California utility PG&E agrees to pay $55 million settlement to avoid fire prosecution
California utility PG&E agrees to pay $55 million settlement to avoid fire prosecution
The California utility Pacific Gas & Electric agreed to pay north of $50 million in connection with two major wildfires sparked by its equipment on Monday. One of those, last year’s Dixie Fire, was the largest in California’s long fire history and the country’s most expensive.
The settlement money will go toward fire prevention, but it’s also raising questions, given PG&E’s recent legal troubles. Because in exchange for paying all those millions of dollars, PG&E is getting out of criminal charges for fires that state investigators have already concluded were the company’s fault.
William Abrams and his family lost their home almost five years ago in a wildfire in Northern California’s Sonoma County.
He’s upset about this week’s deal, which protects PG&E from “facing charges” for one major wildfire and dismisses them in another. “They decided to settle rather than press charges, and that’s no way to pursue justice,” Abrams said.
The deal calls for PG&E to hire more line inspectors and tree trimmers and to fund an “independent safety monitor.”
“What we felt was this was a better mechanism for accountability,” said Jill Ravitch, the District Attorney of Sonoma County.
This deal was the best she and other small county prosecutors could get, she said, adding that they asked for help from Rob Bonta, California’s Attorney General, but that he declined.
“The attorney general could step forward and could take these cases on a statewide basis. The Attorney General’s Office has many, many more resources than we do at the county level,” Ravitch said.
In a statement, the Attorney General’s office denied ever getting a request for help from Ravitch.
Even if criminal charges had been pursued, accountability is tough to achieve when PG&E has so much turnaround at the top, according to Steve Weissman, who teaches utility regulation at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
“Past officers are gone. No one goes to prison,” he said. “So it’s not immediately clear that this is going to be something that is going to spur dramatic improvement within the company,” he said. In response to a request for comment, PG&E pointed to a company press release about the settlement.
Weissman notes charges in these cases are still worth pursuing and PG&E does face the prospect of four more for manslaughter in another major fire. That case is also being litigated by county prosecutors, not the attorney general.
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