Archive | October, 2026

Here’s your answer: A shift in strategy for PG&E in their battle against wildfires. After four years and $2 billion in money spent, the company says it’s moving away from its enhanced vegetation management program….

27 Oct

Well I’m sorry to take this subject on and then not be able to put my full attention into it. I have wanted to write a letter to the paper to get more people into this conversation, but wanted to do more research. I found this article, from The Utility Reform Network (August), that tells us the real reason PG&E is years behind in their program to remove hazards from their lines. They’ve essentially gone back on promises to firesafe their lines in old neighborhoods.

https://www.turn.org/turn-newsroom/concerns-raised-as-pge-cuts-tree-trimming-program-for-wildfire-prevention

A shift in strategy for PG&E in their battle against wildfires. After four years and $2 billion in money spent, the company says it’s moving away from its enhanced vegetation management program….

The announcement is unwelcome news to many who worry it could lead to more unnecessary wildfires.

Instead of the vegetation management program, PG&E plans on relying on other fire prevention tools [like burying power lines….

“That is going to cost billions and billions of dollars and take well over a decade,” said Mark Toney, of The Utility Reform Network.

This statement answers one question – they are backlogged on vegetation removal because they aren’t going to do it anymore.

But I don’t get it. They are obviously not undergrounding lines in old neighborhoods, just new subdivisions. Why would that cost PG&E billions and billions? In California, the developer pays to underground the distribution and service lines for a new residential subdivision. Under California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Electric Rule 15 (Distribution Line Extensions) and Rule 16 (Service Line Extensions), underground lines are mandatory for all new residential subdivisions – not old neighborhoods. In fact, when they put a tiny new subdivision in my neighbor’s back yard, they only undergrounded the lines for those seven houses, hooking them up to the pole on our street with a regular above-ground wire.

The only lines I know of that they are undergrounding at their “own” expense are the lines in Paradise – that’s part of the fire settlement. And as you know, they get their money from the ratepayers. Say MOO-OOO!

Here’s what I think – if you live in a neighborhood more than 60 years old, you are on the bottom of the dogpile when it comes to city services. In 1967, the CPUC made that ruling about undergrounding in new subdivisions. So even if developers are paying for it, it takes up a lot of the PG&E labor force. For every new subdivision – drive around town. Bottom Dog.

So vegetation management takes a back seat. So does road maintenance, drainage, sidewalks, etc. I don’t even know if the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to old neighborhoods. I do know, the property owners are responsible for the sidewalks and the drainage, and that can run thousands, even 10’s of thousands of dollars.

So yeah, that just sucks. Since I wrote that last post, our next door neighbors hired a tree company to cut trees that had been marked at least three times over the past few years by various PG&E consultants.

I’m not sure there’s a letter to the editor here, cause Wolcott won’t print “sucks” in his catbox liner.

Have any of you had PG&E repeatedly mark trees under nearby power lines but they never come back to cut them? What is the city of Chico’s policy? The city’s tree ordinance exempts utility work – is PG&E bullshitting us?

1 Oct

Fall is a messy time of year. We have two sycamores and a ton of oaks. They have been shedding like crazy, and I look up there, and there’s still all these leaves. If only I could spin them into gold.

I love valley oaks, and we have a lot of them, they give us a lot of shade and comfort. But sometimes they cause problems. Eversince we bought our house, we’ve been watching a pair of oaks along the front of the property growing further into the saggy old power lines running down the street. They were there when we bought the property, and as much as we’ve wanted to cut them, we just happened to know a guy who got his hands blown off when he messed around with power lines. So we leave that shit to people who get paid a lot of money to deal with them.

Something else we noticed when we bought the place – those two trees have been marked for removal a number of times. Many of you have seen this – different colors of spray paint, different symbols, right on top of each other about midway up the trunk, year after year. We’ve even been contacted by PG&E about those trees, several times – telling us the trees were scheduled for removal. We’ve waited, and we’ve waited, but nobody ever shows up to do the work. They are touching the power lines.

Something else we noticed since we bought the place, no matter how we’ve cleaned the place up, our insurance has gone up gone up gone up. Over the last few years they’ve really been jacking it, and they’re saying it’s because of fire hazard. And not just our place – the city of Chico has been called on the carpet. And I feel the city has moved pretty slowly – the park running right through my neighborhood is a giant mess of non-native volatile plants, shoulder high dead grass and dead and dying trees hung with ivy. All the goats did was spread the poison oak. Have you ever seen poison oak catch fire? Yes, Chico, in it’s entirety, is a giant fire hazard.

Then, about six months ago, we actually got a printed notice about a tree PG&E wanted to cut down. That’s something new! My husband made an appointment to talk to the guy from the consulting firm hired by PG&E, because they said it was along our driveway and we wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause any problems for our tenant. The consultant came over and took a walk with my husband and they discovered that the suspect tree was actually in our neighbor’s back yard.

As of today it’s still there.

So we were pretty excited to have this young man from PG&E show up in our yard this morning to ask us if he could cut down one of our marked trees. We told him, we’d seen them marked again and again, we’d been waiting for years. He seemed genuinely concerned about how far they’d grown into the power lines, he said, “I hope we can get them done before they get much higher…” So my husband asked him when he thought we could expect to see anybody. He looked a little sheepish, and then he said, “you might see somebody about January…” And then he complained that about eight months ago, the city of Chico put some sort of moratorium on PG&E cutting or removing trees. What?

You ever heard that expression – teasing the monkey in the cage?

UPDATE: After I heard from other Chico residents who have had the same/similar experience with either PG&E personnel or their contractors, I looked at the city code. I don’t know what to think – who’s lying? I know it’s not the people who’ve contacted me here. Read this:

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/chico/latest/chico_ca/0-0-0-12992

Yes, we have a “tree preservation ordinance”. But it doesn’t apply to our private homes. “This chapter applies to (a) all undeveloped private property within the city…” It’s for developers of undeveloped properties. In fact, we’ve had licensed tree companies remove large trees from our property in Chico without any sort of permit. We’ve cut down more than a dozen sick, dying and dead trees ourselves over the years. Why would the utility companies need a permit to remove dangerous trees?

Listed under Exemptions, are city, county, state, and school properties, parks and cemeteries, as well as “Tree work performed by public utilities in public utility easements or public rights of way… public utility easement means wherever there’s a PG&E power pole, including on your private property.

Why would PG&E need permits to remove trees that are growing into power lines? Anywhere?

I don’t know who else to ask – I called the city at (530) 896-7800, and reached a recording that told me to leave my number and somebody would call me back. On Thursday afternoon at 2:30. So, how long am I on the hook for a callback? That’s what I call a public worker’s way of fucking me off. They also have an email – parkinfo@chicoca.gov Is this just another dead end? I’ll let you know. If you guys are still having this problem please contact the city and between us maybe we can get somebody to pay attention before the town burns down.