The state Public Utilities Commission is being asked by CPUC staff to lift PG&E’s current regulatory probation, saying the utility has learned its lesson and is now clearing trees deemed at highest risk of sparking wildfires along its system.
The panel’s action would remove the current – although remote -- threat of an ultimate public takeover of the utility, which has been looming since regulators imposed what is known as “enhanced oversight and enforcement” on the utility in April of last year.
The action – only the first of a series of steps towards takeover came after regulators expressed concerns about PG&E’s rate of clearing trees away from power lines the utility ranked as posing the highest risk of sparking more fires. The company was ordered to make routine reports briefing regulators about vegetation management efforts during the open-ended enhanced oversight period.
In urging that probation be lifted, CPUC executive director Rachel Peterson told the panel that PG&E has satisfied regulators. “Pacific Gas and Electric Company has demonstrated that it is prioritizing high risk lines for Enhanced Vegetation Management,” Peterson said in the draft resolution before the commission.
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In a statement, PG&E called the proposed action “an important milestone.” Approval, it says, would recognize it has “met all conditions and evolved” tree-line clearance efforts to target highest risk power lines and adopted other measures to avoid starting more fires.
“We remain focused on wildfire safety to address the climate risk that we’re facing now and the climate challenges we will face in the future. we are committed to doing our work the right way for our customers and communities,” the utility said in a statement.
Even the utility’s harshest critics do not dispute PG&E has made progress while on probation. But they say the efforts to date are not enough, given the continued risk of disaster.
“PG&E continues to start fires,” said Mark Toney, head of the ratepayer advocacy group, TURN. He cited last year’s Dixie Fire, which burned through the Feather River canyon in Butte county to become the largest wildfire in state history, as just one of them.
The company was already on regulatory probation when the Camp fire hit in July of last year. Cal Fire has since blamed PG&E’s failure to cut down a rotting and previously fire-damaged tree near one of its lines. That Douglas fir later leaned onto a nearby line, eventually sparking the fire on the still live electrical line in the hours it took for a PG&E technician to arrive, Cal Fire said.
“That's why PG&E needs to be moved up the ladder towards state takeover and not taken off completely, which is what the CPUC is proposing to do,” Toney said.
PG&E disputes many assertions about the fire and argued separately that TURN’s demands are “outside the scope” of the probation provisions related to risk, terms it says have already been satisfied.
The full commission had been set to act this week, but the matter is now expected to be taken up at the Dec. 1 meeting.
