PG&E was penalized $45 million in a settlement related to its role in the Dixie fire. (L.A. Times)
Pacific Gas & Electric Company will be penalized $45 million for its involvement in one of the largest and most destructive wildfires in California history under a settlement reached recently between the utility and state regulators.
The Dixie fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes, ignited July 13, 2021, after a Douglas fir tree fell and struck energized conductors owned and operated by PG&E. The blaze became the first known wildfire to burn from one side of the Sierra Nevada to the other.
The California Public Utilities Commission announced the settlement Thursday and said the penalty includes $40 million in shareholder funding for an initiative to transition some of the utility’s hard-copy records to electronic records.
The initiative “will support public safety by enabling more accurate recording of information and immediate awareness of the condition of PG&E’s assets, thereby improving the timeliness of inspections and preventive maintenance, and assisting the CPUC in conducting future audits and investigations,” the regulatory agency said.
PG&E will also pay $2.5 million in fines to the California General Fund and $2.5 million to tribes affected by the Dixie fire. PG&E will distribute those payments to the Greenville Rancheria and Maidu Summit Consortium, a nonprofit representing a number of Mountain Maidu tribes and organizations, the CPUC said.
Compared to $83.3 million for E. Jean Carroll, $45 million doesn’t seem like that much.
Not following this closely, but from afar, it sure seems like PG&E is a repeat offender. Too big to fail? I did order a smoke filter to have on hand for my air purifier for the next round of fires that spew smoke across the nation. Too pessimistic?
CA peeps, does this seem like a reasonable penalty?
Open thread.
Could You Give the Definition of Carpetbagger?
Omnes Omnibus
It looks to me like much of the penalty is aimed at prevention efforts.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Is this what you’re referring to?
Pete Mack
So long as California can’t keep up with its fuel load, there will be fires. There are a number of causes: the electric system is one, insect damage is another. But CA is 40 years behind on controlled burns, and just anything can set fires off. Cigarette butts*, hot mufflers, dry lightning.
Kirk
Not CA, but too small. “Update your record keeping system, and by the way pay less than 1% of damage caused by your negligence to the two most affected victim groups.”
Unless it carries an “or else” or “if it happens again” clause, that is. Then maybe it’s ok.
Ten Bears
That’s an accurate observation, PG&E is/are repeat offenders
Like a parking ticket, cost of making money
Parfigliano
$45 per acre burned. $34,615 per home destroyed. Grotesquely lenient and unreasonable.
Kelly
Are they still liable for civil suits?
Here in Oregon Pacificorp has lost several lawsuits and arrived at several out of court settlements for it’s power lines starting many of the 2020 Labor Day fires. I haven’t kept an exact score but they must be out almost a billion dollars with many cases still in process.
RandomMonster
Former Californian and hell no.
pacem appellant
It’s not so much that PG&E is too big to fail, it’s that it CAN’T fail, regardless of its size. It should be a wholely public utility, but some libertarian shitheads in our past decided that it should be a public/private partnership and privatized the only distributor of power in northern California. If the government fines it too much, it CAN’T do the only thing it has to do, which is provide power to me. Fine it too little, and as a repeat offender, it won’t learn its lesson.
If it wasn’t a private utility, it wouldn’t have to give money to its shareholders, and if it didn’t have to do that, it wouldn’t have to decide which “non-essential” maintenance tasks to skimp on, like say, clearing dry branches that overhang high-voltage power lines after years of prolonged drought.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: That and the following bits…
Sister Golden Bear
@Ten Bears: Yep. They took a bunch of money that should have gone for maintenance and paid it to investor dividends. Consequently, almost every fire season there’s at least one major fire caused by this. This is the same company that blew up San Brunos a few years ago after negligent maintenance of a major natural gas pipeline.
There’s a reason that a former poster who worked at PG&E referred to them as “MurderCorp.
@pacem appellant: Nailed it. Should’ve been taken over by the state government years ago.
JaneE
If all of the money went to preventing another fire, it still would be too little. That wouldn’t even cover the homes lost, much less anything else. The only good news is that there won’t be another fire in the same place for a few years. Maybe they will have time to fireproof their equipment by then. Of course their customers will pay for it anyway. I am not with PG&E, but my bill has close to doubled in the last year and a half. At least I can see more maintenance and fireproofing happening, but will it be enough?
eclare
@pacem appellant:
I worked for a large public utility, and it paid out dividends to shareholders however they were governed by a public utility board. Some of my coworkers were called to testify. The stock was known as a “widow and orphan” stock because it promised small but steady dividends.
We could charge ratepayers cost plus a rate of return, as determined by the public utility board. I am not defending PG&E, just saying the dividends are not the only issue. The lack of oversight is. I worked in the tax dept, and it was the most cautious tax dept I ever worked for because we knew the PUB would not let us charge ratepayers for a tax penalty.
mrmoshpotato
@Pete Mack:
Is there a different kind?
Mary s
At one point, while PG&E was in bankruptcy, Newsom threatened to take it over if it didn’t reorganize in a satisfactory way. I confess I don’t remember the details. But I know the state didn’t take control …
Kelly
@Pete Mack:When I was a child my Dad ran heavy equipment for the Oregon Department of Forestry. Every summer he’d vanish for a few day or weeks to push fire lines with a D6 dozer.
I think the idea we let fuel loads build up to disastrous levels by suppressing fire is a bit over blown. We’ve logged off far more wood than old time fires burned. However in spite of what commercial logging interest argue commercial tree plantations burn really well.
It’s the weather. The massive fire of old times happened in weather very similar to the weather driving today’s massive fires. The dry, windy weather happens more often.
Controlled burns can help maintain defensive perimeters around built up areas. There is simply too much flammable land to stop these fires when the weather starts pushing.
Kelly
@mrmoshpotato: Yes there is lightning with and without rain. It makes a big difference.
RepubAnon
@Sister Golden Bear: Agreed – California’s state government should have purchased PG&E when the utility filed for bankruptcy after the first big fire. Alas, public utilities can’t make political donations.
On a side note: the fines are in addition to any civil damages. As long as they’re paid from shareholders and not ratepayers, it’s fine. (I expect the civil suits will use these penalties as Exhibit 1 in their suits. Same effect as why Trump couldn’t dispute the holdings in defamation case 1 ($5mm) in defamation case 2 ($83.3mm). Collateral estoppel, baby!)
eclare
@RepubAnon:
The public utility that I worked for had a political PAC. And this was before Citizens United.
wjca
It’s not so much that we’re behind as that we essentially stopped. And, further, tried to stop every single fire as rapidly as possible. Rather than setting fire breaks and letting them burn up to those. As a result, there is a lot of dead (read highly flammable) wood everywhere — that fuel load.
The only exception being where the massive wild fires the last couple of years have created natural firebreaks. It should be a while before we see a repeat of those enormous fires, even without a saner control policy. Simply because any new fires cannot spread as far without hitting the burned off area of one. It’s essentially a recreation of the fire ecology which maintains when we stop interfering.
That said, there are things we could do which would actually help. The first being undergrounding electrical lines. PG&E is doing some of that. To slowly, but at least they are learning how to do it.
rikyrah
Kenny is on point. As is the man in video.
“You are playing Candyland.She is playing chess.” 👏🏾👏🏾
https://twitter.com/2RawTooReal/status/1751589799188722040?t=us3u3r9h8v3ZAoxtHXM1uQ&s=19
Alison Rose
All I will say is as a lifelong Northern Californian and a now-poor, I hate PG&E with every fiber of my being.
Urza
Erin Brockovich was about PG&E polluting. They’ve been a problem for several decades and just pay the fines and keep doing it cause the execs don’t get held accountable and they can just raise prices if the fines even mean anything to them.
wjca
California has a Public Utilities Commission. What it lacks is an effective one. I haven’t dug into the subject, but “regulatory capture” seems like a distinct possibility.
trollhattan
@Sister Golden Bear: We first learned of the raiding safety to give bonuses thing following the San Bruno explosion-murders.
Plenty of reasons for California to seize and run twice-bankrupted PG&E ourselves but I just don’t think there’s the will or clout to make that happen.
Dixie is the fire that destroyed chez Levenson. 963k acres.
And then there is Diablo Canyon.
We’re stuck with them; hopefully we can keep those shareholders whole.
trollhattan
@wjca: CPUC has proven to be pretty toothless. Wish it weren’t so. Texas envy?
Alison Rose
OT but LOL forever:
BYE BITCH.
The replies to the tweet are terrific.
Leto
@mrmoshpotato: well lightning that happens over bodies of water are obviously wet… but also there’s a difference between regularly occurring lightning and dry lightning.
Leto
@Urza: it’s the “Whose Line is it Anyways” of utilities: where the fines don’t matter and the “oversight” is made up.
Kelly
Here’s a map of wildfires over the last 20 years or so. I’ve zoomed to the Oregon California border. Note that many areas have burned 2 or 3 times. The landscape is undergoing a a climate driven transition. The first plants to grow back in burn scars are flammable annuals and brush.
https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=41.67086,-122.59094&z=8&b=mbt&a=fire
The 2020 Beachie Fire burned to within about 20 feet of my home. My back property line adjoins Oregon State Park land. All the underbrush was back in 2 years. probably 95% of the big trees are OK. Currently small trees killed by the fire are falling when the wind blows. The fuel load is back where it was.
Nukular Biskits
No defense of PG&E here but, short of burying transmission lines (and that would be a VERY expensive proposition!), they can only reduce the likelihood of their lines starting a fire, not eliminate it.
That being said, there was definitely some poor judgment on the part of PG&E officials, bordering on criminal.
trollhattan
@Kelly: That we just lived through the historic longest deepest drought from 2019-2022 is irrefutably the biggest factor in the historic largest fires that occurred during that stretch–many weren’t forest fires.
PG&E failed to clear transmission line rights of way as the law dictates, and did not adequately inspect the towers and insulators–the cause of the Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise and killed nearly a hundred.
Lightning, though, one of those mid-summer dry storms we occasionally get can spark hundreds in a few hours. Picking which to respond to must be fraught.
eclare
@wjca:
Hmmm…I don’t know anything CA specific. I worked for Southern Company, which owns GA Power, AL Power, MS Power, among others. When I was there the GA PUB was tough, my bosses turned down tax saving plan after tax saving plan because they feared a penalty upon examination. I hope it’s still the same.
Alison Rose
@Nukular Biskits: They could also have not left metal hooks in place for just under a century while they wore away down to nothing, which they knew would happen and didn’t give a shit.
trollhattan
This here is fucked up and shit.
TheOtherHank
@Sister Golden Bear: I used to work in South San Francisco and my commute took me near the neighborhood that exploded. One day a year or two before the explosion I was on my way to work with the window down in my car. Sitting at a stop sign in that area I smelled gas. When I got to work I called the PGE line and reported the smell. I guess they didn’t do anything about it.
A few years after the explosion I got home from work early and there was a PGE team wandering around my neighborhood with one of those gas-sniffer things. They decided the gas line going to my meter was leaking. The team that tore up my driveway and repaired it was done at around 2AM. So I guess they learned at least a little bit.
wjca
Might be a way to improve the politics of getting the state to take it over. Ask “Why do we want to be like Texas?”**
** No offense intended to the Texans here. Talking about what might work as California politics.
Kelly
@trollhattan: In the 2020 Labor Day fires Pacificorp was repairing and restarting wind damaged power lines. While their power lines were starting fires. They responded the way they would in a winter storm.
Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day fires were driven by hurricane force winds and single digit humidity. Forestry scientists with the help of geologists and archeologists have found evidence that great fires happened every 100-400 years across much of the west. Probably in similar weather conditions. Instead of centuries between the fire weather storms we get many per year.
wjca
It definitely ain’t cheap. But compare it to the cost of the fires. Especially when you add in the fines.** You can start with the highest risk lines, too. Undergrounding urban and suburban lines aren’t a fire-prevention priority.
** And you can save the ongoing costs of tree trimming, road maintenance, etc.
Nukular Biskits
@Alison Rose:
I won’t claim to be an expert on what led up to the fires, but I’ve read enough to know that PG&E was extremely negligent indeed.
Most of CA is a relative tinderbox and, with the rain they’ve been getting these past few months, I expect it to be far worse in the next couple of years (lotsa plant growth that’s going to dry out once the rainy weather stops).
Citizen Alan
@Sister Golden Bear:
Can the state do that? I know the feds can because I spent most of 2009 screaming “NATIONALIZE THE BANKS!” every time Jamie Fucking Dimon was on TV opining about what Obama should do. But I don’t think that state governments had the power to seize control of private businesses like that. Happy to be corrected so I can start screaming for Newsome to do that too.
Alison Rose
@Nukular Biskits: The thing that baffles me is like…PG&E execs live here, too. Their own homes could also be at risk, even if they live in fancy-schmancy areas. And yet they still didn’t give a damn and still don’t. Meanwhile, they gouge the living fuck out of people just so they don’t freeze or melt in their homes. I live alone in a tiny apartment. I don’t have a TV or a washer/dryer. I run the dishwasher every other day. Most of the day I have no lights on, if it’s cloudy or night time, I have one lamp. But I run the heater for a few hours during the day and I get charged like $140 a month. Batshit.
WaterGirl
@Urza: At least this time it’s part of the agreement that they can’t raise prices to cover the cost of the fines.
Adam Lang
It’s not even a penalty. They have been planning on transitioning to electronic records for a decade. This is just a means to convince them to budget the money for it over the next ten years or so.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
There’s plenty to criticize PG&E about, but I have noticed their proactive activity in my neighborhood in the last couple of years, checking lines for weak spots, removing menacing trees from around those lines, etc. They are working at not only fire prevention but also keeping the electricity flowing. We have a lot of outages during winter storms.
WaterGirl
@Adam Lang: Sad chuckle. I am sure you’re right.
Nice to see you!
Jess
No. For them, it’s just the cost of doing business.
Nukular Biskits
Stupid question (and one I could answer for myself if I wasn’t so damned lazy):
Is PG&E a publicly-traded, for-profit company?
If so, then the inability to pass along the costs of fines (which are, quite frankly, miniscule relative to the loss/destruction) to rate payers will simply be passed along to shareholders.
I’m more familiar with electric co-ops (of which I am a member) where the rate-payers are also the shareholders.
mrmoshpotato
@Kelly: Ah yes.
RevRick
Today’s entry for our church’s 60-day challenge on care of creation:
How strong and good
and sure your earth smells,
and everything that grows there.
Bless us, our land
and our people.
Bless our forests with mahogany,
wawa and cacao.
Bless our fields
with cassava and peanuts.
Be with us in our countries
and in all of Africa,
and in the whole world.
Ashanti Prayer (Ghana)
trollhattan
@Nukular Biskits:
NYSC: PCG
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/pcg
11.28.23 “PG&E Reinstates Dividend for First Time Since 2017. It’s a Penny a Share.”
Baby steps, shareholders, baby steps.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The state taking these hacks over as a public utility is the penalty I want.
wmd
PG&E is publicly traded.
Undergrounding is happening, and it’s prioritized. The bonds have been issued, and the work is happening – my county is supposed to have 8 miles underground by the end of 2024. The first 350 of a planned total 10,000 miles should be done this year, and 2300 miles by the end of 2026.
How this will impact fires remains to be seen. I expect it will have a modest effect.
Cal Fire has increased resources – my insurance agent said they expect to have aerial response to confirmed wildfires on site within an hour of confirmation. I think this will have a great effect on wildfire severity and hope that the experienced decrease in fire damage brings back lower cost private insurance for my home in a couple of years. I’m sure the actuaries will be watching this.
WhatsMyNym
@Alison Rose: That bill sounds high. What’s your meter usage and base fee? I have a 500sq ft condo on the Olympic Peninsula in WA. Even though our kWh is about a third of what you pay I would be shocked at your bill, especially when you cut back so much on use. My highest use was 600 kWh when the temp averaged out to 34 F for the month.
RevRick
@wjca: We’re talking high voltage lines, so you would have to super insulate the line plus guard against penetration by water plus prevent intrusion by tree roots and critters. Which requires constant maintenance. It would be far cheaper to move people away from the danger zones, because most forest fires are caused by arson, stupidity or lightning, and burying power lines wouldn’t change that.
kindness
PG&E went through bankrupcy not too long ago. They offered to give the long distance transmission lines to the state. The state wisely said nope. Setting up the proper maintenance (tree trimming) needs to be enforced. They aren’t the rich agency they once might have been. It’s a balancing act keeping them in the game.
trollhattan
@WhatsMyNym:
CA electricity rates are high compared to much of the country IIUC.
We’re on a local electric utility, not PG&E, we just get G from those guys, and our rates are two-tiered in winter, three-tiered in summer ranging from $0.11 to $0.33/KWh during 2023.
Looks like PG&E 2024 rates will range from $0.38 to $0.62/KWh, based on the flyer I just found. They have two, not three tiers winter/summer. A couple space heaters will give you a nosebleed-inducing bill at those rates.
Alison Rose
@WhatsMyNym: Part of the issue is PG&E does this bullshit “budget billing” thing. According to them:
This means some months you pay way more than you actually used. Supposedly, other months you pay less, except I’ve rarely seen that happen. However, when I told them I wanted to get off budget billing, I was told I’d have to pay off the actual account balance that had accrued, which was like $250, which I could not afford.
I also simply do not believe the numbers they list as to my usage. But even if I had some way to calculate it myself, they wouldn’t give a shit. They charge what they want to charge because they know we have no other option.
sempronia
Not impressed by the penalty. They are merely passing on the penalties to their customers, anyway. Our electric rates in the Peninsula and South Bay have abruptly gone up 25% in the last three months.
wjca
Somewhere, on your property, there’s a meter. Accessible to a meter-reader on foot.** It displays usage. Check it, say weekly, and write down the number. You can at least see how real their numbers are.
** They are gradually moving into the 21st century, and doing wireless transmission of the numbers. But the meter is generally still there and still visible.
trollhattan
@wjca:
My PG&E gas account shows daily use/therm and /dollar, via wireless smart meter. My electricity bill shows hourly use in KWh and /dollar, plus applicable rate tier, via smart meter.
I suspect most Californians have smart meters for both electricity and gas, by now. The on-line account has usage and billing info within a day or two, so close to real time monitoring. It’s become one of my weirder hobbies, tracking this stuff, and the only way to tease out the fees and taxes from actual energy consumption.
Alison Rose
@wjca: I live in an apartment building. I wouldn’t even know where to look or if it was even accessible to tenants. Further, as I’ve noted many times, I’m homebound due to disability and cannot go out to search for it.
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: Have you created an on-line account? You should be able to retrieve actual use and billing data, plus current rates, there.
https://m.pge.com/index.html#login
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
I used to live/work in the PG&E world and did not appreciate their business model in the least. I’m now back in SoCal and use Edison, which while it might not be the greatest, it’s BETTER than PG&E.
Alison Rose
@trollhattan: Of course I have. My point is, I don’t believe their numbers. I don’t see how it’s possible I could use as much as they claim.
rikyrah
He is hilarious 😂
The kids will have these memories forever.
These will be endless stories for their kids about Grandpa 😁
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8tcnKDx/
Fair Economist
@Kelly:
This. California is actually burning firebreaks at this point. The problem is that with climate change we have a lot of doomed forest, by one estimate I saw approximately the bottom 2000 feet of the mountain and hill sides, which is the only place we have forests in the southern 2/3ds or so of the state.
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: Plenty of variables but the household’s high-use devices warrant consideration, individually and combined.
If you have hourly data you can begin to narrow down both the what and when. Our home’s highest cost is inevitably between 5-8 p.m.–the highest rates, highest AC and heat pump use, frequent oven use. We can still do laundry and other things during off hours.
The usual culprits: electric space/baseboard heaters, dryers, water heaters, stoves, ovens, AC. If on a smart meter, their use during peak rates doubles the cost.
The ‘spread out the pain” program seems like a mixed bag. I like the really small spring and fall bills, personally.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
Is there any way to hurry him along, any improvement is an improvement and a lack of his presence would/should be rather noticeable.
Chris T.
@sempronia:
That second sentence is the real key: even if they were charged a $4B penalty, they’d just soak the ratepayers for it.
Peculation Greed and Extortion (as they’re known in certain circles) really just needs to be broken up via anti-trust, but they’re just one of many such, most of which aren’t utilities in the first place…
Chris T.
@trollhattan:
Note that they keep jacking around with what times are “on” and “off” peak. (Some of it’s actually sensible and follows the wholesale market, and some isn’t.) When we were in Oakland I had solar PV and an EV and was able to use on and off peak rates plus net-metering to keep the bill low, until the year before we moved. We’d have needed to put in a big battery system (like a Tesla Powerwall) to tweak the timings, and I did not have liquid funds for that.
If you can put in solar PV and use batteries to time-shift your loads, it’s worth it at the new prices. Those rates are just nuts, but then, you’re still paying off the penalties for setting Santa Rosa on fire.