed Green Path North Transmission Line had tarnished Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's bid to portray himself as the leader of the "cleanest, greenest big city in America." Villaraigosa was unavailable for comment.

A driver chatting breezily on his cell phone as he speeds down the freeway may be a quintessential L.A. scene, but the unsightly antennas sprouting citywide to carry such calls shouldn't be, Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski said Tuesday. Miscikowski introduced two motions calling for regulations on the design and placement of cellular phone antennas and the utility cabinets that house telecommunications equipment.

If you look up, you might spot them hanging from telephone wires and power lines by their shoelaces. Some people say the suspended sneakers, high-tops and boots mark a place where drugs are sold. Other lore holds they commemorate a killing, mark gang territory or vow retaliation. Others insist throwing shoes tied together by their laces over a wire is just a kid's prank, an effort to leave a mark that's as pointless as sticking gum under a table. No matter why they're there, so-called shoefiti isn't exactly a welcome-to-the-neighborhood message.

For the second time in less than a month, AirTouch Cellular has found itself battling Valley residents over the installation of a transmission tower. This time the ruckus is in Encino, where one neighborhood is balking at an antenna system the communications company has proposed for the top of a Ventura Boulevard office building. "We can send people to the moon, but we can't find another location," said Gary Davis, who lives near the building at 17547 Ventura Blvd.

A 1,500-foot transmission tower collapsed into a mass of twisted metal Saturday, killing three workers on the tower who earlier discussed cutting short their repairs because of windy conditions. Dallas-Fort Worth television station KXAS--one of the stations that uses the tower--reported that a gust of wind caught a machine used to hoist materials up to the workers. The machine fell, breaking a guy wire and causing the tower to fall. "When people said, 'The tower!'

Law officers in Northern California and Oregon were on the hunt Wednesday for a portly, gray-bearded man suspected of attempting to topple two electricity transmission towers in what police said smacked of domestic terrorism. Authorities said the man tried to remove large bolts and nuts at the base of the steel structures in an apparent attempt to bring the 115-kilovolt electrical lines crashing down in a high wind.

Witnesses told investigators that they saw sparks falling from power lines on a Sylmar-area hillside before a fire erupted Monday that burned 750 acres of brush and damaged several ranch buildings. But utility companies disputed that view Tuesday, saying their equipment did not malfunction until after the fire started.

Lodestar Towers Inc., a builder and marketer of broadcast transmission towers, said it is moving its Southern California regional headquarters to Orange County this week. The company will relocate 12 employees from Glendale to Santa Ana and said it expects to add new workers in coming months. Florida-based Lodestar, a subsidiary of Canadian transmission tower builder LeBlanc & Royle Enterprises Inc., is building its first Southern California tower about 1.5 miles below Mt.

When Lodestar Towers Inc. purchased 160 pine-studded acres high in the San Gabriel Mountains two years ago, it wasn't for the crisp mountain air or the million-dollar views. Lodestar bought the property on Mt. Harvard, just down the hill from Mt. Wilson, to position itself as a major landlord in the obscure but fast-growing communications site-management industry.

Southern California Edison got the green light Thursday to build the final segments of a nearly $2-billion transmission line that will connect customers with renewable energy produced by windmills. The California Public Utilities Commission approved the construction of the last 173 miles of Edison's 250-mile Tehachapi transmission project in Kern County. The line will be able to transmit as much as 4,500 megawatts of electricity produced from wind, enough power for nearly 3 million homes.

Some San Pedro residents fear that a cellphone tower recently installed across from an elementary school will emit harmful radiation in the direction of the school. On Sunday, more than 80 people, including Taper Avenue Elementary School students with signs protesting the T-Mobile tower, gathered to try to persuade the company to relocate the telephone-pole-size tower. "We're not anti-technology," said David Renn, the father of two school-age children and one of the organizers of the rally.

Los Angeles officials said the city may abandon plans to build a highly controversial "green" power transmission line through unspoiled desert and wildlife preserves on a route east of the San Bernardino Mountains, focusing instead on alternative pathways mostly along an interstate highway where high-voltage lines already exist. The Department of Water and Power's proposed 85-mile-long Green Path North transmission line has faced fierce opposition from more than a dozen community and environmental groups, creating a political chink in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to cast himself as the leader of the "cleanest, greenest big city in America."

Edison International said it wouldn't pursue regulatory approvals for the Arizona portion of a power line that has drawn opposition from state regulators. Edison said its Southern California Edison subsidiary would go forward with the California portion of the line, part of a $774-million project that was proposed in part to help bring solar power into the state. The transmission line will instead get power from California renewable and fossil-fuel power projects.

An environmental group has asked the California Supreme Court to review a controversial power transmission project that was approved last month by the state Public Utilities Commission.

In the rural, arid flatlands near the Salton Sea, CalEnergy Generation is sitting on what California needs. The Imperial County company taps steam heat from deep within the Earth's crust to generate clean electricity, enough to light 238,000 homes. There's more where that came from.

The man sought by the FBI for allegedly removing bolts from electricity transmission towers in Northern California was arrested Sunday when he walked into a California Highway Patrol office, having grown weary of evading authorities after a month on the run. Michael Devlyn Poulin, 62, of Spokane, Wash., was taken into custody about 9:30 a.m. at a CHP office in south Sacramento after an officer recognized him from his wanted poster, said CHP spokesman Tom Marshall.

Calling the 150-foot-high electrical transmission line towers that cut across North Hollywood a visual scar on the community, City Council President John Ferraro Wednesday asked the Department of Water and Power to look into improving their appearance. Ferraro suggested placing the lines underground or building a bikeway along the right of way and landscaping it. Ferraro introduced a motion calling for the study in response to a request from the North Hollywood Residents Assn.

Sempra Energy's planned $1.72-billion power line to deliver electricity from renewable sources to Southern California cities was endorsed by the chairman of the state's utility regulator. The recommendation by Public Utilities Commission Chairman Michael Peevey, posted Tuesday on the commission's website, rejects a conclusion last month by an administrative law judge that the project, called Sunrise Powerlink, isn't needed and would add unnecessarily to power bills.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing state regulators to sign off on a high-voltage power line that a San Diego utility wants to build through the middle of California's largest state park. Proposed for Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the project puts Schwarzenegger again at odds with environmentalists -- and some state officials -- who believe he is allowing California's unrivaled collection of public preserves to be threatened.