When Will Pg&e Pay Dividends Again

The pattern has played out repeatedly: A devastating wildfire. Neighborhoods reduced to charred rubble. The likely culprit a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. power line.

Company leaders have said repeatedly that they're trying to make their electric arrangement safer and more resilient to a hotter, drier California, one where a single spark is much more dangerous because of climate modify. After revealing that it may be responsible for the Dixie Burn, PG&E apace announced a plan to coffin x,000 miles of power lines — possibly its about intense fire-prevention effort yet.

But putting many more lines underground won't be easy or inexpensive. It will also have years to reach.

Meanwhile, equally California deals with unrelentingly severe wildfire conditions, PG&E's critics and many of the xvi one thousand thousand people it serves wonder: When will Northern California finally get a pause from menacing fires sparked by the utility's ability lines? When, if e'er, will the visitor's dismal prophylactic record plough effectually?

"PG&E'southward blueprint of conduct raises serious questions about whether they are willing to larn from their mistakes and change their means," said Catherine Sandoval, a former regulator at the California Public Utilities Commission. She at present represents concerned PG&Eastward customers advocating for changes before the federal judge who oversees the visitor's probation for a deadly gas line explosion in 2010.

While the cause of the Dixie Fire is even so under investigation, PG&E has said 1 of its employees found blown fuses and what appeared to exist a healthy, 70-foot-tall dark-green tree lying on a ability line near the burn'southward origin point. The company has also said information technology found a tree on another line well-nigh the ignition site of the Fly Burn down, a smaller blaze that merged with the Dixie Fire, which started on July fourteen.

On Friday evening, a federal judge overseeing PG&East's probation for felony convictions tied to the deadly 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion ordered the utility to explain its role in igniting the Fly Fire. U.S. Commune Gauge William Alsup said the response should besides include drone images of the tree that may have started the Dixie Fire and to place each blaze PG&E is suspected of starting this wildfire season.

PG&E'southward responses, Alsup said, "volition not exist deemed as an admission by PG&East that it caused any fire, just they will serve as a starting betoken for give-and-take." The responses are due back to court by Aug. 16.

The Dixie Fire has devastated a large swath of the northern Sierra Nevada almost Lake Almanor. The burn flattened much of the celebrated Gold Rush town of Greenville and forced thousands of people to flee.

Sandoval said PG&E should accept acted faster to forbid the Dixie Fire from getting out of paw, noting that it took several hours for the company to discover flames spreading at the scene. It's frustrating to Sandoval, because PG&Due east has a well-known history of copse falling on its lines and setting off sparks with devastating consequences.

"They but don't learn from their mistakes, and and so they besides tend to cling to really old means of doing things," Sandoval said.

A PG&East worker severs a electric line from a fallen utility pole on Geysers Route during the Kincade Burn near Geyserville in 2019.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

The poles and wires in the area where the Dixie Fire began were inspected in detail in May, according to company spokesperson James Noonan. Inspectors did not discover any equipment in demand of repair, he said in an e-mail.

PG&E too ordered a tree-trimming inspection of the line in question in January, and that did not notice any trees that needed piece of work, Noonan said. The adjacent vegetation management patrol of the expanse was supposed to happen adjacent month.

PG&Due east recently announced several steps to reduce the hazard of power-line ignitions as the statewide drought deepens and fire season approaches its about unsafe period.

The visitor said information technology will try to fix whatever mistake or outage on power lines in high-fire threat areas within hour. In the same areas, PG&E is also increasing the sensitivity of fault-sensing devices and undertaking extra patrols of power lines in areas most affected by the drought.

"We are taking steps every day to improve the rubber and reliability of our electric arrangement," Noonan said.

By far the visitor's near ambitious project, however, is its newly launched power-line-burying attempt. While details remain deficient, executives have said they'll focus first on areas with a large concentration of trees that could fall on distribution lines, the primary wires that ship power around its vast service surface area.

Michael Wara, director of the climate and free energy policy programme at Stanford University, said he had a lot of questions almost how the undergrounding programme would play out. He wondered, for example, how the company would account for long-term investments in above-ground lines that were supposed to exist paid for over time.

He also wondered whether information technology might make more than sense for PG&E to keep its reliance on shutting off power during high winds while ensuring that affected customers have enough backup batteries and solar panels to keep the lights on.

"The proof will be in the pudding," Wara said. "Nosotros need to see mode more than information."

Noonan, the PG&E spokesperson, said the company will "leverage customer and public funding to pursue undergrounding, every bit the benefits for customers for the long run are clear."

He said buried power lines would better safety, require PG&E to spend less on tree-trimming and lead to fewer burn down-prevention power shutoffs.

"Over time, we accept the potential to trade ongoing and recurring vegetation management expenses for this capital investment and minimize customer charge per unit changes," Noonan said.

While PG&Eastward presses ahead with its years-long undergrounding plan, the Dixie Fire may have more immediate legal repercussions for the visitor, every bit Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey investigates whether criminal charges are warranted. If he decides they are, it won't exist the beginning time Ramsey has sought to agree PG&East criminally responsible for harming public safety.

Just last year, Ramsey got PG&E to plead guilty to 85 felony counts — 84 for involuntary manslaughter and one for unlawfully starting a fire — stemming from the 2018 Military camp Burn, which virtually destroyed the town of Paradise.

Information technology was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire California has ever seen. It was also just a little scrap west of the Dixie Fire.

PG&E crews articulate downed power lines and phone poles in Paradise in 2018 after the Camp Burn ripped through the entire town.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle 2018

But the Dixie Fire isn't the only possible legal trouble PG&E has to worry about.

Shasta Canton Commune Attorney Stephanie Bridgett has said she will pursue criminal charges against PG&E over the Zogg Fire, which killed four people and destroyed more than than 200 buildings outside Redding last year. California investigators concluded the burn started after a pino tree hit a PG&East power line.

Also, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch has already filed criminal charges against PG&Due east over the 2019 Kincade Burn, which destroyed 374 structures and forced many thousands of people to evacuate. The fire was started by a broken cable on a PG&E transmission tower in the hills outside Geyserville, according to land officials.

PG&E is still on probation for felony convictions that arose from the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, which killed 8 people and destroyed 38 homes. The probation, overseen past Alsup, ends in January.

After that, the company will be overseen by a new, contained safety monitor who the California Public Utilities Commission says volition be "functionally equivalent" to the courtroom-appointed federal monitor who currently reports to Alsup. The agency is expected to select the safety monitor, who will serve a five-year term, before PG&E'due south probation ends.

Utilities committee leaders have also forced PG&E to submit to more country oversight because of its failure to adequately trim trees effectually its highest-take chances power lines in 2020. The company was placed into the first of a 6-step process of escalating regulatory enforcement that was created every bit a condition of its leave from defalcation last summertime.

Commission spokesperson Terrie Prosper could not say how PG&Eastward'due south placement in that enforcement process might be afflicted if the agency finds that the company violated state utility regulations in the Dixie and Fly fires. Simply if the agency finds PG&E did run afoul of state regulations, the visitor could exist fined up to $100,000 per twenty-four hour period, per violation, Prosper said.

J.D. Morris is a San Francisco Relate staff author. Electronic mail: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @thejdmorris

holdenardess.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Cause-of-Dixie-Fire-raises-a-familiar-question-16371018.php

Share this post