Street lights in Laguna Beach are owned and operated by either the City, Southern California Edison (SCE), or San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E).  The City currently maintains an inventory of over 790 street lights.  The primary purpose of street lighting is to assist motorists using the public right-of-way to identify obstacles at potential conflicts in the roadway.

Ownership of street lights is generally classified as follows:

City of Laguna Beach

  • The City owns standalone street lights or lights mounted to wood utility poles that are not occupied by other utilities.
  • City street lights are tagged with identification badges in the LB000XXX format.  The XXX designation is a unique three-digit street light number.

Street light 1 
          City Street Light Tag

SCE

  • SCE owns lights mounted to wood utility poles occupied by SCE and/or other utilities.
  •  SCE street lights are tagged with identification badges typically consisting of six or seven numerical digits followed by the letter “E”.

Street light 2
                  SCE Utility Pole Tag

SDG&E

  • SDG&E owns lights located along Coast Highway south of Aliso Circle.

Report a Street Light Outage

Street light outages may include lights that are not turning on, flickering lights, or lights that stay on all day.  The public’s assistance in noting and reporting outages is very important.  Although the City conducts routine inspections, reported outages enable the outage to be addressed in a timely manner.  Once an outage is reported, repairs are typically completed within several days.

To report an outage of a City-owned street light, please contact Public Works at (949) 497-0711 and provide the street light number or the street address/street intersection.  

To report an outage of an SCE street light, click on the following link to be directed to SCE’s webpage: https://www.sce.com/outage-center/report-street-light-outage or contact Public Works at (949) 497-0711.  The SCE identification number or pole location will be required to identify the correct street light needing repair.

To report an outage of an SDG&E street light, please contact Public Works at (949) 497-0711 and provide the street light address/street intersection.

Street Lighting Standards and Guidelines

In March 2022, the City Council adopted the Guidelines for Street Lighting incorporating City Street Light Standards. To provide uniformity throughout the City’s street light system, standards were created to apply to new City-owned street light installations including those on Coast Highway and in residential neighborhoods.  The street lighting guidelines include information regarding LED conversion and luminescence, permitting, Dark Sky compliance, aesthetics, future technology, and wireless communications facilities attachment.

The Guidelines for Street Lighting can be accessed below.

LED Conversion

The City’s contractor, Crosstown Electric & Data is currently converting 443 existing City-owned cobra head street light fixtures from high pressure sodium (HPS) to light emitting diode (LED).  LED lighting will improve lighting and system reliability in addition to conserving energy.

For information about the LED conversion project, please contact Tom Perez, Capital Program Manager, at (949) 464-6688 or tperez@lagunabeachcity.net. 

Contact Us

For specific street lighting inquiries, please contact Pierre Sawaya, Project Manager, at (949) 497-0751 or psawaya@lagunabeachcity.net. 

Documents