PG&E Awarded Safety Certificate After Causing Years of Environmental Catastrophes

Since Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) was founded in 1905 when San Francisco Gas Company and California Electric Light merged, the utility has seen its fair share of scandals. In this article, we track some of the company’s most memorable and destructive incidents over the years.

In 1965, PG&E reported that their natural gas compressor station in the small city of Hinkley, California, had contaminated the area’s water supply. However, the contamination had reportedly been ongoing for more than a decade before it was reported. You can view the state of California’s record of the cleanup case, opened as of January 1st, 1965, here: https://geotracker.waterboards.ca.gov/profile_report.asp?global_id=L10003115065

In 1994, PG&E was found guilty of 739 counts of criminal negligence when the utility did not adequately trim trees near live power lines. The trees caught fire in August of 1994, scorching a school and a dozen homes in a Nevada County Town. The California Department of Forestry concluded that hundreds of small wildfires, along with several devastating blazes, had previously occurred due to PG&E’s failure to follow safety regulations. SFGate originally reported on the trial: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/PG-E-Guilty-In-1994-Sierra-Blaze-739-counts-of-2821364.php

On December 20, 2003, PG&E’s Mission Substation experienced an electrical fire that left around 100,000 consumers without electricity throughout the San Francisco region. The same substation experienced a nearly identical incident in 1996, but the utility did not implement recommended safety measures and protocols that would have likely prevented the second incident. PG&E did not even have a joint emergency response plan with the San Francisco Fire Department in the event of an accident, so the fire department was unable to launch an effective response. Just two years later, defective underground equipment caused fire to explode upwards through a San Francisco sidewalk. A pedestrian suffered burns on over 40% of her body. Read more: https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/published/Report/40886.PDF

On Christmas Eve, 2008, a Sacramento suburb was rocked by a massive natural gas explosion. While performing a repair to one of their lines in 2006, PG&E installed an incorrect pipe that failed a few years later. Additionally, when contacted about a possible leak on the day of the accident, the company failed to respond promptly. CBS originally reported on the story: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2011/12/01/pge-to-pay-38m-in-2008-explosion/

One of the worst disasters caused by the utility occurred in 2010, when the neighborhood of San Bruno was devastated by a fatal pipeline blast. PG&E was found guilty of falsifying “locate and mark” reports and was convicted with six felony crimes for their role in the explosion. In 2016, the company was sentenced to five years of criminal probation and fined a sum of $3,000,000. Despite this, they oversaw another eleven pipeline explosions over the past decade, as seen in the Doan Law Firm’s study: https://www.explosionaccidentattorney.com/pipeline-explosion-statistics/

During their probation, PG&E’s woes continued. On September 9th, 2015, a downed tree hit a PG&E electrical wire. This started the Butte Fire, which destroyed 365 homes, killed two people, and scorched more than 70,000 acres. Three years later the Camp Fire occurred due to PG&E equipment. Most of the town of Paradise was destroyed and 85 lives were lost. To learn more, visit: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/wildfire/cal-fire-pge-started-the-camp-fire/103-0e316a82-7f73-4956-86bb-d218c42512eb

Now, mere days after PG&E ends their criminal probation for the San Bruno pipeline explosion, they have been granted a safety certification from the Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety. In addition to designating the utility’s methods as safe and effective, PG&E may now tap into the California Wildfire Fund or customer payments to recover catastrophic wildfire costs.