CALIFORNIA FOCUS5
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2025 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WILDFIRE FUND MAY FALL SHORT IF UTILITIES FOUND AT FAULT”
When Gov. Gavin Newsom and
his political donor cronies at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. cooked up the $13
billion California Wildfire Fund in 2019, they never conceived of wildfire
damages on the scale of either the Palisades or Eaton blazes that together have
been the most expensive in state history. The latest credible estimate of total
replacement cost came in at $250 billion.
As it was, the fund was
plenty controversial, arriving just after PG&E equipment was officially
blamed for starting the Paradise fire, which leveled the Butte County town and
its surroundings in 2018, and others. As one result, many consumers advocated
breaking up PG&E or having the state take it over while it struggled in
bankruptcy.
But Newsom pushed a law
known as AB 1054 through the Legislature, creating the fund that was supposed
to cover liabilities for damage caused by utility equipment starting future
wildfires. Electric companies kicked in $7 billion toward this, while every customer
of privately owned firms like PG&E, Southern California Edison and San
Diego Gas & Electric will be paying $2.50 a month for it until 2036.
So far, PG&E is the
only utility that’s made use of this pot of cash, drawing out a reported $150
million for some damages from the 2021 Dixie fire, which struck the Plumas
County town of Greenville and parts of four other counties.
Now lawsuits from
homeowners hit by the Eaton fire in and around Altadena, which burned more than
14,000 acres in eastern Los Angeles County during January’s massive suite of
firestorms, charges Edison with failure to turn off power to the transmission tower
just above the spot where that fire began. The suit claims Edison had ample
warning of extremely fire prone conditions, but did not shut down the juice.
Said one lawyer involved,
“Everything we’ve seen points to Edison’s power lines being the cause.”
The Eaton fire covered
more than 14,000 acres and burned 1,000-plus homes and businesses.
Some also charge Edison
equipment caused the much smaller Hurst fire in the Sylmar portion of Los
Angeles on the same day, with no definite ruling rendered yet.
Final damage figures from
the Los Angeles area fires are not certain. If any claims against it stick,
Edison may wind up drawing far more from the state Wildfire Fund than PG&E
has done so far. It might even exhaust the fund.
This again raises a
question that dogged the legislation creating the fund: Why should most
California electricity customers pay for damages caused by negligence or
malfeasance from the state’s monopoly investor-owned utilities?
At the same time, because
they did not contribute to the fund and their ratepayers don’t pay into it,
publicly owned utilities like the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
(DWP) cannot draw from the fund.
This means that if DWP
equipment is found to have started the even more widespread and damaging
Palisades fire, Los Angeles taxpayers could wind up with expanded tax bills.
That blaze, said to have begun on or near a remote trail in hills behind the
area, destroyed about half the homes in the Pacific Palisades district of Los
Angeles, plus many beachfront homes in Malibu.
There were initial reports
of fireworks-like noises in the vicinity of the ignition point about the time
flames began.
The upshot here appears to
be that the swiftly and crudely drawn legislation passed at the behest of
Newsom and his longtime benefactor PG&E could prove both unfair to most
consumers and inadequate to cover damages if one or two of the state’s utilities
are found at fault.
Meanwhile, insurance
companies will complain nonstop for years to come about the gigantic sums they
will have to pay out to cover affected policy holders. But much of the money
they dispense will likely be refunded by the utilities (or their customers) if
the wildfires are officially blamed on those outfits, as happened in several
Northern California wildfires where insurance companies still gripe about
alleged large losses they never really incurred.
It's a confused scene
bound to end up unfair to millions of Californians, coming on top of huge
damages already suffered by many thousands of burned-out residents.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book,
"The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the
Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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