OUTAGE REPORT CITES LAX CONTROLS PANEL TO PROBE FURTHER INTO DWP OPERATIONS.

Byline: Dan Laidman Staff Writer

Poor communication and lax oversight between the Department of Water and Power and a contractor contributed to a massive September power outage that left nearly 2 million people in the dark for more than an hour, according to an independent review released Tuesday.

But the probe of the Sept. 12 blackout - the largest power outage in Los Angeles since the 1994 Northridge Earthquake - also raises issues that go beyond the initial explanation of a worker cutting the wrong wires, including the quality of an ongoing modernization project and training and safety standards.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who called for the review, said he expects the report's recommendations to produce tangible changes.

``The report ... has indicated several areas of concern, ranging from employee training to quality control to system design,'' he said in a statement. ``I expect the Board of Water and Power Commissioners and the department to carefully review the results and to implement whatever steps are needed to ensure the safety and reliability of our electrical system.''

The DWP apologized in the wake of the incident, saying the outage resulted from a worker accidentally cutting wires during a modernization upgrade at a Toluca Lake facility.

The Daily News reported last week that as the utility faces hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage claims resulting from the outage, the probe had expanded to review the utility's wider modernization project and the role of third-party contractors.

DWP Commissioner Nick Patsaouras, an engineer whose examination of project records spurred the independent probe to dig deeper, pointed to a review citation noting that a contractor who designed the modernization made a cable-numbering error - which the DWP failed to catch - that contributed to the outage.

``It's shocking that DWP has no quality control during the design process,'' Patsaouras said.

A spokesman for the main contractor on the modernization project, Denver-based Enspiria Solutions Inc., said company officials had not seen the review Tuesday and could not yet comment.

The review also raised other contract quality-control issues, saying the utility did not clearly delineate its responsibilities in relation to its contractors, allowing for overlap.

``Their checks and balances are not in order,'' said Councilman Tony Cardenas, who chairs the council committee overseeing the DWP. ``There are holes in the system.''

The probe by Pasadena-based Electric Power Group makes a raft of recommendations for how the DWP can avoid such problems in the future, from contracting reforms and more quality controls to more training and job-site safety measures.

The report also recommends changes to the power grid system to cope with the aftermath should such an accident happen again.

DWP managers want to do everything possible to avoid such a scenario, said General Manager Ron Deaton.

``LADWP management and staff are seriously evaluating each recommendation of this report, and we will take corrective actions as expediently as possible,'' he said in a statement.

Some of the recommendations, including the contracting and training reforms, should be relatively easy to implement, said Mary Nichols, president of the DWP commission.

Dan Laidman, [phone]

dan.laidman(at)dailynews.com

CHANGES NEEDED

Key recommendations of the analysis:

--Change contracting for engineering work

--Increase quality controls

--Boost worker training

--Provide more on-the-job oversight

--Change some electrical equipment 

--Improve the power-grid operation

--Make changes to generating stations

--Boost emergency training for dispatchers

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CHANGES NEEDED (see text)