SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Pacific Gas and Electric was aware of a 2013 assessment that wide-ranging work was needed on an aging complex of transmission lines and towers in an area scorched by a fatal California wildfire last fall, but didn't schedule the necessary improvements until December 2018 _ one month after the lethal infernos in Butte County in November, according to regulatory documents.
The power facilities that weren't repaired for years after problems were identified stretch through Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties in Northern California and include 115-kilovolt transmission towers located on the Caribou-Palermo line, regulatory filings show.
"It is sickening to see this," said Mindy Spatt, a spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network, or TURN. "It's not that PG&E didn't know there was a problem. It's not that they didn't have the money to do this. They just didn't have the will to do the work, or they were just negligent."
The disclosures raise fresh questions about PG&E's safety efforts as they relate to the company's creaky complex of electricity lines and towers.
"PG&E keeps telling us they are now a new company and they are changing their ways. But how can we believe them?" said state Sen. Jerry Hill, whose district includes parts of Santa Clara County. "They have said this numerous times before."
In 2010, PG&E caused a fatal gas explosion that killed eight people and destroyed a San Bruno neighborhood that is in Hill's district. Federal investigators determined the explosion resulted from a disastrous combination of PG&E's flawed record keeping, shoddy maintenance and lazy and ineffective oversight of PG&E by the state Public Utilities Commission.
PUC documents showed that energy officials had been warning about the fast-aging system of transmission lines for the better part of a decade.
"In 2010 and again in 2015, the California Independent System Operator transmission plan identified the need to improve and upgrade this system to address potential overloads and power outages that would affect customers in the service area," according to a May 2017 PUC filing.
In 2018, as part of PG&E's annual request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for rate changes connected with its transmission lines, PG&E noted that considerable work was being proposed for the Caribou-Palermo line.
"The Caribou-Palermo 115 kilovolt circuit was analyzed as part of the 2013 NERC Assessment," PG&E stated, referring to an analysis by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC.
The filing indicated the 2013 NERC study determined that well over 100 transmission line spans were perilously close to vegetation or trees.
"The completed analysis identified 127 spans with clearance issues out of the 455 spans on the electric transmission line," PG&E stated in the FERC filing.
PG&E stated in 2017 that it would embark on numerous repairs of the Caribou-Palermo system. The planned repairs and maintenance included new tower frames, steel poles, improved line tension and hardware upgrades.
"The project has a forecasted capital expenditure of $30.3 million," PG&E said in its FERC filing of July 2017. The company predicted that the work on the Caribou-Palermo line would be complete by December 2018.
In December, PG&E revealed that it had suffered equipment failures on the Caribou-Palermo line near the origin point of the lethal Butte County inferno, also known as the Camp fire.
The PUC said it and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection are undertaking parallel investigations of the Camp fire.
PG&E sought bankruptcy protection from its creditors on Jan. 29, listing $51.7 billion in debts, because it faced a forbidding mountain of debts and wildfire-related liabilities that arose from the lethal infernos that torched Northern California in 2017 and 2018. A bankruptcy judge held hearings on Wednesday regarding the case, but key issues under contention were deferred until March.
"They had bad maintenance, failed record keeping with San Bruno, and now with their electrical system, it appears to be more of the same for PG&E," Sen. Hill said. "One of the questions is, if PG&E was given money to carry out these repairs, why didn't they spend it? Or did they divert the money to something else?"
The state PUC is also to blame for the problems with PG&E, said Loretta Lynch, a former PUC commissioner.
"The problem is the PUC acts like a lapdog and not a watchdog when it comes to PG&E," Lynch said. "The PUC has let PG&E get away with anything it wants."
