A lesson in ‘making sense’ out of a bad deal
Wells and water hauling
Last week I ran you up to speed on a couple of undertakings I’m involved with growing out of the drought.
The Board of Supervisors last year created a body called the Ad Hoc Drought Committee overseen by Supes John Haschak and Glenn McGourty.
This committee is looking at various issues related to groundwater including existing wells, drilling new wells, water hauling, and reviving the County Water Agency that was tombstoned a decade ago. The Water Agency issue is actually a separate committee endeavor and process, and we haven’t held a meeting yet. Which is fine with me because Mendocino County does not own a single water right to a single drop of water in this county. So by my reckoning, while a functioning Water Agency may be worthwhile to re-establish, we have larger fish to fry at this time. A Water Agency steering committee has been formed to come up with recommendations to re-raise the defunct agency, and at the end of the month we hold our first meeting. I’ll keep you current on any developments.
I have been working on these water issues with many different people including representatives from water districts, water haulers, ranching, farming, law enforcement, environmental health, and concerned citizens, trying to figure out how to best address these problems.
We meet on a monthly basis for about 60-to-90 minutes, and we’ve been able to put together some recommendations regarding water wells and water hauling that include a general framework of proposed rules and procedures. We’re probably setting a record for brevity of meetings that so far have been very productive, a dynamic that is unheard of (at least in this county). I’ll take some very minor credit for that being the case so far because at our very first meeting I presented a general framework that focused on start use at the water source (private sector wells and local government water utilities, continuing through middle use (water hauling), to end use (water delivery to end user property). More work needs to be done but we’ve made a start at attempting to exercise more monitoring and control over some tough problems that are major concerns of many county residents.
For example, we need to develop standard conditions and guidelines for drilling commercial water wells. Private sector owner/operators of commercial wells should be required to obtain a use permit, business license, perform a hydrological study, maintain records of metering, water sold, who it’s sold to, etc. Likewise commercial water haulers should be required to obtain business licenses and tracking logs detailing gallons of water hauled and location of water deliveries, and would be prohibited from after-dark hauling.
The main reason the process is working so far is because most of the folks participating actually know what they’re talking about due to their practical experience in dealing with different aspects of water policy and water operations. To date, there’s been no evidence of hidden agendas or political bamboozling. Neither Haschak nor McGourty have been a problem, not that I ever expected them to be. In fact, they have supported and endorsed damn near all of the advice and recommendations from committee participants.
Most importantly, they also listen a hell of a lot more than they talk at our meetings.
And that squares with my belief that there was a reason why the Creator gave us two ears but just one mouth.
DA Coalition and PG&E deal draws fire from victims
District Attorneys from six fire-ravaged counties announced a settlement with PG&E this past Monday, eliminating the possibility of criminal charges for the catastrophic Kincade and Dixie fires the electrical monopoly caused in 2019 and 2021.
The six-county coalition is comprised of Sonoma, Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama. Mendocino County was not involved in the process, thus qualifying as a smart move by our DA.
Organizers with Reclaim Our Power, the largest coalition of grassroots organizations fighting to hold PG&E accountable and for a transformation of California’s energy system, called out the settlement for its failure to truly hold PG&E accountable for their crimes, and called on Governor Gavin Newsom “to take action to end PG&E’s reign of terror over California.”
Mary Kay Benson, a Butte County wildfire survivor advocate, said, “What would it take to actually hold PG&E accountable? How many more burned down towns, more lives upended, more burned lungs do we need to see until we get justice? For the millionaire executives at murderous PG&E, the money in this settlement is a rounding error, and is an appalling way to mistreat the families, farmworkers, forests and lives damaged by this monstrous company.”
The settlement reportedly will total only 55 million dollars, largely in contributions to local education and non-profit organizations, for damage that will likely total in the billions of dollars. In contrast, it was recently reported that PG&E paid their new CEO Patti Poppe 50 million dollars in pay and benefits in 2021.
That appears to be a good deal — for the new CEO, of course. But as always is the case with common folk, they got the messy end of the stick.
Reclaim Our Power says fire survivors presented the Sonoma District Attorney with tangible, concrete pathways to hold PG&E accountable through this process, including forcing the utility to return to criminal probation, following through on charges for causing damaging smoke, and even making the evidence of what happened to cause these fires public, to avoid future calamities. The settlement included none of these provisions.
The six-county DA coalition, issued a joint statement that is reality-bending. They said it made more sense to make a civil settlement “to maximize the return to the fire victims rather than to seek criminal penalties.” The utility only paid $4 million in fines after pleading guilty to 85 felony charges in the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire ever in California. The judge lamented that the $4 million was the maximum penalty under the law. Unless the federal government decides to prosecute on the Dixie Fire, the deal enables PG&E to avoid the stigma of more criminal convictions on its record as it struggles to polish its tattered reputation while spending billions every year to make improvements in wildfire safety.
According to the Sacramento Bee, “PG&E Corp. cut a dramatic deal with prosecutors in six California counties Monday that enables it to sidestep criminal prosecution from two notorious wildfires. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. instead will pay tens of millions of dollars in fines, charitable contributions and other expenditures. The state’s largest utility agreed to pay more than $55 million in order to avoid prosecution on last year’s Dixie Fire — the second largest wildfire in California’s recorded history — and the 2019 Kincade Fire in Sonoma County. The company had already been indicted in connection with the Kincade Fire and was being investigated by district attorneys in five counties following the Dixie Fire.”
Anyway, under the deal, the DA in Sonoma County dropped the criminal case and the other coalition DAs announced they will forego filing charges. However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento has also been investigating PG&E’s role in the Dixie Fire, and wasn’t a party to the settlement. Since the 2019 Kincade Fire occurred in Sonoma County, it is not in the jurisdiction of the Sacramento U.S. Attorney’s Office, but it is in the jurisdiction of the San Francisco Office, that so far has not been involved in the issue, at least publicly. CALFIRE investigations found that both fires were caused by PG&E power lines.
The deal has clearly angered many fire victims and others, given PG&E’s abysmal history on statutorily-required tree and vegetative maintenance, wildfire safety and the amount of damage done by the two fires. But the district attorney in Plumas County — where the worst of the damage from the Dixie Fire occurred — said the “agreement made sense.”
Of course, this backroom deal probably makes the most sense to those who suffered no losses in life or property, i.e. coalition DAs, because of PG&E’s criminal actions in starting the most destructive and expensive wildfires in California History.