A “license to burn” [is] what environmental justice advocates call the safety certificate Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration issued to PG&E late Monday, <big><big>allowing the utility to “recover catastrophic wildfire costs from its ratepayers” or from a $21 billion state insurance fund partly funded by surcharges on customers’ power bills for the next 20 years.</big></big>
At the end of Reclaim Our Power Utility Justice Campaign’s Monday press conference urging the governor to reject the safety certificate, organizers found out <big><big>the Newsom administration had granted [the certificate] hours earlier</big></big> — even though the campaign said it was scheduled to meet with his office on Feb. 7 to discuss the decision <big><big>ahead of a Feb. 10 deadline.</big></big>
Supposedly, the certificate means PG&E “is working toward becoming safer and improving its operations and culture” but “does not shield PG&E from enforcement or penalties for safety violations”. How is putting catastrophic wildfire costs onto the customers’ backs the next two decades NOT shielding PG&E from penalties?
This comes only ONE week...
...after PG&E exited five years of criminal probation for the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people. Although the utility said it “has become a fundamentally safer company,” the federal judge charged with overseeing it disagreed.
During its “probation” California was ravaged by wildfires PG&E was found culpable for in part or in whole, with millions
of ordinary Californians subjected to harms ranging from summer heat illness and spoiled food due to power cut-offs, to horrific loss of life.
Now we have thousands of homes and businesses losing power across the Sacramento Valley since Tuesday’s windstorms, and San Diego County forecasted for three back-to-back Santa Ana wind events potentially through Monday.
Barely two weeks ago, the “Colorado” fire:
Strong winds pushed a wildfire that broke out in the rugged mountains above Big Sur to the sea, forcing hundreds of residents on this precarious stretch of the California coast to evacuate
with the National Weather Service reporting “surreal fire behavior….”
Our “wildfire season” is now year-round. Despite a wet October and December bringing snowpack up to 160% more moisture than normal, the dry January took it down to 92% with February expected to desiccate matters further in this seemingly endless drought decades.
Amid all this, dangers to come — Reclaim Our Power Utility Justice Campaign coordinator Mari Rose Taruc:
...days before meeting with the people who have been terrorized by PG&E, the Newsom administration quietly handed a license to burn back to the most murderous corporation in history.”