Schwarzenegger visits San Pedro solar panel farm, addresses pothole video

LOS ANGELES - Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently visited a new solar panel installation at AltaSea in San Pedro, something he said "we need to do all over the state of California."

The ocean institute at the Port of Los Angeles recently completed it's nearly-5,000 solar panel installation, and Schwarzenegger was there this week to plug the grid in. AltaSea said the panels will be able to power as many as 700 nearby homes by the fall.

AltaSea CEO Terry Tamminen, who led the California EPA under then-Governor Schwarzenegger, led a tour of the facility. They showed off not just the solar panel farm, but also 3-D printing designed for the sea, food grown using aquaculture and the latest in wave technology, all of which Tamminen described as "blue technology, [solutions] for climate change from the ocean."

"We've become then kind of the model for the rest of the country and the rest of the world," Schwarzenegger said.

SUGGESTED: Arnold Schwarzenegger fills LA pothole: 'Let’s not complain, let’s do something about it'

The former Governor also addressed his most recent viral moment, when he shared a video of him filling in a pothole near his home, on his own with a group of friends, without a permit.

The hole, Schwarzenegger said, was actually the remnants of a Southern California Gas Company project the group completed work on in January. 

"They closed the trench to perfectly," Schwarzenegger said. "But obviously not perfectly enough that when the next rain came in, washed it out. And the whole became bigger and bigger and bigger. And then all of a sudden I was riding down with my bicycle. and it was like, oh, my God. I could have wiped out here." 

After weeks of unanswered complaints, Schwarzenegger and his team filled the ditch in themselves. That's when he said the misinformation began to come in.

"[They said] this was actually a service trench," Schwarzenegger said. "[A] service trench is something [for] when you're still working on it. But they stopped working on it. So there was no one working on it so that was a lie."

Schwarzenegger said that he called Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after the video went viral, to tell her that his cleanup was "not to embarrass you," and that he just wanted to help.

"I fix the roads," he said. "They came out and they said it looked great. It did a great job. And now everyone is happy."