It wasn’t global warming causing the wildfires.
Long before the Camp Fire raced through Northern California, claiming at least 85 lives and all but erasing the Gold Rush town of Paradise, state law required the three big power monopolies to file detailed strategies to prevent wildfires.
Under Senate Bill 1028, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric were supposed to prepare annual wildfire mitigation plans for reducing fire threats and identify who specifically would be responsible for implementing them.
The bill, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in September 2016, also called on the California Public Utilities Commission to review the filings every year, comment on the material and audit the companies to make sure they were being followed.
More than two years after the legislation was enacted, state regulators have yet to direct issue directives for the utilities to write the plans, let alone discuss or examine them for compliance — although SDG&E says its own fire plans comply with the new law.
While the commission delayed enforcing the new law, wildfires suspected of being caused by overhead powerlines and other utility equipment killed at least 125 people. They also destroyed 18,000 buildings and charred hundreds of square miles of the California landscape.
“They have done absolutely nothing in those two years,” state Sen. Jerry Hill, the San Mateo Democrat who introduced SB 1028, said of utility regulators.
“The unfortunate thing is we gave them that authority but we did not put a timeline on it,” Hill said. “We assumed it would be prioritized, but sadly it takes a tragedy to realign priorities — and that’s what we’ve seen — tragedy and devastation.”
Utilities commission spokeswoman Terrie Prosper did not respond to questions about why the agency has not required the plans.
In a response to a California Public Records Act request, commission lawyer Frederick Harris said regulators were “in the process of developing procedures to implement Senate Bill 1028” when Brown signed a different wildfire-related bill this past September.
via Weasel Zippers
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