PG&E confronts judge on mandate
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. is trying to unwind a federal judge’s order that directs the company to revamp the way it inspects its heavyduty power lines and trims trees that could damage electrical equipment and cause more catastrophic wildfires.
In a court filing late Wednesday, PG&E attorneys asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to reconsider his April order imposing a series of additional conditions as part of the company’s five-year-probation sentence arising from the deadly 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion.
The company said Alsup failed to give PG&E an opportunity to raise objections at a hearing, based his order on “a series of factual errors” and interfered with the role of state regulators. The conditions are also “substantively unreasonable because they are not reasonably necessary to accomplish the purposes of sentencing,”
a filing from the company said.
PG&E sought to halt the new probation measures while its efforts to change them proceed. If the company is unsuccessful in altering the conditions, it will appeal Alsup’s order to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Alsup responded on Thursday by scheduling a hearing for May 28 and setting deadlines for additional filings before then. He agreed to stop implementation of the new conditions in the meantime.
The judge noted that he had held a hearing on Feb. 19 and said his order last month was “fairly written within the colloquy from that hearing.”
“Nevertheless, we will make sure the offender has a further opportunity to be heard,” he said.
Alsup imposed the order as a response to fires blamed on PG&E power lines that have killed more than 100 people and destroyed more than 20,000 structures in recent years. He said PG&E “cannot deliver power safely to California” and the company “cheated on maintenance of its grid” while enlarging shareholder dividends, executive bonuses and political contributions.
The order came weeks after PG&E said it would plead guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter and one felony count of unlawfully causing a fire due to its role in starting the 2018 Camp Fire that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise. PG&E is scheduled to be arraigned in a Butte County court on May 26.
Specifically, Alsup told PG&E to design a new system for inspecting its transmission lines, the kind of highvoltage electrical equipment that broke and started the Camp Fire. Alsup ordered the company to keep records about the age of all equipment on its transmission towers and lines. And he said that contractors who inspect transmission lines must have enough insurance to “cover losses suffered by the public should their inspections be deficient and thereby start a wildfire.”
Alsup further directed PG&E to hire its own distributionline inspectors to oversee the contractors, who cut vegetation that could spark fires like the ones that ravaged the North Bay in 2017.
PG&E spokesman James Noonan said in an email that the company shares Alsup’s focus on safety and knows it has to help lead the efforts to help prevent more devastating fires.
“While we are committed to working with the court, our regulators, California’s leadership and other stakeholders to provide safe and reliable power to our customers, the new conditions were imposed by the court without a hearing and based on a number of incorrect assumptions,” Noonan said in the email. “As such, we have asked the court to reconsider its order, provided evidence as to why PG&E believes that the order could hinder our wildfire safety work, and we remain willing to continue our ongoing dialogue with the court in a future hearing on the subject.”
He said PG&E is committed to keeping its customers safe and “doing right” by communities harmed by wildfires.
The kerfuffle over Alsup’s probation conditions comes as PG&E is trying to wrap up its bankruptcy, which was prompted by wildfire liabilities. Fire victims have until 4 p.m. Friday to vote on the company’s plan to resolve the case and pay them through a $13.5 billion settlement.