COOL, Calif. — On top of her sky-high power bills and fear of PG&E’s notoriously fire-starting electric grid, power customer Stephanie Buss has another complaint to lodge: false advertising.
“It’s a lie. It’s all a lie,” Buss said. “What I see is not what they promoted on TV.”
Last summer, construction crews came to her rural community’s network of private roads and started digging into the asphalt.
CEO Patti Poppe promised in TV ads to “rebuild PG&E from the underground up,” committing to bury 10,000 miles of lines.
Buss and her neighbors were excited to see crews last year begin to bury PG&E power lines underground.
Oaks and gray pines tower over the bare metal PG&E power lines along Indian Rock Road, each one with the potential to start a wildfire if it falls on the wires during the dry months.
“(PG&E) said they were going to underground all these lines. I was excited about that,” said neighbor Jeff Riffey. “I was thinking I won't have as huge of a fire risk.”
But then, after burying a fraction of a mile of power lines, the undergrounding workers left.
“They stopped,” Riffey said. “Now, they’re replacing poles.”
This is how the community learned most of its power lines aren’t going to be buried. Of the four miles it takes to escape her home, PG&E only undergrounded 0.3 miles.
“We got 0.3 miles underground,” Buss said after measuring PG&E’s undergrounding with her car odometer. “The rest is still above ground.”
It’s not what she expected after hearing PG&E CEO Patti Poppe declare undergrounding the company’s lines in fire country will be “safer and less expensive in the long run.”
“Patti lied on TV,” Buss said. “Why didn't you do what you said on TV with all those ads? Why isn't my road system underground?”
“Patti Poppe, who's been making promises in all those commercials that you and I are paying for… those promises are all false,” said Loretta Lynch, who used to regulate PG&E and its rates as president of the California Public Utilities Commission. “What's really happening is PG&E is proposing actions that pump up their profits.”
Poppe did not respond to our questions for this story but forwarded them to her public relations staff.
Poppe’s combined $82.3 million in salary, bonuses and other compensation over the past three years strikes Buss as “outrageous,” and sends her a clear message.
“They're raising our rates to pay somebody a lot of money, instead of making it safe for us,” Buss said. “It's still greed, I feel, because they've raised our rates. And they're making all that extra money.”
Greed was the motive named by local and federal prosecutors who successfully convicted PG&E of 91 felony crimes during the past decade.
In 2016, a federal jury convicted PG&E of six felonies after the deadly San Bruno gas explosion.
In 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty to felony reckless arson and 84 felony counts of manslaughter for starting the deadliest wildland fire in California history: the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise and its surrounding neighborhoods.
PG&E used federal bankruptcy court to shield itself from the legal consequences of its disasters.
ABC10's investigative reporting also revealed Governor Gavin Newsom hired PG&E’s longtime law firm to draft new state laws that bailed PG&E out.
“There’s been a lot of enabling going on in Sacramento,” said Butte County Deputy District Attorney Marc Noel, who served as the lead prosecutor for the Camp Fire case.
As for PG&E’s plans to bury power lines, Noel remains skeptical.
Poppe hurriedly announced PG&E’s commitment to bury 10,000 miles of lines in 2021, while the PG&E-caused Dixie Fire was still burning.
The fire was started by a tree falling onto bare metal wires. Due partly to PG&E’s own internal confusion, it took about nine hours for the company to send a technician to that power line.
By then, the tree had burst into flames and started the Dixie Fire, which consumed nearly a million acres, including the town of Greenville and more than half of Lassen Volcanic National Park.
“The only thing PG&E has learned is how better to bury its crimes,” Noel said.
In a written statement from PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo, the company said its “fire-risk modeling and fire-prediction programs enable us to identify the highest-risk powerlines” and that PG&E uses a mix of above-ground and underground techniques to harden its grid in those areas.
She also confirmed of the approximately 63 miles of grid hardening PG&E plans to do around Cool, fewer than 10 miles are slated to be undergrounded.
Customers we spoke with said they wish PG&E had been upfront about its plans in advance.
“Two years ago, we received information (PG&E) would be doing work on our road via a letter,” Stephanie Buss said. “But no details on what they would be doing where, when they would be doing it, how long it would last.”
PG&E still has crews working on the lines here, shutting off power for entire workdays. Instead of burying power lines, this year’s crews are installing new bare metal wires atop new PG&E poles.
The old PG&E poles are still standing to hold up the old AT&T phone line, even in the 0.3 mile section where power lines were undergrounded.
In a wildfire, each pole is a threat to fall on the road and block the neighborhood’s escape route.
“We have more poles,” Buss said. “Because now we have poles next to poles and lines next to lines.”
PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo told ABC10 the company “considers ingress and egress to an area” in its analysis of where it will underground power lines, with the caveat: “when appropriate.”
ABC10 asked how the company decides whether it’s “appropriate” to factor in the ability of people to escape an area alive.
In a reply that gave no additional specifics, another PG&E spokesperson said the decisions about factoring in escape are made in a “community-wide analysis that incorporates factors in our wildfire risk model.”
Much of the confusion around PG&E’s undergrounding plans appears to stem from the company’s use of big numbers and a lack of context around what those numbers mean — 10,000 miles is a lot of undergrounding, but it’s only 10% of PG&E’s grid.
This means PG&E is planning to keep the other 90,000 miles of power lines hanging above ground but the monopoly didn’t say that in its TV ad.
With any other company, customers might simply take their money to a competitor if they felt like they were tricked by bait-and-switch advertising. Because California’s state government has chosen to protect PG&E as a legally-licensed monopoly, the customers don’t have any alternatives.
Jeff Riffey doesn’t think the work “customer” really describes his relationship with PG&E.
“No. I feel like prey,” he said.
Note: PG&E representatives sent two written statements in response to our questions for this story. They appear below:
From PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo, via email July 8:
We prioritize our wildfire safety work in areas where we can most greatly reduce wildfire risk. Our fire-risk modeling and fire-prediction programs enable us to identify the highest-risk powerlines to move underground or strengthen overhead. We may use a combination of wildfire safety upgrades, including undergrounding, overhead installation of strong poles and covered powerlines, or line removal. When appropriate, our analysis also considers ingress and egress to an area.
Based on our analysis of the risk in and around Cool, our work plan for this area includes both undergrounding powerlines in some locations and installing more resilient poles and wires in other locations, including totals of:
Nearly 10 miles of undergrounding, with an additional two miles planned
Roughly 53 miles of overhead hardening with strong poles and covered powerlines
This includes four miles of overhead hardening and less than one mile of undergrounding in the Indian Rock neighborhood.
Completing these projects requires our crews to temporarily turn off power for safety while they place the upgraded lines in service. We inform our customers of these planned outages ahead of time and provide regular project updates via letters, emails, voice messages and text messages.
It’s also important to note that undergrounding and strengthening overhead lines are just two of the many layers of protection that we use to reduce wildfire risk.
To help keep the communities we serve safe, we are also addressing trees and vegetation to ensure they are a safe distance from our powerlines, employing our network of weather stations and cameras to better detect extreme weather and wildfires, utilizing Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings, and more.
From PG&E spokesperson Jennifer Robison, via email July 9:
Prior to the start of construction in each phase of our system-hardening projects in and around Cool, our local customer outreach specialists notified customers via letter and email of undergrounding and overhead hardening work in their area. In addition, customers received automated voice and text messages reminding them of the construction immediately before work began. These notifications went out to about 200 customers in the area.
We consider ingress and egress based on a community-wide analysis that incorporates factors in our wildfire risk model.
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