PG&E: shuttered line still a hazard
Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s power line that started the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history could still be hazardous even though it has been shut down since late 2018, the company told a federal judge Friday.
PG&E attorneys said in a court filing that the CaribouPalermo transmission line in Butte County, which was permanently turned off after it ignited the historic Camp Fire in November 2018, still poses a “potential residual public safety risk” that the company is scrambling to eliminate.
The risk arises because other power lines that share towers with the CaribouPalermo line or run alongside it are “inducing some level of voltage and current on the CaribouPalermo Line despite its deenergization,” attorneys told U.S. District Judge William Alsup.
Alsup is the judge overseeing PG&E’s probation arising from the deadly 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion. He has proposed adding a series of new conditions regarding tree trimming and power line inspections in order to make PG&E’s electrical equipment less likely
to start fires, but the company urged him to reconsider and proposed a more modest set of conditions instead.
The Camp Fire started after a hook broke on a tower supporting PG&E’s CaribouPalermo transmission line. Dozens of people died in the fire, and the town of Paradise and surrounding communities were nearly wiped off the map. PG&E recently pleaded guilty to 85 felony counts, all but one for involuntary manslaughter, over its responsibility for the fire, which killed more than 80 people.
In the court filing, PG&E lawyers said the company is “taking immediate steps to eliminate or minimize” the outstanding risk posed by the Butte County power line. First, the company is physically isolating the line into 15 sections and installing protective material that creates a path for any electrical current on the sections to go to the ground. PG&E said it has already started that work and expects to finish by the end of next week.
“PG&E’s expectation is that once the sections of line are isolated and grounded, the level of electrical activity on each of the 15 sections will be zero or nearly zero,” the company’s attorneys told Alsup.
Additionally, the lawyers said PG&E is fasttracking repairs on the CaribouPalermo line that it never completed after deciding to permanently turn off the line. The company also eventually will remove the power line’s conductor, which “will permanently eliminate any risk of ignition from induction on the line,” but that will take several months to finish, attorneys said.
The company vowed to regularly update its courtappointed monitor on its progress, including “why this risk was not addressed earlier when the line was taken out of service or thereafter, and steps PG&E is taking to identify and address any potential ignition risks arising from induction in high firethreat areas across PG&E’s system.”
PG&E’s filing also comes shortly after the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a case prompted by its liability for years of devastating wildfires, including the Camp Fire.
Removal of the conductor is said to permanently eliminate risk of ignition from induction on the line.