- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Local leaders, community members discuss power shutoff impacts with PG&E, CPUC
The Friday afternoon meeting was held in the Board of Supervisors’ chambers at the Lake County Courthouse in Lakeport.
The committee formed last year to address the repeated public safety power shutoffs that impacted the entire county. In October, all county PG&E customers – more than 37,000 accounts – were off at the same time for several days due to two overlapping shutoffs. A small, more focused shutoff, occurred in November.
The committee, which held its first meeting in December, includes representatives from Clearlake, Lakeport and the county. On Friday, Mayor Russ Cremer and Vice Mayor Dirk Slooten represented the city of Clearlake, and council members Stacey Mattina and Mireya Turner represented the city of Lakeport. Moke Simon and Bruno Sabatier – the latter the alternate sitting in due to the absence of Rob Brown – attended on behalf of the county.
Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora, Lakeport City Manager Margaret Silveira and County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson also were in attendance.
California Public Utilities Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves and Aaron Johnson, PG&E’s vice president of customer energy solutions, offered updates and took community input.
Guzman Aceves said they are hearing input from residents up and down the state who have been impacted by the public safety power shutoffs.
“We also find it unacceptable. It is not a new normal, as far as we’re concerned,” she said, noting it was a time of transition to get utilities up to speed. She said much-needed collaboration and communication are missing from PG&E.
“One of the areas that we’re working on is the rules for the shutoffs,” she said.
Those include proposals to create working groups to improve communication with local governments, provide 24-hour community resource centers, improve outreach, system hardening and vegetation management.
Guzman Aceves said there is now a whole new set of requirements for utilities when it comes to hardening infrastructure and vegetation management. The state also wants micro gridding of infrastructure, which relates to putting backup generation next to substations so as many communities – and critical facilities – can stay energized as possible.
Lake County’s state legislators, Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, sent representatives to weigh in on the situation.
Taylor Morrison, McGuire’s district representative, said McGuire’s “whole mission is to hold this utility and other state utilities accountable.”
McGuire has been named co-chair of two state working groups that have been meeting since the fall, one on energy market and insurance stability, the second on wildlife fire response and resilience, including and forest health strategies. The State Senate also has launched an action plan to address the situation, Morrison said.
PG&E’s Johnson said the corporation is improving real-time monitoring and intelligence in its wildfire safety center, installing more cameras, and instituting new safety practices and enhanced vegetation management. He said the way the system was designed does not now meet the needs of the communities the company serves.
Johnson, who said he is one of the architects of the public safety power shutoff program, agreed with Guzman Aceves. “We too believe this is not an acceptable way to move forward.”
He added, “Our focus was very much on how do we safely do something that we are not built to do, which is to turn off the power. That was the lion’s share of our focus.”
Johnson said the company missed the mark when it came to anticipating the impacts on the communities they serve, admitting they didn’t do enough to meet needs and hardship as the shutoff events unfolded.
“We do believe this is a necessary tool in these current conditions in order to safely operate the grid, but these events need to be less frequent, they need to be shorter and smaller in scope as we move forward,” he said.
Johnson said initiatives include improving weather data analysis to allow them to target weather in smaller geographical areas and speeding up restoration.
They’re also working to improve information sharing and website functioning, which he said were among the most embarrassing elements of the company’s performance last fall.
He said PG&E also wants to expand community resource centers and move them out of tents and into hard-sided structures with air conditioning and heat.
Mattina asked about whether PG&E is looking at narrowing its timeline of system hardening and vegetation management from 10 years to three years.
Johnson pointed to challenges in doing that and how the company is looking at shutoffs going forward.
“I’m not convinced in these fire conditions that public safety power shutoff comes out of the toolkit of the utility, ever,” he said, adding that they need to happen much less frequently, and the windstorms that trigger them need to be much more severe.
He said they increased the number of employees in vegetation management from 3,000 to 6,000 and inspected all of their lines in tier two and tier three areas, where fire risk is highest, and prioritized repairs there.
Slooten said there had been no discussion up to that point about undergrounding. “Obviously, that’s the ultimate solution. Wouldn’t you agree with that?”
Johnson did agree. “I think it is the ultimate solution. It is a part of the long term plan to harden the assets,” he said, and he expected them to do significantly more of it, although it’s three to 10 times as expensive as hanging wire.
The places where undergrounding needs to be done the most are the most challenging – steep, rocky areas, he said.
In addition to considering undergrounding in some areas, they are also looking at removing wire where they can, and putting in solar batteries and generators rather than running miles of wire through fire-prone terrain, Johnson said.
Sabatier said he doesn’t want to lose focus on the future, but he raised issues with PG&E’s past performance – from its pole that caused the Sulphur fire in Clearlake Oaks and Clearlake in 2017, to the tower that caused the Camp fire that destroyed the town of Paradise in November 2018, to the San Bruno pipeline disaster in September 2010.
He said he wants PG&E to let the county know where its problems are so local officials can work with them, noting that words aren’t enough. Sabatier said he wanted to see more transparency from PG&E and to know what their plan is so Lake County can be part of it.
Johnson said that, as someone who is proud of the work he does, he doesn’t relish hearing those past stories about the company. “But it’s the reality,” he said, acknowledging they have a lot of work to do to regain people’s trust.
“We are also tired of the words and want to see some actions and commitments,” said Guzman Aceves, who invited Johnson to come to the CPUC with action and specifics.
She said the CPUC had put forward plans for working groups with local governments. “That can start today,” she said, adding that PG&E should have a list of community resource centers in place.
Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora told Johnson that in public safety power shutoffs, which are not declared disasters, PG&E’s practice of putting out information through the county’s Office of Emergency Services doesn’t help the cities, and that the company needs to plan to communicate directly with municipalities.
Local officials ask for help, partnership
During public comment, Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace raised his concerns with PG&E’s past performance and how it’s planning for what is ahead.
He said that when he was talking to PG&E last year about the potential shutoffs, “Pretty much the message was, you’re gonna be on your own, kinda figure it out.” As they started getting into the events, he said it was a matter of last-minute “flailing” and trying to get generators out.
He said now there is a lot of skepticism that PG&E is going to follow through. It was hard to understand last year what PG&E was thinking and the company seemed more focused on liability than helping local officials plan for the community at large, Pace added.
Pace said now, months later, with possible shutoffs ahead, “We’re still talking about planning and possibilities,” while his department is working on different strategies in parallel.
He pointed to the importance of 24-hour power accessibility for the medically fragile. What’s needed are more than community resource centers which PG&E previously had offered during daylight hours, with water, chairs and device charging. Rather, Pace said, what’s needed are cots and adequate power strips because some of these people will need to come in and sleep for the night.
“We’re actively working on setting up shelter possibilities,” and getting memorandums of understanding in place, Pace said.
He asked for transfer switches for generators, cots, power strips, security and partnering.
Pace said they are very concerned about the loss of life. “It’s hard to trust you at this point as we’re halfway to the next one and we don’t see anything yet.”
Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg said that in polling colleagues around the state, there seems to be a philosophy of not opening schools if there is no power.
“I believe we need to open schools, with or without power,” he said, explaining they can mitigate the risks.
Addressing Johnson directly, Falkenberg said, “I need your help to do that.”
He asked PG&E for support and consultation to keep schools open. Falkenberg said if schools don’t open, people have a hard time going to work.
During the committee members’ closing statements at the end of the nearly three-hour meeting, Mattina said, “I’m not OK with this being a new reality for us. It is outrageous what we’ve been through.”
She said focusing on the power grids to have less impact on city centers will be important.
“We’re really your partner in this and we weren’t treated that way. We look forward to that changing and making it a lot less painful,” Mattina said.
Turner also asked community members to start preparing their private properties – including dealing with growing vegetation – so they don’t contribute to fire danger.
“We need to all be working together to find these solutions,” she said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.