Lakewood Village Neighbors Affected By LBCC Power Outage

More than a month ago, on Nov. 28, Long Beach City College’s (LBCC) Liberal Arts Campus suffered a complete electrical failure. According to the student newspaper, the Viking, “the power generator at LBCC’s power building, which is located next to the P building, stopped working, and Southern California Edison (SCE) got a call to find a solution.” The immediate solution was to rent generators to restore power. The long-term solution was to fix the problem, most likely a “blown transformer” so that SCE could restore power.

The amount of the rental is unclear, though a daily figure of $20,000 did come up. And whether the cost should be borne by LBCC or SCE is also unknown.

The college promptly rented six fairly noisy generators from Sunbelt Rentals, placing them overnight on-campus at Faculty Road and Greenmeadow Street, which fronts on a residential neighborhood. Dave Eisenhauer, a media rep for SCE stated the power loss is restricted to the campus and not to the adjoining neighborhood, but that’s small consolation to those who live adjacent to the generators which emit noise 24 hours a day.

One of these neighbors emailed the Beachcomber with this description. “The LBCC campus on Carson Street appears to be having a major electrical issue. Six large generators have been running non-stop now for 2 or 3 weeks at the junction of Faculty and Greenmeadow. They have a security guard posted on Faculty 24-7. These generators are frequently replenished with diesel fuel by a tanker truck. The issues raised by the noise, and I imagine the air quality, are not inconsiderable. I have telephoned the maintenance department. but could not get a better answer than ‘we’re working on it’. When will this apparent problem be fixed? The cost must be enormous. When it first started the place was crawling with SCE people and trucks for 2 days, even had Faculty closed for a while, but now nothing.”

As of Christmas Eve, the six generators were running at the site with significant noise noted. According to a Sunbelt Rental employee at the scene, when demand goes down, so does the number of generators in use, such as overnight periods. Also, the back generators are used first to avoid noise on the block. But there never is a silent period. Adding to the potential cost, a Sunbelt truck and employee are on-scene 24/7 in case of a mechanical problem. An employee on standby opined that SCE is considered to blame for the outage, but further comment from the utility was not forthcoming.

This employee estimated that power might be restored by year’s end, but SCE was not so sure. SCE’s Eisenhauer stated the solution poses a “complicated engineering problem. SCE is ready to restore,” but the school is not ready to switch power back on. Attempts to reach facilities management and campus safety were met by a short ring and then a continuous beep and the facilities management email address was apparently also not functioning. As of late December, the LBCC main switchboard was functioning properly, but could not connect to an extension line.