Oct. 8--San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has scheduled a public meeting for Monday, after residents began voicing concerns about the metal poles and lines the company plans to install near their homes.

Electric company officials will use the public meeting to explain their plan to replace existing wooden poles near homes.

Residents began calling and writing letters to the company after they discovered informational fliers attached to the poles a few weeks ago. The meeting will give homeowners a chance to learn more about the plan and to urge the company to consider alternative locations for the larger, taller metal poles that residents worry will be eyesores.

The meeting is scheduled from 2:30 to 4 p.m. Monday at Pala Mesa Resort, 2001 Old Highway 395, in Fallbrook.

The replacement is part of the company's Pala-to-Monserate transmission line wood-to-steel-pole replacement, which calls for large metal poles to hold the heavier lines needed to conduct electricity from the planned 96-megawatt Orange Grove peaker plant near the Pala Indian Reservation.

The project calls for the removal of three existing wooden poles and the replacement and/or relocation of 33 more along the 9.8 miles of lines between the Orange Grove plant just north of Highway 76, about three miles east of Interstate 15, and SDG&E's substation on Via Monserate in Fallbrook. Seven new metal poles will be installed on the line for added wire support. Altogether, the project will cost around $2.5 million, officials said.

Resident Gail Kerry said she's concerned that she and other residents haven't been provided enough information to know what they're really in for.

"I want to know what it's going to look like," Kerry said. "I want to know if there's monster poles going up over here. I want to know why they have to do it over here when they could do it over by (Highway) 76."

Resident Chuck Tillotson said he was concerned that aesthetically displeasing poles would decrease property values in the area and further blight residents' views, which are already sullied by two sets of wooden poles left from the company's pole replacement project in 2007.

"When they replaced the poles two years ago, they couldn't remove the poles that were replaced because of TV or communication data cables," he said. "So we ended up with two poles when we originally had one pole."

"We have to look at these things, and they're eyesores," Tillotson added.

The metal poles will be able to hold both sets of cables, said SDG&E spokesman Raul Gordillo. Officials expect to complete the cable consolidation within 60 days of the replacement, after which they can remove the old poles.

The Pala-to-Monserate project is required to move electricity from the Orange Grove plant, but it's congruous with a similar, larger pole replacement program under way to improve fire safety in rural areas.

The company is spending more than $100 million over the next few years to change out poles along 122 miles of transmission lines as part of a plan to improve fire safety.

Sixty-nine miles of poles will have been replaced by the end of this year, company spokeswoman Stephanie Donovan told North County Times last month. She said SDG&E has 180 miles of the long-distance transmission lines in the high-fire-risk rural areas.

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