Hundreds of trees fell on the Monterey Peninsula during last winter’s storms. With another wet winter ahead, what can be done?

A LARGE MONTEREY CYPRESS PROVED TOO MUCH FOR THE MAIN OVERHEAD TRANSMISSION LINES THAT CARRY ELECTRICITY INTO MONTEREY, PACIFIC GROVE, PEBBLE BEACH AND CARMEL. Amid high winds, the heavy tree, located just outside the fence at the Naval Postgraduate School along Del Monte Avenue, in Monterey uprooted and came crashing down the night of Thursday, March 9, pulling down poles that support the lines. In an instant, approximately 37,000 PG&E customers were cut off from the state’s power grid and left in the dark, one of the largest outages in the state that first day of a major storm.

Crews worked around the clock for two days to replace the poles and get the lines up and running, restoring power to almost half of customers by Saturday, March 11, but the mess left behind by hundreds of downed trees – along power lines that feed off of the main line – proved a daunting task. Six days later, all but 8,000 customers had their power back. It would take around 12 days for every household to be restored.

Exactly how many trees toppled during the storm and the days that followed is hard to say. Over 100 trees fell in one day alone in Pebble Beach, according to Mike Niccum, general manager of the Pebble Beach Community Services District. In Monterey, over 30 trees fell in the first couple of days of the storm, causing 12 street closures. Pacific Grove and Carmel saw dozens come down, as well. The sound of buzz saws roared throughout neighborhoods for days and even weeks afterward.

While the coastline often steals the show, the Monterey Peninsula’s forest is a natural wonder in and of itself. Two of the most predominant trees – Monterey pine and Monterey cypress – are ancient and rare species native to the region. The forest is stunning in sunny weather, mysterious when shrouded in fog. Urbanization, drought and intense weather exacerbated by climate change have brought stress to the forest, and failure to some of its trees.

With an El Niño weather pattern predicted for this coming winter and various storm preparations in place (see story, p. 14), what is the answer to keeping the lights on during the next big storm? The answers are not easy, and they are not cheap.

IT’S A MIRACLE NO ONE WAS KILLED DURING THE MARCH 2023 STORMS, or the “bomb cyclone” that preceded it in January. After a series of storms through the winter, by the time March rolled in, perhaps trees on the brink had had enough in heavily saturated soil. One firefighter was injured by a falling tree in Pacific Grove. Several homes were severely damaged, including one in Carmel that saw its garage smashed to pieces. One house in P.G. wasn’t crushed, but it was damaged badly enough to force the family to move out. It remains empty nine months later.

In 2017, a 61-year-old woman wasn’t so fortunate. After a series of storms had blown through, a tree came down in Monterey in the Skyline Forest neighborhood. Her car crashed into the tree and she was killed. Arthur Pasquinelli and Jim Cullem remember it well. As the president of the Skyline Forest Neighborhood Association and chair of the group’s Safety Committee, respectively, trees – and their capacity to wreak havoc – occupy a lot of their time and attention.

The irony is not lost on the two when asked what they like best about living in their tranquil neighborhood overlooking the city and Monterey Bay. “The trees for one,” says Cullem, as both men chuckle. “At least that’s what my wife likes.” The beautiful forest they enjoy is the very thing that worries them the most. Winter storms bring the potential for damage and power outages. Massive wildfires like those in Paradise and Maui are never far from mind.

The species of tree that blankets their neighborhood is Pinus radiata, the Monterey pine. The pines were mostly what fell around the Peninsula during the March storms, including along Holman Highway between Monterey and Pebble Beach where Caltrans crews spent days clearing huge trees that fell across the highway, both in the initial storm and another storm system days later.

“By and large, the problem with Monterey pine trees is they grow fast, they grow tall and they are relatively shallow rooted. They have a life expectancy of around 80 years,” says Cullem, who served as Carmel’s public works director from 1987-2003, where he became well acquainted with the tree. “They’re like humans in a sense. They live about as long, and they get just as stiff when they get to be 80. That’s the problem, they lose their flexibility. When they’re young, they can bend with the wind. When they get older, these trees become rigid.” And when fully grown the trees develop a crown at the top, “they become a big sail.”

Monterey pines can reach up to 124 feet tall, with trunks around 6 feet in diameter, according to the National Resources Conservation Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As young trees they have a pyramid shape, but by the time they are fully grown their crowns become flat. If their roots are shallow, or they’re diseased or the soil becomes saturated, they can topple. “Boom. They can come down in very short notice,” Cullem says.

It is a rare species native to only four other areas in the world: near Point Año Nuevo in San Mateo County; the Monterey Peninsula; Cambria in San Luis Obispo County; and the islands of Guadalupe and Cedros off the coast of Baja California. A domesticated variety is sold throughout the world, but the native Monterey pines are a more genetically diverse species that have been on the California coast since possibly the middle Miocene era, around 16 million years ago. Fossilized cones or needles have been found in 20 locations in California, including the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, according to the 2004 article by Frank Perry, “The Monterey pine through geologic time.”

They are related to other pines called “California closed-cone pines,” cones sealed with resin that release their seeds in fire or in extreme temperatures. According to Perry, scientists theorized that the species adapted to dry climates which experienced occasional fires. As the flames sweep through the pines’ treetops, the cones’ resin melts, and the seeds are released within a day after the fire, allowing dead trees to repopulate quickly.

It’s an adaptation that is not a good fit for the urbanized forest of today. In a healthy forest, there will be fires during which some trees survive, some do not, with the result being a forest composed of trees of various ages and sizes. (The last fire in the Del Monte Forest in Pebble Beach was in 1987, caused by an illegal campfire. It burned 160 acres and destroyed 31 structures. There were 18 injuries, mostly among firefighters, all minor.)

Since fires are anathema to an area populated by humans, and the coastal climate doesn’t offer many high-temperature days, what’s resulted on the Peninsula is a forest of many similarly aged trees.

“Fortunately for us, we’ve had relatively few homes hit and as far as we know, nobody has been killed or seriously injured within their house [in Skyline Forest],” Cullem says. “But the potential is there.”

He saw it happen while working in Carmel. “When they come down on a house they go through [it] like a knife. They can go all the way down to the foundation. And you can imagine what would happen if you were in the way.”

THE VISION OF A TREE CRASHING DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THEIR PACIFIC GROVE DREAM HOME is on the minds of Tim Calvert and Christie Monson every day. That vision of one or more of their four Monterey cypress trees, each over 50 feet high, was so strong they moved their bedroom from the front of their home into a common area off their living room located at the back.

“I have lived in P.G. since 1985 and I have seen trees with my own eyes, in perfectly nice weather, just pfft. So that’s why we’re here for the duration,” Monson says in her living room. “We moved our office, we’re working in the dining room.”

Calvert and Monson became concerned after an arborist told them in 2018 the trees were at risk of failing. They applied for a tree removal permit from the City of Pacific Grove, but were denied. They applied again in January 2023, when their arborist’s assessment was worse. They were told that on a scale of 1-12, with 12 being the highest risk level, at least one tree was at a 10-11. The city’s arborist disagreed with the assessment and insisted the cypress trees were healthy. The couple got a lawyer and appealed to the Beautification and Natural Resources Committee, and again to the P.G. City Council in April. City officials maintained the trees are healthy and safe.

There is a sweet story behind the four trees in their front yard, Monsoon says. There was a free seedling giveaway by the city in 1986. The former homeowners took four, one for each of their children. They were likely a cultivated variety of the Monterey cypress, scientific name Hesperocyparis macrocarpa. The original natives are more rare than Monterey pines – they are only found in two small groves, one in Pebble Beach (home to the iconic Lone Cypress) and one on Point Lobos. The groves are thought to go back at least 2,000 years.

Unfortunately for Calvert and Monson, who bought the home in 2018, the trees were planted too close together and as shown when they grew up over decades, within feet of overhead power lines. PG&E crews regularly prune the side of the trees facing the lines, which Calvert and Monson say creates an imbalance. They also contend the trees have been topped, which most experts agree is a practice that can lead to disease, insect infestations and a shorter lifespan.

“The lifespan is about 150 years old but these guys aren’t going to make it to that,” Calvert says. “They’re going to fall over, this one is going to fall on the house for sure,” he says, pointing to the tallest tree on the end.

Calvert was incredulous when during one public hearing the city arborist said that if the tree fell on their home it would be a “soft fall,” meaning the canopy of the tree would soften the impact to the house.

“That is three to four tons of tree,” Calvert says.

P.G. Public Works Director Dan Gho, not directly speaking to the Calvert/Monson case, says all decisions about whether to keep a tree or allow removal are based on the city’s tree ordinances. If defects in a tree are found to be valid by the city’s arborist, they will post the tree for removal for a 10-day period, giving members of the public the opportunity to appeal the decision. “The problem is emotions get brought into it,” Gho says.

“We’re Pacific Grove, a grove of trees,” he adds. “We’re based in an urban forest… we want to maintain that canopy.” The canopy, he says, provides significant benefits, like shelter to wildlife, cleaner air and a significant wind break from winds blowing off the ocean.

Calvert and Monson say they’d be happy to plant new trees to replace the cypress trees they worry are endangering their home and their lives. They’ve drained savings on attorney’s fees and feel stressed out by the situation.

“I’ve been saving all my life to get a house like this,” Monson says. “This has been our dream, and now we don’t know what we’re going to do.”

TREE ORDINANCES WERE CREATED WITH A SINGULAR PURPOSE: to protect trees. Guidelines established by the Environmental Law Institute lay out the reasons, including maintaining large areas of contiguous habitat with “meaningful” connections between habitat areas, protecting sensitive areas and species, among others. It’s a formula that urban foresters and arborists in cities and counties have adhered to for years.

Each jurisdiction crafts its own ordinance, including when permits are needed for pruning or removal, how trees will be evaluated, how to appeal a city arborist’s decision and a schedule of fees and fines.

Pasquinelli in Skyline Forest remembers that years ago, Monterey’s foresters were not often sympathetic to homeowners looking to remove trees. “They said, ‘You chose to live in the forest, what do you expect?’ I expect to be able to live.” He says the attitude has changed in recent years.

Louis Marcuzzo is Monterey’s parks operations manager. “It’s pretty rare we would disagree with an arborist,” he says of requests that come with arborist’s reports. Sometimes city officials ask for a more complete report, and in cases where they do disagree with a property owner, the case could go into an appeals process.

Cullem suggests that in the case of trees that could pose a danger to homes, “you’ve got to say to yourself, that should be a factor. We’ve requested this officially with the City of Monterey, for the forester to consider not just the health of the tree, but its potential risk and its perceived risk. The perceived risk is not insignificant.”

He and Pasquinelli say Monterey City Manager Hans Uslar already made a change based on their request that appeals be handled by a committee that includes members with tree expertise – previously appeals went through the city’s Architectural Review Board. It gives them hope that an amended city tree ordinance taking safety into account will become a reality.

MIKE NICCUM HAS SEEN THE WORST OF WHAT STORMS CAN THROW at Del Monte Forest after 29 years working for the Pebble Beach Community Services District. “In 1998 we got hit really hard. We had roads washing out all over the place and we were out of power for a couple of weeks,” he says. “Pebble Beach gets hit by the outages more than anyone else.”

The outages there tend to last longer than the rest of the Monterey Peninsula as well, but Niccum, who took over as the district’s general manager in 2008, says he understands – Pebble Beach is less populated, so PG&E focuses on higher-population areas first to restore power.

Restoring power is also complicated by safety concerns and the area’s rougher geography. When trees pull lines down, those lines have to be treated as live, which means crews have to de-energize them before repair work can begin. Some of the craggier areas of the hills and gullies make it difficult for trucks and equipment to reach the damage.

It was power outages that spurred district leaders in 1996 to survey residents about whether they wanted to tax themselves to undertake undergrounding. At the time, the cost was estimated at approximately $1 million a mile. Pebble Beach contains 60 miles of power lines.

“People did a quick calculation and said a generator would be much cheaper than that,” Niccum says. “Undergrounding is a great idea when someone else is paying for it.”

After a large outage during a storm in early 2008, residents were more amenable to the idea, and in 2011, the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) approved PBCSD’s authority to underground the power and communication lines within Pebble Beach, paid for through property taxes. The question, Niccum remembers, was: “If everyone is paying for it, which neighborhood do you underground first?”

They decided to tackle the main feeder lines first. The district has completed three projects for a total of six miles, at a cost of around $18 million. Each project takes three to four years to complete. The last project cost approximately $3.5 million a mile.

In Carmel, where the City Council recently considered creating an undergrounding district using a program called Electric Rule 20A – for undergrounding in urban areas for aesthetic reasons – the cost estimate was around $600,000 for 1,500 feet.

“With 27 lane miles, the total comes out to $120 million,” Carmel City Administrator Chip Rerig says. Councilmembers said they wanted to focus on one area near Mission Trails Park but a vote was postponed to do outreach to homeowners. PG&E provides some money through the program but property owners would have to bear some of the cost.

Part of what drives the high cost of undergrounding is that it’s not just PG&E involved – AT&T and Comcast communication lines have to be included as well, Niccum says. Each utility is regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission and each comes with their own unique set of rules. Plus, there’s existing underground infrastructure like sewer lines to contend with.

Pebble Beach didn’t qualify for Rule 20A, since its mission was to improve reliability of power delivery, not aesthetics. There is a less frequently utilized Rule 20B, and Niccum says some wealthier homeowners have opted to use it to underground utilities near their own properties. There are no subsidies available – the cost is borne 100 percent by the homeowner.

Undergrounding isn’t the panacea that will solve all connectivity issues, as Pasquinelli and Cullem well know. The Skyline Forest neighborhood was undergrounded years ago – you can see where the line, which emanates from a power station visible from Highway 1 between Munras Avenue and Holman Highway, heads down into the ground at Skyline Forest and Skyline drives – but if that line is struck down at any point before it goes underground, the neighborhood is left in the dark.

THERE ARE HUNDREDS MORE MONTEREY PINES under the line that runs from the Monterey power station and Skyline Forest and it runs directly through the Monterey Vista neighborhood where Jean Rasch lives. Yet it wasn’t trees interfering with power lines that got her interested in undergrounding. For her it was a proposal by Verizon to add 13 cell antennas to power poles several years ago. With no poles, there’s no way to hang cell antennas, she reasoned.

Rasch got involved in a subcommittee of the neighborhood association that was addressing the issue and served as the first chair of what became its own organization called Monterey Undergrounding. Current chair Ray Meyers says the initial focus was power outages, but fires like the one in Paradise also became a motivating factor.

Rasch and Meyers both emphasize the negative economic impact of power outages, seriously affecting local businesses and costing residents who have to toss the contents of their fridges. Rasch believes the cost of undergrounding on a large scale is worth preventing future losses.

How will it get paid for? “It’s the question,” she says. It could be a combination of money from state grants, taxes or bonds to create undergrounding districts. Monterey’s Neighborhood Improvement Program, financed by transient-occupancy taxes paid by hotel visitors, could be utilized.

Meyers says the group is advocating for other solutions that rely on technology, including “distributed energy,” where the solar systems and batteries within a neighborhood are used to distribute power within an area when electrical power fails. Electric cars sitting in driveways could be plugged into the distribution system. “They have a huge battery and could be used to augment the system,” Meyers says.

ALTHOUGH A LARGE PORTION OF THE DEL MONTE FOREST lies within an area considered to be a high fire risk by PG&E, there are no plans to underground lines as is being done in more rural areas of the state, according to a spokesperson for the utility. There are 34 miles in a mountainous section of rural Monterey County that the company is considering, but it depends on future approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. It’s part of PG&E’s plan to underground 10,000 miles of rural areas over the next decade.

On Nov. 16, PG&E and the CPUC came to a compromise on the company’s 2023 request to underground 2,000 miles of lines, along with other improvements, at a cost of $15.4 billion. Commissioners pushed back, arguing that covering conductors would be more cost effective. In the end, they agreed to the undergrounding of 1,230 miles and covering conductors over 778 miles.

Someone has to pay for those safety improvements, and that someone is us. The typical ratepayer will see an increase of around $38 a month, or 12.8 percent, according to the CPUC. The increase goes into effect Jan. 1.