CHICO — It was standing room only at the Butte County Association of Government Chambers on Thursday, while the California Public Utilities Commission heard public comment on Pacific Gas & Electric Corp.’s request to charge its customers nearly $2 billion more over the next three years.
The utility company says it plans to use the money to help pay for wildfire safety improvements and other costs.
“The 2020 GRC proposal, which is the focus of Thursday’s public participation hearings, does not include costs associated with the 2017 and 2018 wildfires, said PG&E spokeswoman Kristi Jourdan in an email the day before the meeting. “PG&E has the authority to track costs from these fires, including costs associated with repairs, restoration, damages and third-party claims, in memorandum accounts but would have to seek authorization from the (public utilities commission) through a separate application to recover those costs.”
The request for a rate raise must be approved by the commission and would give the utility company $1 billion above current rates in 2020, $454 million more in 2021 and $486 million more for 2022.
For the average customer, Jourdan said, the rate raise would be approximately $10.50 more per month — $8.75 for electricity and $1.84 for gas.
The meetings were held at 1 p.m. and again at 6 p.m., and numerous protestors showed up to make their voices heard against the utilities giant, that Cal Fire found sparked the deadly Camp Fire in November which killed 85 people.
William Bynum, of Oroville, spoke to assembled protesters before the meeting began, telling them that he did not believe the state public utilities commission represented the interests of the public.
“The bottom line is people should not be making profit off electricity or water or whatever people need to exist,” Bynum said.
Chico Councilor Ann Schwab also spoke in front of the protesters, saying that “it was time for PG&E to look for other ways to repair the damage and repair their infrastructure — not on the backs of us, who have been so damaged by their actions.”
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Inside the meeting, speakers ranged from stoically outraged to emotional, and many shared stories of their survival during the Camp Fire.
“It can’t not be emotional,” Camp Fire survivor Susan Sullivan told the commission. “How do any of you sleep at night with what you’ve done?” She suggested to them that PG&E needed to be broken up and managed on a local level.
Many were angry at the commissioners themselves for not providing better oversight of conditions that led to the Camp Fire and other fires in the past several years. Several speakers said they would be going with solar energy as soon as they could.
Representatives from PG&E spoke before the public comment section and assured those assembled that the money from the rate raise would go toward wildfire prevention — not executive salaries or wildfire victim compensation.
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State Senator Jim Neilsen, R-Tehama, who represents Butte County among others in the state legislature, also attended the meeting, and several speakers said they would not have known about it if not for the work of his office to get the word out.
Thursday’s comments — and the comments from the meetings that have yet to be held in other areas of the state — will be entered into the record and considered as the commission makes a decision. However, Jourdan said the general rate case proposals have never failed at the CPUC hearing, and the proposal submitted is based on information that PG&E alone decides to include.
“You know that what you’re doing is killing people, and that means you’re all serial killers,” Mary Kay Benson told the commissioners Thursday afternoon. “We are not going to just lay down and be collateral damage.”
Similar meetings will be held in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Santa Rosa, Bakersfield and Fresno. Members of the public can send comments by email to public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov.
