PG and E wants to cut down acres of trees in Sonoma, along their utility line route. Just looking out for the public health and safety (in line with their previous stellar track record)? or looking out for the bottom line and hoping not to get sued, yet again. At least they are holding a meeting this time...
After years of trimming, this is a new policy. What do you think?
PG&E to hold meeting on big Sonoma County tree-cutting plan
Published: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 7:41 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 7:41 p.m.
PG&E officials will host a community meeting Thursday to
address concerns from landowners that a revamped maintenance plan will
mean cutting down thousands of trees in a 39-mile stretch of high
voltage lines through Sonoma County.
Facts
PG&E tree-cutting plan
A community meeting to discuss PG&E’s plans to cut thousands of trees under high-voltage power lines across Sonoma County will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday at the Bennett Valley Fire Department, 6161 Bennett Valley Rd.
The plan has come under
criticism in recent weeks as landowners have discovered in some cases
hundreds of trees marked with tell-tale blue paint that PG&E said
means the trees are targeted not for pruning, but removal.
PG&E
officials said the move is spurred in part by federal regulations that
have increased penalties for outages and other incidents. But homeowners
called for a meeting to hear why a decades-old strategy of pruning and
select removal is seemingly being abandoned.
“PG&E
has not really been open and not really been honest, I think, about the
plans,” said Tom Birdsall, who has owned 41 acres on Sonoma Mountain
Road for the past decade.
In that time, PG&E has successfully pruned growth on his property three or four times without issue, Birdsall said.
“It’s our belief that the trimming of trees for 50 years has worked just fine,” he said.
The
39-mile path stretches from The Geysers to Petaluma. A 2003 blackout
blamed on trees that cut power to 50 million people in the Northeast put
new focus on hazards that vegetation can pose to the nation’s power
supply.
In 2007, under a
federal mandate, North American Electric Reliability Corp., an
organization of the nation’s electrical grid operators, came up with
more robust standards for utilities.
A
focus of Thursday’s meeting is to reach “a mutually acceptable way of
providing safety and reliability,” PG&E spokeswoman Brandi Ehlers
said.
“As a company,
PG&E shares the same appreciation of trees as our customers,” she
said. “Right now we are really focusing on reaching out to our
customers.”
Some annual
work must be complete by the start of the fire season which typically
begins around May 15, while the remaining work is expected to be
finished by year’s end, Ehlers said.
Assemblyman
Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, who owns property in Oakmont where
high-power lines stretch across the sky, has introduced AB2556 that he
says will prevent PG&E from having “carte blanche” to clearcut
trees.
“Initially they
said they were doing this in response to federal legislation, but
federal legislation did not say you had to clear cut,” he said.
“They don’t need a black eye on this either,” he said. “We are trying to do this cooperatively.”
