The Southern California Joint Pole Committee (SCJPC) is commemorating 100 years of cooperation among utilities this year. Originally named the Los Angeles Joint Pole Committee, it was formed on Oct. 10, 1906, when representatives of the fledgling power, telephone and railroad industries met and developed a unique way to deal with the construction of utility poles. The committee was formed to devise “ways, means, rules, regulations and methods whereby any two or more [parties] may own and occupy poles jointly.”

From the seven charter members in 1906, the SCJPC has grown to 29 members, comprising of municipalities, power and telephone utilities, and newer competitive utilities that use wireless and fiber-optic technologies to serve Southern California. There are currently 1,172,055 such utility poles under joint ownership. Members of the SCJPC will celebrate the 100^th anniversary at a dinner cruise on Oct. 10, 2006.

No other state has a similar method for dealing with joint use. Only the SCJPC and the Northern California Joint Pole Association allow utilities that qualify for membership to buy the necessary space to construct their systems on existing utility poles, rather than having to construct new poles or lease space from the utility that built the pole. According to the SCJPC, this has minimized the construction of new utility poles, distributed maintenance costs among utilities and facilitated the deployment of new technology.