Operator: Voting meeting on this day,
September 10th, 2020.
I would now like to turn the call over to President Batjer.
Thank you, ma'am, you may begin.
-: Thank you operator and good morning, everyone.
We need to first establish a quorum.
Agenda clerk, can you please call the roll.
-: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Present.
-: Commissioner (beep)
-: Here.
-: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Here.
-: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Present.
-: President Batjer.
-: Here.
Thank you.
We have established a quorum.
Welcome to the California public utilities Commission.
I'm calling this meeting of September 10th, 2020
public agenda number 3470 to order.
Due to the Coronavirus pandemic
and the shelter in place order,
we are conducting today's business meeting online
and by remote participation.
The meeting is live streamed on the CPUC's website.
You can view the meeting at ww.adminmonitor,
all one word .com/ca/cpuc.
Public engagement is critical to the CPUC process.
If you wish to make a public comment, dial (800) 857-1917
and enter pass code 9899501 and press star one.
You will be placed into a queue and the operator
will take your name and organization if appropriate.
You will be called upon to speak
when we get to the public comment period in today's agenda.
If you encountered difficulty calling
into the public telephone line, please email
votingmeetinghelp,
all one word, votingmeetinghelp@cpusi.ca.gov.
Okay, I would like to start this meeting by recognizing
that many of the people we serve are emerging
from the major, de-energization events across the state
due to extreme weather events.
And many fellow Californians are contending
with the raging fires as we speak.
Please know that we have been monitoring these events
and the utilities actions for several days
and have been in contact
with local government representatives.
In approximately 10 days, we will have after action reports
from the utilities, which will give parties, the public
and the CPUC, the opportunity to fully assess
their actions during this difficult period.
In addition, later in today's meeting,
we will have reports and discussion
with the three major electric utilities
on their customer outreach for these events.
The Commission would also like to thank Cal Fire
and the many first responders for the incredible work
they have done and are doing across the state to save lives,
property and animals from the dreadful wildfires
we are experiencing.
Now, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge
the 10th anniversary of the pipeline explosion in San Bruno,
a tragedy that took eight lives,
including the life of our colleague, Jackie Greg,
injured 58 people, destroyed 38 homes and damaged 70 more.
As many are aware, an investigation
conducted by the federal regulators identified
a number of elements that led
to the Pacific gas and electric PG&E's pipeline explosion,
including falsified reports by PG&E
and insufficient oversight by the CPUC.
Since then, the CPUC has taken a series of actions
to hold PG&E accountable and to improve our safety oversight
all with the focus on ensuring public safety
in the immediate and longterm.
And nearly 10 years since the report, CPUC regulation
and oversight has become more proactive
through a multi-billion dollar pipeline safety testing
and replacement program.
We've increased staff citation authority,
increased frequency of inspections,
and more than tripled our state, our staff of gas
safety engineers.
Our enhanced focus on safety has been an ongoing effort
and has involved the hard work of our dedicated staff.
Our improvements and advancements
cannot right the wrongs of the past,
it can help ensure the similar tragedies
do not occur in the future.
I also want to acknowledge and thank Senator Hill
for his leadership on this issue.
Together, this Commission and his office have worked
as thought partners in holding the CPUC
and PG&E accountable.
These lessons have and continue to guide us
to develop stronger safety measures.
Yesterday, we held an event to remember the life
of our colleagues and others who lost their lives that day.
And as we move forward,
I assure you that the CPUC will remain steadfast
in its commitment to fulfilling this mission
of ensuring that safe, clean, and affordable service
is provided to the utility customers.
I also want to take a moment to report again,
the results of the August 31st Commission meeting,
pursuant to government code 11126.3F.
The Commission took action during its August 31st, 2020
closed session to dismiss the executive director,
Alice Devins by a roll call vote and reconvened
in a public session and reported out on August 31st, 2020.
Pursuant to government code 11125.2,
we are again, reporting today that Ms. Devins was dismissed
as executive director by the following
roll call vote:
Genovese Shiroma, yes.
Martha Guzman Aceves, yes.
Cliff Wrecks, yes.
Glenn Randolph, yes.
Marybel Batjer, yes.
Rachel Peterson will be serving as acting executive director
of the CPUC.
She joined the CPUYC in 2011, and most recently served
as deputy executive director for safety enforcement
and policy.
She also served as chief of staff
to Commissioner Leanne Randall,
and as an advisor to previous Commissioners.
Prior to serving as deputy executive director,
Rachel served as the acting director
of the safety policy division.
My fellow Commissioners and I are grateful
for and encouraged by Rachael's willingness
to serve in this role.
Rachel is a proven policy
and organizational management leader.
We look forward to working with Rachel
in leading the CPUC forward.
I would also like to take this opportunity
to inform the public that assistant chief administrative
law judge, Michelle Cook will be serving
as acting deputy executive director
for the administrative services division.
We are thankful for Michelle's leadership
and effective management over the last several weeks
as she performed many of the duties
of the executive director.
She ensured the steady flow of our operations,
and we are fortunate that she too has been willing
to serve the Commission so admirably and faithfully,
and that we thank her for accepting
yet another new assignment.
Lastly, I'd like to acknowledge the conservation efforts
made by the Californians this past weekend.
At the end of last week and into the weekend,
the state experienced another climate change
fuel heat storm.
This second prolong heat storm within three weeks,
again, required a collective effort
to make the state's energy needs.
The energy demand over the weekend was record setting.
This record demand combined with the loss of some generators
and transmission capacity due to ongoing wildfires
required many people across the state to pull together
to help avoid outages.
Residents, turn the thermostats up,
they did many other conservation efforts
like not washing their clothing or dishes
during 3:00 p.m to 9:00 p.m,
many businesses conserved and let on backup power.
The United States Navy even told many of their ships
off shore power.
They help ensure the state could ride out the event.
Global warming and these extreme heat events
are coming out of staffs and furiously.
The impacts of global warming are here
and are happening now.
We are adapting in real time and we will continue to adapt
our policies and programs and work with other energy
agencies to ensure customers have reliable power
in a climate changed world.
On behalf of the CPUC and the inter-agency effort,
we have been a part of deeply thank residential
and industrial customers for their conservation efforts
last weekend in the midst of the wildfires and the pandemic.
I would also like to remind the public that the CPUC
is working with the California independent system operator
and the California energy Commission
on a joint investigation, into the root causes
of the events of August 14th and 15th
that we intend to deliver to the Governor later this month.
So with that, we will now turn to public comment.
If you wish to make a public comment
and you have already dialed into the public comment
telephone line, please press star one to get
into the public comment to queue.
CPUC ghouls do not allow for parties in proceedings
to speak about open proceedings.
The public can make comments addressing items
on the regular agenda and including items
not on the agenda today.
Please note that there will not be public comment
on items three, four, 14, and any item
on the closed session agenda.
Each member of the public will have two minutes to speak.
With that guidance in mind, I welcome today's speakers
and I will now turn to the operator
to open the public comment line.
Operator: Thank you, the public comment line is now open.
Our first speaker is David McCord, a citizen.
So you may go ahead.
McCord: Hi, this is Dave McCord.
I'm a rate payer in El Cerrito,
and I want to ask to thank staff for holding item 20
on CCA payments and financial security instruments
through October eight.
CCAs have been here since 2010 and have proved
to be solid financially and to provide substantial
local services.
They maintain cash reserves and their bond ratings
are investment grade while PG&E's is not.
On micro grids and rulemaking in 1909009
to facilitate their commercialization.
Development of micro grids should encourage the CCAs
or local governments who are closer to their disadvantaged
and vulnerable communities to take the lead on citing.
And they must get the full and quit cooperation of the IOUs
to interconnect.
We need to push the legislature to allow interconnection
of elements across streets.
Rule 218 of the public utilities code
now restrict cities in making essential facilities
and services resilient to power outages.
As we're seeing climate change is making this
ever more essential with tinder dry forests.
Thank you.
I'm done.
-: Thank you, Mr. McCord.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Senator Jerry Hill.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Hill: Well, good morning, President Batjer
and Commissioners.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak this morning
and to remember the Californians,
the members of my community who died tragically
10 years ago.
I and in my community are not alone in this grief.
As you mentioned, a president of Batjer,
the Commission lost Jackie Gregg and her daughter,
Janessa that day.
Jackie had worked at the Commission for 21 years,
and I know she is still fondly remembered
by those that worked alongside of her.
We also lost Lavonne Bullish and Greg Bullish
and Will Bullish, Jessica Morales, Elizabeth Torres
and James Franco.
We vowed 10 years ago to never forget.
And I called today to say their names
and remember their family and friends and our community.
The explosion and the corruption and criminality
that was uncovered afterward did not,
and does not define my community.
Rather it's strengthened us.
We follow never forget with never again.
And I can't emphasize this enough,
this drive to insuring a tragedy
like the San Bruno explosion never happens again
was not mine alone or not even mine to begin with.
This drive came from the citizens of San Bruno,
the community who elected me to serve them.
The mayor, the council, managers and attorneys
who fought every day on all fronts in the courts,
at the Commission and in the legislature
to ensure justice and dignity for those eight lives lost
and to secure a future where no other community
in California would face a similar fate.
It was that drive from my constituents
that motivated me every day of my legislative career.
And I know that it motivates many of you
in your work at the Commission every day,
because you recognized that lives on the line
with each decision that you make.
Hold that responsibility with the humility
and gravity it deserved.
That is what we remember today.
The eight lives lost 10 years ago and the charge
to honor their lives every day by your actions.
Never forget and never again.
Thank you, Madam president, and thank you Commissioners
for all of your hard dedicated work.
-: Thank you so much, Senator Hill for your remarkable work
for your constituents and for the state of California.
We're honored by you calling today
and thank you for remembering the eight wonderful souls
who lost their lives tragically.
Thank you so much, Senator.
-: Thank you, Madam president.
(beep)
Hill: Thank you.
Bye bye.
-: Operator, the next caller please.
Operator: Our next caller is Laura Rosenberger
Hyder, a rate payer.
You may go ahead.
Laura: Hi, I'm a resident of Fresno.
I'm opposing item 20, decreasing the fees on CPAs.
The CPA should be treated equal to IOUs
and not pay excessive PCIA cost.
Stop charging micro grids and other customers
the transmission access charges when they don't use
the transmission grid and CCAs have demonstrated
high economic and environmental stewardship.
They had greater than 98% reliability
towards zero emission micro grids that are available.
And also my grids get more renewable energy
and potentially more renewable backup on the grid.
With incentives for pilot studies and the exemption
from departing load charges, micro grids could be developed
by disadvantage vulnerable communities
and also the help of nearby CCAs.
We need a modern grid, not dangerous diesel generators.
Important, the type of micro grid projects
pose the emissions benchmark limit.
All right, thanks.
I'm finished.
-: Thank you, thank you very much.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Jim Stewart, a rate payer.
Sir you may go ahead.
Jim: Hello, this is Dr. Jim Stewart,
an energy consultant.
Thanks President Batjer for recognizing the climate crisis.
We are indeed in horrible times, which will get worse,
but we need to move forward in spite of this
and we need more renewable energy.
We need more micro grids.
The people of Calistoga and Nevada City are much safer now
because their key government services have not been shut off
in these power shut offS.
And you can do this throughout California
by establishing some separate tariffs,
maybe with sub tariffs that can cover the more types
of micro grids than the narrowly staff focused proposal.
We need to have these micro grids enabled
beyond just critical facilities or high fire areas.
And we can move off of these diesel generators
with the use of the batteries and solar.
And all of this is made uneconomic
by the fact that you trudge the local sources
transmission access charges,
even though they don't use the transmission.
It's time for you to end this inequity and enable people
to install these kinds of locally powered micro grids.
We also want you to not add more fees to CCAs.
That item 20, I'm glad you postponed it.
But the point is that it's time for the CPUC
to honor the CCA as important partners to the IOUs
and not punish them with more costs.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, Dr. Stewart.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Glenn Prom, a citizen.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Glenn: Good morning Commissioners, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
-: Okay, my comments relate to item number 10
on today's agenda regarding timeline 6975.
I wanted to voice my opposition to the recommended action
for two reasons, community impact and public safety.
When you travel the Palomar airport road
in San Marcos Boulevard corridor from interstate five
to state highway 78, this is the only stretch
of above ground power lines in that nine mile corridor.
Replacing the existing power lines with taller
more congested poles will adversely impact the aesthetics
of this corridor and reduce property values
of the surrounding homes.
Regarding public safety, the staff report says
there are no safety considerations
associated with this decision.
I think any citizens who have lost their homes
or loved ones to fires caused by down power lines
would disagree with that assessment.
I know the residents in the vicinity of this project
don't agree with that assessment.
Public safety power shutdowns were instituted for a reason.
Above ground power lines, poses significant danger
to the public during certain weather conditions.
I realized that undergrounding all above ground power lines
is neither practical nor affordable,
but replacing an above ground power line
with a new above ground power line is foolish.
In our society, this would be called bad judgment.
In the eyes of the law, this would be called negligence.
Let's learn from history, let's learn from the fires
we're experiencing across the state.
Let's learn from the problems Pacific gas and electric
is facing due to their handling of above ground power lines.
Placing an item of such importance and community sensitivity
on a consent calendar is dismissive and disrespectful
to the community that will be severely impacted
by this project.
Part of the CPUCS's mission is to ensure the public safety
is looked after.
Please fulfill this aspect of your job.
Don't approve this project.
Require a full environmental impact report
and public safety review.
Everybody thinks the systems they've designed are safe
until we learn the hard way that they aren't.
Thank you for your time and please vote no on this item.
-: Thank you very much.
The next caller, please.
Operator.
Operator: Our next caller is Tom Permosh,
a Rancho Dorado homeowners association.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Tom: Hi, good morning Commissioners.
My name's Tom Permosh and I live in the Rancho Dorado
neighborhood.
I'd like to adjust the dress it agenda item 10.
I think it's important for you to realize how unified
the Rancho Dorado and San Elijo Hills communities are
along with the city of San Marcos
in requesting an environmental impact report be conducted
before granting SDGs request.
Approximately 3000 families live in our two communities.
Our unity is the evidence and the over 1500 comments
submitted online, petition submitted with 266 signatures
requesting environmental impact report
to explore alternatives, including
a direct underground route and 53 individuals who spoke
at two public hearings held in San Elijo Hills
and the San Marco city hall on office on April 30th, 2019.
The record shows that the clear consensus was a request
to conduct an EIR before SDG needs requests.
Additionally, 15 public agencies and officials utilities
and interest groups, including the city of San Marco,
city of Carlsbad, as well as the mayor and council member
of San Marco's echo this request to conduct an EIR.
Our goal is simple, we want to ensure that whatever decision
is made, is made in the best interest of the public,
not just a small group of people.
We're not asking the project to be stopped,
we are asking that given the impact of our environment,
such as the increased wildfire risk that everyone agrees
will result if the proposed 12 mile above ground route
is approved, that a thorough consideration of alternatives
be considered by conducting an EIR.
Even though we disagree with the conclusion
of the final M&D, that was there were no significant impacts
that cannot be mitigated, we all agree
that this should not eliminate the option
of conducting an EIR, not being required (beep)
does not prevent you from conducting an EIR.
It's within your discretion to mandate an EIR,
which is what our community and the city are asking you
to do today.
Thank you for your time.
I appreciate it.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Claire Broom, a rate payer.
Ma'am, you may go ahead.
Claire: Good morning, President Batjer
and Commissioners.
I'm Dr. Claire Broom.
Thank you for investigating the outages and PSPSs.
We need you to help prevent them by rapidly increasing
clean energy and storage on the local distribution grid,
behind the meter rooftop, solar and micro grids,
and in front of the meter, medium scale solar plus storage.
The IOUs ongoing campaign alleges that rooftop solar
is a cost shift.
This is disinformation.
The electric grid intrinsically shifts costs,
city dwellers subsidize rural dwellers,
who couldn't pay the full cost of serving them.
AB 327, directed the CPUC that total benefits
to all customers and the electrical system
are approximately equal to the total cost.
For you to balance the cost and benefits,
you need to quantify the benefits.
Where is the societal cost test analysis
with the benefits of rooftop solar promised since 2015
for the 2019 IRP, where are you counting
the monetary resilience benefits of micro grid?
Why are the IOUs charging transmission access charges
for energy generated on the distribution grid,
which does not use long distance transmission.
Business as usual has not worked.
Step back from the stove pipe proceedings,
and plan to accomplish your real objectives
for the state of California.
Yes, partner with IOUs,
but using performance based regulation,
not investor driven regulation.
Back to the public, local government CCAs
and environmental groups, they're the ones
who can partner with you to solve this crisis now.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you, Dr. Broom.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Jennifer Tanner
with Indivisible, California Green Team.
You may go ahead.
Jennifer: Can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
Jennifer: Thank you.
President Batjer, thank you very much for your comments
and acknowledgement of climate change.
I know your heart is in the right place and thank you.
A big group of us had a powerful meeting
with Joshua Honeycutt yesterday about micro grids.
20 groups, 20 energy leaders focused on the same issues,
micro grids to help solve the wildfire and shut off problems
of California.
Joshua was clearly impressed and said he had never seen
such a group like this and so well representing the issues.
We could see how impressed he was.
But then he said, but it will take a long time,
it's complicated and the same old story from the CPUC.
So captive to profit focused utilities
rather than the constituents of California.
Even when the right idea is present,
the CPUC process makes it very difficult to implement.
California used to be the fifth largest economy
and I don't know where we are now.
Failing at PG&E was treated as an emergency,
but the real emergency facing California
is not being treated as an emergency at all.
We should be creating micro grids and terrace
to promote micro grids for safety and clean energy,
not diesel generators.
Bureaucratic excuses old, and I'm tired of it.
And so should we all be.
We fought to have new leadership after Michael Picker,
and there is now much politeness and these open hearings,
and that's really good.
But there's no real meaningful change,
just the same old excuses.
California is losing its climate leadership position.
Did you see the sky yesterday?
The CPUC is basically telling us, the public,
we just need to deal with fires and blackouts.
Where is the bold vision for a new grid?
We're a dinosaur and you know what happens to them,
they died from climate crisis and inability to adapt.
Thank you for listening.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Tad Sanders, a citizen.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Ted: Alright, thank you very much.
My name's tad Sanders and of course I'm also a rate payer.
I live in Santa Rosa near the Harville road,
PG&E substation, which is located in a tier two fire zone,
which also burned in 2017.
On June 18th of this year, concerned citizens
from our neighborhood net with a PG&E senior manager,
Joe Horak about 18 two megawatt diesel generators
being moved to the substation.
Because the sub station is in an unsafe tier two fire zone,
we were told that they would be stored there temporarily,
but wouldn't be directly powered there.
It would be located in Rincon Valley, tier one areas
to provide smaller micro grids.
By running underground lines from the substation
to the tier one areas.
Due to fire danger, our tier two area above Badger road
would not have access to the micro grids during PSPS events.
Within the last few weeks, we noted that PG&E
connected the diesel generators directly
to the Harville road substation.
During the flex alert on the afternoon of September 6th
2020, they fired up all 18 generators.
The noise and volume of diesel emissions could be smelled
a quarter mile away, I'm sorry,
and the noise could be heard half mile away.
We spoke to Joe Horak and learned that the generators
were powering the Harville substation
during rolling blackouts.
Outside of the approved emergency use
for a PSPS event.
For more than 30 consecutive hours, PG&E ran generators
at the Harville substation to power the grid.
All Cal ISO simultaneously declared no power outages
in our area.
Not only does this substation sit a few hundred feet
from residences that were subjected to constant noise
and toxic emissions, but it is adjacent to brush Creek
and on top of a zone one aquifer.
The prospect of permanently contaminating groundwater,
electrical issues, not just for our County,
but for the entire state.
Fire danger, environmental impact,
groundwater contamination, extreme noise and toxic emissions
violating AB 25 88 or why this location should not be used
as a substation micro grid.
Thank you for your time.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: The next caller is Elliott Baum,
a San Marcos resident.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Elliot: Thank you very much committee in taking the time
to hear all of our comments.
I am a resident in San Marcos and in the area
where you're timeline, 6975, which is agenda item 10
will be or is being proposed.
Myself, my neighbors, my community,
we're all asking for an EIR to be used
and done for this project.
Since 2000, there's been at least four fires
in California of over a million acres lost
and specifically two in the last five years in the area.
And there's one currently in Alpine.
So the concern of our community is certainly life
and making sure that all things being considered,
this is a highly congested area.
Many residents, it'll be going through
and affecting not only residents,
but two local high schools, San Marcos high school,
High tech high.
I just think that there's too many people and property
in the way of this project to go above ground.
Our community has spoken to SPG&E
as well as other community leaders to come up with
and fortunately have several different options,
underground being one of them, alternate routes.
Plus also too, I don't think that the rise in solar
has been accounted for.
Just in the last year alone, 10 of my closest neighbors
in my community of Bruce, I can see have added solar.
So it doesn't seem like that is also being taken
into consideration toward the amount of power
that is proposed to be needed for this area.
So again, I thank you for your time
and myself and my community hope that you guys
will consider an EIR in this matter.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Katherine Erickson,
a citizen.
You may go ahead.
Katherine: Yes, please.
Madam president, esteemed CPU Commissioners.
My name is Katherine Erickson and I'm a resident
of the Rancho Dorado community and San Marcos
where the TL 6975 projects for agenda item number 10
is being proposed and we realize you do not have
to listen to us, but we are asking for you to listen
to the right data.
The data that you've been provided by the M&D
is incorrect and subjective.
We do not have the time to provide details in this forum,
but we can do it in a heartbeat.
The CPUC has dismissed every valid fact
that we have presented.
The contractors for hire do not know our communities,
do not frequent our parks that are referenced
in your report.
We know them all, we can provide the full picture.
If your limited view of the data says the glass
is half full, then how do we convince you
that it is half empty?
I have been working in IT for over 35 years.
My database has provide valuable services for banking,
health, insurance, defense, manufacturing.
If my database has has incorrect information,
a bank account might show overdraft and it is not.
People maybe denied health insurance in dire circumstances.
Government contracts and circuit chips might malfunction
causing computer outages and military interruption.
Accuracy is paramount in proper functioning of society.
Rubber stamping this project now without requesting an EIR
is akin to NASA sending astronauts into space
with incorrect launch data.
Abraham Lincoln suffered about a dozen major setbacks
before finally achieving his goal of president.
None of his setbacks caused negative ripples in communities
that he never visited the way this does.
Please perform due diligence, get the full facts
and stop the launch of this unsafe failed rocket into space.
Thank you so much.
-: Thank you, Ms. Erickson.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Bridget Palmer, a citizen.
You may go ahead.
Bridget: Hello, thank you so much for listening
to our comments.
It really makes me feel good as a citizen
to know that people in your position are available
to listen and hear.
I also live in Santa Rosa, California
in the same neighborhood that Tad does.
And he stated it much more detailed than I'm able to do,
but I wanted to chime in.
It's very scary having all those diesel generators
right in the middle of our neighborhood.
And I personally feel betrayed by PG&E
because when we had the public meeting with them,
they promised us that they would not turn them all on
in that one spot, right in the middle of our neighborhood,
unless there was a very serious situation,
which they probably wouldn't even happen.
But instead when there wasn't any kind of a danger
to the community, they turned them all on,
they didn't give us any warning.
And I think Tad said that there's people living
a few hundred yards away,
there's people living like hundred feet away.
It's very, very loud.
It resonates in a...
We all live in a Valley.
So if the sound is contained in our valley and it echoes
and there's the fume and it's very disconcerting
to have that happening when we were basically promised
it wouldn't.
So now we don't know what's gonna happen next.
And I think that PG&E needs to be forced
to be communicate better and to keep their words,
that sort of thing.
Thank you for listening.
-: Thank you, Ms. Palmer.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Beverly Jackobee
with San Elijo hills community.
Your line is open.
Beverly: Thank you Commissioners.
In reference to TL 6975, I'd like to present these remarks.
I'm a homeowner and resident in the area,
which would be adversely impacted by this SDG&E project
at San Diego gas and electric as you know.
I have lived at my current address since 2002.
When I moved here, there were no nearby above ground
power lines visible from my home.
Since that time, the San Diego gas and electric company
installed a very large power transmission pole,
less than 100 feet from the rear of my property.
Now with the above referenced project,
SDG&E would install another above ground power line,
parallel to the existing one even closer to my home.
I am objecting to this proposal
for more than aesthetic reasons.
One, the area in San Marcos, where I live
is in a high fire danger zone.
In the 18 years, my family and I have lived here,
we have been evacuated several times due to brush fires,
which ultimately consumed nearby houses.
California exists in a year round fire season.
The wildfires that destroyed entire communities
will come again.
The above ground power lines have been cited
by fire authorities as contributing to the fires
up and down the state.
Such as happened in paradise California last year.
If as some will argue, burying power lines
would be too costly for the utility companies,
consider the costs of lives and property every fire season.
This SDG&E project will effectively double the fire risk
in our neighborhoods.
I believe there are other transmission routes
available in this area which do abut existing neighborhoods
and that SDG&E has an obligation to seriously consider them.
Secondly, on a personal note, I have had occasion
to have my home appraised as of the date
of my husband's death in 2018.
The appraisal deemed the existing power transmission pole
directly behind my house lessen the value
by at least $50,000.
But another adjacent power line would do to the value
of my home and that of my neighbors is unknown,
but sure to be extremely negative.
Thank you for listening.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Rosemary Panther.
San Elijo residents.
You may go ahead.
Rosemary: I am interested in item 10.
I'm voicing my opposition.
I am asking for a full environmental impact report.
We're watching the two million acres destroyed
in California this day.
San Elijo Hills is called a cul-de-sac community.
All the subdivisions lead one way in, and one way out.
They're ending.
We happen to have only three roads that lead in
and out of San Elijo Hills.
San Elijo road comes in, double thousand Oaks goes over
and we have one going East to Escondido.
We have 4,279 children that go to school in our elementary,
two elementary schools and one middle school.
They have a stay in place order.
They cannot escape or leave their school
without being picked up by a guardian or a parent.
During the Coco's fire in 2014, Thousand Oaks road
was closed off.
That gave us one, two lane road going in and out
towards Escondido, which also had a fire by the way.
We could not exit that way.
This community of 8,000 or more people could only go out
San Elijo road.
There are four lanes, two lanes going out, two coming in.
We could only go out two lanes.
If you can imagine the fear that we all had
trying to get out of this hilly area with no exits.
It was very fearful.
All I can say to you is this is a very dangerous
fire situation for our community.
And I beg you to please reconsider.
Get an environmental report done for this
and don't vote this in for SDG&E, it is not right.
There is a wire that goes across San Elijo road.
If that wire had fallen, we would have had no way out.
I beg you, please consider this community.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Christine Kirshbaum,
a San Elijo Hills neighbor.
You may go ahead.
Christine: Hello, I'm kissing Kirshbaum.
I live in the San Elijo Hills community,
just like Rosemary and I'm just so moved,
I'm calling in same as to address agenda item number 10.
I'm just so moved by what she just said.
And the five of you must be sitting there listening to us
on the call saying this is all true.
But there are this many false, why did they not present
this information earlier?
That I'm just as strict as addressing
the aesthetics analysis.
The truth of is we address a lot of that
and the rest you has continued to learn
as this process has proceeded.
The bottom line is we lack the resources,
we're ordinary rate payers who don't have full time staff
and expert consultants available to conduct
an in depth analysis of over 8,000 pages made available
in this proceedings.
We have found and continue to find these discrepancy
and more disturbing facts over the course
of the last two years.
It is a hope that the five of you will see that
just based only on what we revealed that looking closely
at the aesthetics analysis.
You will see, you will not allow this project to go forward
before considering possible period all done this route.
We would not speaking to you today
if the most obvious era of this report to people who live
in the area of the project, leaving out Simmons family part
of the initial MND had not been made.
The submission was screaming out to us.
We were asking how could this have happened.
But it did happen and here we are today.
And to what we see the lack of credibility
in initial and final MND, the wildfire potential risk
in this area were 80% of 12 miles above ground lines
will be traversing through the highest basis zones
of Cal Fire.
But the fact that all parties agree,
the safer alternative they'll go underground.
And why would that alternatives not at least
be thoroughly evaluated before making this decision
that will impact the safety of 10 thousands of people
for generations to come.
My brother in law use to live in paradise.
Oh, I guess I'm done.
He lost his home and it's terrible.
He's still in depression.
And it would be awful to have said this would happen
to this community if we cannot learn from the mistakes
that happened in paradise.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next is kayle Seymour,
a Rancho Dorado resident.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Kayle: Yes, good morning to the CPUC Commissioners.
My name is Kayle Seymour, the home owner
here in Rancho Dorado, addressing item number 10.
We're asking at the very least that we simply,
this is reiterating what everybody's been talking about
this morning to have a full EIR environmental impact report
performed for researching alternatives,
like moving this power line project underground
or so that it passes along the public thoroughfare roadways
around our neighborhood instead of through it.
It's an already known fire prone area.
It's much safer to have power lines above pavement
and concrete sidewalks along these public roads
versus the known fire risk areas,
which include the natural areas of Carlsbad.
These natural areas that extend through our neighborhood
and westward to El Camino real are massive natural areas
that are not allowed to be cleared for the purposes
of fire mitigation and already burned back in may of 2014.
These power lines will pass once again,
over these tender boxes and increase the fire threat
to our neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods.
During these fires last year that I just mentioned 2014,
my family and I had evacuated our home
and we met the same gridlock.
They were talking about really at Rancho Santa Fe Melrose
less than a half a mile from our home.
In order to escape the smoke,
we ended up going through a blockade that was abandoned,
but not had been taken down, but it was no longer manned.
So we were able to get to safety through that route,
but would have succumb to the smoke and flames
and hundreds of others stuck in the gridlock,
had the fires moved eastward through San Elijo.
Rancher gratis recently been included
in high risk fire zone.
And not only have some insurance company canceled
home insurance in our neighborhood,
others refuse to insure us.
My home insurance personally, my home insurance has doubled
in the last three and half years.
It's increased from 1,138 to $2,247.
So I ask you please, to have this alternative looked into
so we can have the research done.
Why should our neighborhood be the subject
of hundreds of thousand dollars in reduced property value
with these additional power lines through them
to subsidize a project that could otherwise be done
another way when it could be shared and amortized
over the entire usage of the SDG&E power users.
Thank you for your time.
-: Caller, thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Victoria Cromer,
a San Elijo Hills resident, you may go ahead.
Vicky: Hi, my name is Vicki Cromer
and I'm opposed to agenda number 10, the SDG&E
additional power lines in San Marcos.
My husband and I were one of the first families
to live in highly populated San Elijo Hills since June.
Oh my phone's dying.
Oh, no, come on phone.
Hold on a second.
I'm sorry.
Since June, 2001, and we look out
over the existing power lines.
We are shocked to learn that SDG&E
is proposing additional line.
The power lines, lower property values,
and ruin the beautiful Valley views.
In 1996, five years before San Elijo was built,
parts of the Elephant forest, Encinitas, Carlsbad
and Lake San Marcos were destroyed
in the huge harmony Grove fire.
Of the 8,600 acres that burned nearly 50%
was where San Elijo Hills now stands.
This Valley has been identified by Cal Fire
as part of the fire hazard severity zones.
Since we moved in, we've been evacuated three times.
In 2014, the Coco's fire was just over the ridge
and we were evacuated, we sat for over an hour
in bumper to bumper traffic on San Elijo road,
the main road in and out.
If the winds changed, hundreds of people
would have been trapped in their cars.
It was terrifying.
Thousands of families in three schools
are in San Elijo Hills.
This year wildfires that burned over.
I'm sorry, it's really an emotional thing for me.
And a lot of people were scared.
This year wildfires and burned 2.5 million acres
in California.
There've been eight fatalities and over 3,700 structures
destroyed, two of the three largest fires in California
history are currently burning and we were not even
in fire season yet.
Say high temperatures and drying over seasons and years
and with global warming, the fires will only increase.
We are living in a tinderbox.
It's been proven that power line to cause fires
where people have lost their lives and property.
(beep) to do the right thing
and force the SDG&E to bury the power lines,
all power lines.
People have lost faith in government and large corporations
like SDG&E and they won't do the right thing
on their own, so you need to do it for them.
Avoid a tragedy, (beep)
request for more power line.
At least cough were an EIR.
Thank you for your time.
-: Thank you caller.
I appreciate very much your emotion.
Operator, the next caller please.
Operator: Our next caller is Dr. Jason Curry,
a Rancho Dorado resident.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Jason: Well, good morning, president and Commissioners.
My name is Dr. Jason Curry.
I'm a physician and a homeowner in the Rancho Dorado
neighborhood which is located in North County, San Diego.
I am also calling about agenda item number 10.
Today, you're hearing from several of our residents
in our community who strongly oppose this plan
by SDG&E to build new power lines through our community.
I would like to emphasize it that these transmission lines
are not just going along a highway,
these lines are being placed directly
through our neighborhoods next to our homes.
Numerous concerns are being shared today
regarding the property value impact in the wildfire risk.
There are several viable alternatives to this plan,
but such as undergrounding, but due to the increase costs,
they have rolled this out.
I'm calling today to emphasize one major point.
And that is the aesthetic impact of the new lines,
which is indeed a significant impact.
And therefore it should automatically trigger
environmental impact report.
And the initial and the final MND,
the aesthetics impact analysis is severely flawed.
And the initial MND, Simmons family park
was completely omitted from this analysis.
Simmons family park is the only public park
along the 12 mile proposed route of this new power line.
The park is situated at the top of a Hill
in our neighborhood.
After the public expressed outrage over this emission,
the park was included in the final MND.
However, the photograph of the park
that was used in the final analysis
to make that the conclusion of aesthetics
were only a less than significant impact
was taken facing the southward direction
away from the ocean.
I have to strongly note that the choice of both the position
and the camera direction of the photograph
was chosen by SDG&E.
This is a direct conflict of interest.
If the photograph taken with position facing westward,
then there would be an ocean view in that picture,
and then the aesthetic impact undeniably
be a significant impact, which should trigger
an automatic EIR.
My fellow neighbors are gonna be calling
with further facts and substantial evidence to support
a point that we plead with you
to have an environmental impact review.
Thank you so much for your time.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Peter Frye,
a Rancho Dorado resident.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Peter: Yes, good morning
and thank you for your time today.
And my name is Peter Frye.
I am a resident here in Rancho Dorado
where I've lived for the last 16 years.
I'm calling regarding agenda number 10
regarding the above line power lines proposed
to impact those San Marcos and San Elijo communities.
The residents of both San Marcos and San Elijo
provided over 1500 public comments
condemning this above ground power line expansion
for a variety of reasons, including safety of property lies,
environmental issues, aesthetics, financial impact
to property values.
I'd like to discuss a specific impact
as it relates to property values.
The property right next to the power lines on coast Avenue,
2166 coast recently sold for $960,500
after being on the market for over two years,
this home does have an ocean view as well as a view
of the existing hundred 20 foot steel power line.
This was a significant reduction in terms of its value
as compared to a similar model up the about 11 homes down,
which sold for approximately $135,000 more.
So, as you can see today with one set of power lines,
you got negative impact.
You're gonna add another set, obviously it's gonna have
a bigger impact.
Also recently, I had my home appraised to determine
a part of a refinancing and found that my home was valued
at approximately $110,000 less, similar in terms of its size
and value to other homes outside of the San Marco
San Elijo area.
So you can see this is real money and will have
a real impact to the community in both San Marcos
and San Elijo if this proposed project
is allowed to go through.
All we're asking is to provide for a full environmental
impact report before moving forward.
Thank you for listening.
Have a great day.
-: Thank you for calling.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Sarap Chandra,
a Rancho Dorado residents.
Sir you may go ahead.
Chandra: Good morning Commissioners.
My name is Sarap Chandra.
I live in branch of Dorado community in San Marcos.
I would like to address agenda item number 10.
When my subdivision was developed 20 years ago,
the builder was required by the city to dedicate
the highest point in our community to become a public park.
That park is Simmons family park.
They did this because they wanted to preserve its beauty.
The views from the park are probably the most scenic
in all North County.
We still enjoy the beautiful, expensive panoramic views
of the Pacific ocean, it's coastline, the Carlsbad lagoons,
the mountain tops to the North.
On a clear day, you can see some came on the Island
and Catalina Island some 60 miles off shore.
On a nightly basis, people are enjoying spectacular sunsets
from the West facing cement weaving bench
all from the grassy hill directly below.
I'm telling you about the Simmons family park,
because I want each of you to understand how important it is
to our community.
I can even still remember the view
before the current power lines were built in 2010.
At that time, I was surprised when those obscure polls
were replaced with the much larger current poles.
They seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
But this time, I'm aware of this proposed change
and I want to make sure my wife has said
that the damage already done in 2010
is not further compounded by loving mother set up
only the power lines that preferred to destroy
our wonderful natural resource.
Please consider other options
that will not create such a negative effect.
Thank you for your time.
Please vote no on item number 10.
Have a nice day.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is a Victor DFeCarra,
a citizen, sir you may go ahead.
Victor: Hi, I'm Victor DeCarra.
I'm calling about item 10 also.
I live at 2179 coast Avenue in the Rancho Dorado
development in San Marcos.
And I visited the nearby Simmons family park
every day of the week.
Thank you for this opportunity to express my views.
And the final ISMND on the project section 1.3 findings
is a summary provided by Lisa Forsaba, the project manager.
The section comprises three paragraphs
with a total of 399 words.
Second paragraph describes her evaluation of comments
regarding the visual aesthetic impact of the project.
She devotes 255 words, 64% of the entire finding section
to the topic.
She calls up by photographic simulations
and they put aside then because they, I'm quoting,
"Lack sufficient credibility to be considered
"a substantial evidence as no vantage point field of view
"or methodology for creating the simulations
"has been specified."
I am the person provided those photographic simulations.
All that information is readily available from me
for the asking.
The CPUC website for submitting the sponsor
supports uploads of photographs.
That page does not include or reference any guidelines
or best practices for documenting the photographs.
The upload process included my name and email address.
There is no effort made to gather them to seek information.
I was never contacted.
I am discouraged by and suspicious of a process
that has undisclosed rules.
I'm discouraged by and suspicious of a team
that failed to seek out critical missing information.
I encourage you to come to San Marcos and visit
Simmons Family park with me.
Stand on the walkway or sit on the bench
facing the Pacific ocean.
Use your own eyes to determine whether or not
the simulations are realistic.
Use your own eyes and determine whether or not
this additional transmission line would have substantial
adverse effect on the scenic Vista.
Please vote no, thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Anna Williams,
a Santa Rosa resident.
You may go ahead, ma'am.
Anna: Yes, can you hear me?
-: Yes, please, go ahead, caller.
Anna: Yes, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
Anna: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Yes, so my name is Anna Williams and thank you
for this opportunity to share concerns.
It is heartening to hear my fellow neighbors and citizens
eloquently speak on these matters.
I'm a resident of Santa Rosa.
I live right next to the PG&E substation on Harville road.
My concern as many of my neighbors share
is the placement and use of diesel generators
in order to power the grid.
My neighbor, Karen Sanders has written an excellent letter,
outlining the specific details of our situation.
And I would just like to add on to that by requesting
that PG&E not be allowed to continue this process.
At this point, all of our complaints that we have shared
with PG&E in a face to face meeting, emails and phone calls
have been responded with vague comments from PG&E,
such as will give us a year to do something different.
As citizens and environmentalist,
we ask that there is oversight and communications
to residents, and a timeline degree to,
for establishing a better response to our energy
and climate concern.
Our trust in PG&E is very slim and we look to you for help.
Thank you for all of your work.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is David Elmer,
with San Elijo resident.
Sir, you may go ahead.
David: Yes, thank you very much.
Good morning Commissioners.
I too am calling about the SDG&E tightline 6975
item number 10.
And although I do echo a lot of the sentiment
of my neighbors who were talking about the aesthetics
and even the safety components of on the fire safety
and evacuation from San Elijo Hills area where I live.
The one area I wanna talk about is the feasibility side.
I do understand that really a big part of your position
in the CPUC is to really make sure
that our rates are protected.
That all users and rate payers are protected
against elevated fees, not related to power consumption.
And I do recognize that and appreciate that.
But the one thing I'd like to point out
is if we were to go underground as been suggested,
and I know that it's been pushed aside the plan,
but I did some rough numbers based on some research I did
where I looked at it, if it were to be an additional
$30 million to do this,
which is an estimate that I did find somewhere potentially,
that there's 1.4 million meters in San Diego
that SDG&E does service.
And that $30 million depreciate it over 30 years.
It brings it to about a million dollars a year
on their books for this project amounts to about 6 cents
a month per meter.
And that's some of the numbers I think,
needs to be looked at because I do know also SDG&E
is self-insured.
And if there was an incident that were to happen
and let's say, and we know up in paradise,
that was a 60, I believe it was a $16.5 billion lawsuit.
But even if there was just one here that amounted
for just half a billion or $500 million,
that alone amortized over that same 1.4 million meters
for 30 years is a dollar a month versus 6 cents a month,
I'm sorry, 6 cents a month for the additional construction.
So it's sometime (beep)
fruit for you all to look at it in the short term,
it might be slight increase.
But in the longterm, I think your due diligence
is to protect those rates.
And this is a way to do that is to go underground
and protect us that way.
So I do thank you for your time
and everyone please stay safe during this madness.
So thank you very much.
-: Well, I thank you for your call.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Kurt Schwind, a citizen.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Kurt: Thank you.
Good morning and thank you for taking my call.
I too am a homeowner in the Rancho Dorado community,
and I'm calling to voice my opposition to agenda item 10.
I take exception with the MND report that was presented
initially and in the followup for a major reason,
I'm a project management professional,
and I know that a key to a successful project
is making sure that all of the stakeholders have been heard.
But no stakeholders were consulted,
the stakeholders, meaning the community
were consulted in the development of this report.
They have key findings of little or no aesthetic impact
and little or no fire risks.
And again, as a project management professional,
I can tell you that without consulting the community,
how can you say that there's no aesthetic impact.
I happen to live along San Marcos Boulevard
where the current wooden pole power lines
run directly behind my yard on the far side of a brick wall.
They're gonna replace those wooden poles
with large metal poles, twice the size of the existing poles
with twice as many power lines.
How can they say that's no aesthetic impact on my home,
no impact on my property value.
Not to mention the fact that the current power lines
exist in a five to six foot wide landscaped area
on the far side of the wall.
Next to that is a sidewalk and next to that six lane,
San Marcos Boulevard.
There's nowhere to put these new power lines
except inside the wall on my property closer to my home.
So you're gonna put a twice as large of an object
with twice as many power lines, 20 feet closer to my home
with the span of the power lines practically over my roof.
And you're telling me that there's no aesthetic impact
on my house.
That's not gonna affect my property value.
That's ridiculous.
So that's one of my arguments against this.
In addition, I recently saw a billboard on I78
from SDG&E that says anything it takes to keep you safe.
Well, maybe that should say anything it takes
as long as it meets minimum safety requirements
and is the cheapest solution.
The reality is we have to stop looking at safer
and start looking at (beep)
There's no way to know what is the safest solution
without a full environmental impact.
Thank you for your time.
And please do not allow this to go through without
a full environmental impact report.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller.
Operator: And thank you.
Before we go to the next caller, if you wish to speak
during the public comment period, please press star one,
unmute your phone and clearly provide your name
and organization when prompted.
Our next caller is Dave Lee, East San Marcos resident.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Dave: Good morning, Commissioner.
I'm Dave Lee, I'm also live in San Marco.
And I will echo too many people have called earlier
regarding agenda number 10.
I'm also the light to ask you for a full environmental
impact report.
I wanna share my personal experience with you.
A few years ago, I met, it was a windy day.
I was at work and I was told that we have to evacuate
because of the wildfire.
The way that one started with the chief touching
the power line and we started a wildfire.
So I was told to go home.
As I was driving home, my work is only 15 miles
from my house.
I received the call from the school telling me
that I have to go pick up my kid
because they have to go outside on my house.
I say parents off to, I can tell you that,
even now there was one may 15 mile drive,
that was the longest drive I have ever experienced
not knowing whether my kid is safe and on house
and I can't get home.
I really wanna express my concern of the additional
power line and to close us off increased probability
of wildfire.
I'm begging you to come see the a full environmental impact
report to study.
Thank you, Commissioner.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, is there anybody else on the line?
Operator: Yes, our next caller is Chuck Rozelle,
a rate payer.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Chuck: Thank you.
I'm Chuck Rozelle and I'm a resident of Oakland.
I'm calling regarding the micro grid proceedings.
The recent blackouts highlight the fact
that there's plenty of installed power.
It's just not addressable an emergency.
Now that the PSPS sees it as a POTUS,
there's a similar issue.
The CPUC is authorized controversial diesel powered
alternatives, which failed to integrate existing resources.
It should be apparent that disruptive solutions
are being deployed concurrent with utility industry,
desperately trying to support an increasingly irrelevant
infrastructure.
That infrastructure is not only susceptible to wildfires,
but also to an unresponsive mix of current generation.
In business school, a classic case study
is an industry's response to disruptive technology.
The traditional solution is to slow the process down
by every means available.
In this case, the state of California cannot wait.
A robust distributed energy solution,
including micro grid capability is the solution
to the problem.
Fortunately, the California energy Commission
and the municipal directed CCAs have been aggressively
exploring and deploying these solutions.
Policy is not keeping up.
For too long, state energy policy has been dominated
by the IOUs and their ability to drive
well-meaning proceedings to their liking.
It's time for that model to change.
I strongly urge the CPUC to utilize the opportunity
afforded by track two of the SB 1339 proceeding
to change the paradigm and listen to the voices
that count be responsive to California residents
and the municipalities that represent them.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Keon Kerner, a citizen.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Kerner: Hi, I'm Keon Kerner,
I'm a resident of Rancho Dorado,
and I agree with all the points of my neighbors
regarding the aesthetics issues, the property value issues,
the fire safety issues.
I wanted to raise a separate point regarding health issues
personal to us.
We, our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia
when she was three and through a lot of research and study,
we believe it was linked to the high EMF level
in our home at the time.
So in searching for new homes,
we were diligent and checking for low EMS
and obviously power lines got huge amounts of EMS.
I've tested the ones in our neighborhood,
they are already very high.
And when we were looking for our home,
we pass on many homes because they were too close
to power lines.
So worried that they're gonna double the size
of these power lines and double the power water
running through them and run them closer to people's homes,
I think presents a health risk to the people
in the neighborhood that should be raised as well.
So that's a huge concern for us that I wanted to voice
to you guys.
I appreciate your time.
Thank you.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Catalina Elmer
with a San Elijo Hills resident.
You may go ahead.
Catalina: Hello, can you hear me?
Hello?
-: Yes, we can hear you.
Catalina: Okay, I was so emotional just now
Sharing about the leukemia.
I'm talking about item 10 and I would like to talk further
about the rental opposed to preserve.
I live adjacent to a preserve and we often use it
for our enjoyment or hiking.
The trail is elevator will be used in the West,
including the Pacific ocean.
However, when I let them form the TPUC reports and the trail
is not part of the preserve and that it will not be impacted
by the new power lines, I had to get involve,
specifically the initial MND and table 3.1-3,
rental costs to preserve another column view obstruction.
It says no project is located to the East behind the viewer.
However, this is not true and much pointed out
in the public comments and acknowledged in the final MND
and the staff's response to his public comments
on page 183 of the final MND.
To make matters worse, it turns out the initial MND
on page 422, under the analysis of the recreation says
rental cost of reserve is comprised of 1035 acres
of non-continuous protected areas in Santa Marcos.
The some section of segment two would cross
through this preserve.
Even the staff own report that segment two
crosses over the preserve.
And yet the final MND does not reflect that fact
in table 3.1/3.
To top it all off in the final MND
in their conclusions of these fabrics impact.
And this does on page 295, they say in summary,
for the scenic vistas in Rancho Dorado preserve
and diamond 12 preserve, the project would not be visible
in the view and not impact on these scenic basis
would occur.
This is 100% incorrect, and yet this was the basis
for the conclusion (beep)
was less than significant.
Given this example and how Eric has pointed it out
and ignored, please mandate an EIR,
and please do consider our fire danger.
We have over 5,000 students in two middle schools,
two elements, (beep)
Day care units here in San Elijo Hill,
one road, two ways out.
Thank you so much for your time.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Patrick Hadley
with San Elijo Hills and San Marco owner.
You may go ahead, sir.
Measurement.
-: The measurement.
Patrick: Hello there.
So, yeah, so I am obviously, I'm calling about number 10
as well and I oppose the above ground power lines
for many of the same reasons that many of our other callers
have said.
My family was also evacuated a few years ago,
coming home, not knowing after three days being out
what we were gonna come home to.
Fortunately, the firefighters did a great job
and our houses were saved that time.
But we moved here at 10 years ago from New Hampshire,
a tiny little state of New Hampshire.
And guess what they have there,
they have underground power lines there.
The fact that California is supposed to be the leader
in green technology and all these other things.
And we're still talking about giant, ugly,
dangerous power lines, it's embarrassing.
And we need to do better and we need you to listen
to our local voices because we are the ones
that will live with the consequences of your decisions.
So we need you to be a leader,
have some longterm vision on this and let's do better.
That's really all I wanna say.
-: Okay, thank you, caller.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Irene Totten,
a San Marcos resident.
Ma'am you may go ahead.
Irene: Thank you.
Hi, I too I'm a resident of Santa Elijo Hills,
which is adjacent to Rancho Dorado and in the city
of San Marcos.
I am vehemently against these above ground power lines.
My home currently resides in the shadow
of a five story monsters pole that I can even sleep
with my windows open at night
because I can hear the humming.
That's how close it is, okay.
I listened to the man talk about his child with leukemia
and I'm crying because my daughters sleep
directly next to these lines every night
as do the rest of my family, we are sitting ducks.
We are sitting ducks in these communities.
There is not enough egress for us to get out
in case of fire.
We are so lucky that the DC Kent was able to drop
when it did in 2014.
Otherwise we would have all been wiped out.
This is an imperative situation that you please
demand an EIR vote against this proposal
for SDG&E doesn't give a crap about us.
And they've made that perfectly clear.
They have an ongoing ad campaign
that both of their protection of San Diego
and by undergrounding power lines all over the County.
But why, why do our lives not matter as much.
This is absolutely preposterous.
And I am begging you for the lives of my family,
my community, for our health, our safety, our wellbeing.
I am begging you to vote no on this proposal
and demand an EIR because SDG&E does not have
our best interests at heart and I would rather pay 6 cents
more a month and lose my life and my property
and the lives and property of my neighbors and friends.
This community is so concentrated with children
and families.
And we have already, it's already been proven
that we do not have enough egress to get out
when wildfire hits.
They want to put a pole 50 feet closer to my home,
I can already throw a rock and hit the one that's there.
Please, I am begging you as a mother and a human beings
to use your common sense and your sense of duty to vote
correctly and do what is right.
You must vote against this plan, must demand an EIR,
and we need to be heard.
We're the ones that live here,
we are the ones that have to put up with this, look at it.
Not to mention, there are more people home than ever
right now because of COVID.
We're more people trying to get out.
I know that's the end of my time,
but I cannot stress this to you enough.
It is even more important now than ever
that our homes be protected,
it's where we educate our children,
it's where we work from,
and we're not gonna be able to escape when fire hits.
I appreciate you.
Please do your job and do it well,
please save us.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, caller.
Operator, the next caller please.
Operator: Our next caller is Jeff Rector, a rate payer.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Jeff: Hi, my name is Jeff Rector,
I'm a San Marcos residents, I live in San Elijo Hills.
I'm calling about agenda item number 10.
I'm appalled, so by my property,
my view line is not affected by this.
I don't expect my property values will be effected
except for the increased fire risk that this is causing.
When we had the fire in 2014, it was terrifying
to be caught in a traffic jam on a two way lane
on the only way out.
That route is going to be crossed by these additional lines.
But I also wanna emphasize that I am shocked
that at this point in time, when the state is making efforts
to address resiliency in the grid,
that they're approving a project that increases
investment in transmission lines,
above ground transmission lines.
Well, we need our distributed energy resources, micro grids.
We need the ability to isolate this community
with its own power when there are weather related events
that requires public safety shutdowns.
The initial study that concluded
there's less than significant impact.
I am the appall at that.
As many others on this call have mentioned,
if you just come and look at this community,
look at the views, look at where some of this is gonna go.
It's absurd to conclude that there is a less
than significant impact.
And one of the justifications that there's no aesthetic
or there's no impact on the aesthetics
was in the report,
was it there's already an existing facility.
And I encourage the Commission to give serious doubts
about that as a basis to conclude
that there's no significant impact.
Does that mean that if you're sitting beside a power plant
in the community that additional facilities
should not be considered because you're already
in a blighted area, no.
I mean, so I'm not gonna pretend that I am a citizen
who demands environmental justice for my own self,
because we live in a very comfortable community,
but I object to the basis of an existing project
as justification for an additional one to be built.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you, okay.
Jeff: I apologize, thank you.
-: That's all right, that's right.
Just wanting to make sure you heard the bell.
Okay, thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Anthony Cicero,
a San Elijo Hills homeowner.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Anthony: Thank you and thank you to the committee
for allowing us to voice our opinions.
I'm not a native California, I've been here about 11 years
and I love California, I love San Marcos, my neighborhood.
But mostly I love my family.
And in 2014, I happened to leave on a business trip
to Florida the day before the fires hit in the area.
And my family had to evacuate.
My wife, my daughter, my dogs, and my elderly
handicapped father, who's Korean war vet.
It took them over an hour to get them from my neighborhood,
the houses in Promontory ridge, the main road
to get out of San Elijo.
Thank God they were able to do that because if the fires
had reached into town, they would probably all be gone.
Or if they had the ability to get out of the car and run,
my elderly father who can't get out of car and run
would have burned to death.
Not really a, a good showing of what this community would do
for our veteran heroes.
And since 2014, there's thousands of more residents
in San Elijo Hills and new neighborhoods of sanctuary,
the estates, the town center.
I mean, it would take even longer to get out of here now,
should something happen.
I understand that progress has to take place,
but the cost of putting the lines on the ground
versus the cost of damage and lawsuits
to potential fire seems like a no brainer to do.
I totally oppose number 10 and request that you do an EIR,
because this is a great neighborhood and a great community.
And we shouldn't have to live our lives in fear
because of the bureaucracy of SDNG&E
wanted some unreasonable launch to our neighborhood.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
The Next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Dr. Lee Tian,
a citizen.
You may go ahead.
Lee: Okay, can you hear me?
Hello?
-: Yes, yes, yes.
We can hear you, go ahead.
Lee: All right, thank you so much first of all,
to all of the ladies and gentlemen sitting on the panel
and listening to all of us.
I am a resident of San Elijo Hills in San Marcos.
I know you guys have already heard so many touching stories.
We've lived here for 15 years.
The first time we were evacuated, our neighbor called me,
called us three o'clock in the morning.
I had no idea, I saw as a prank call.
But in any case, I'm so thankful for those neighbors
who called us otherwise we wouldn't know there was a fire
approaching.
And the second time 2017, we watched,
we stood at the end of our driveway,
watched a fire going up to the Hill right across from us
and watch all the cars parked on the street
in front of our house for 40 minutes,
nobody could move anywhere because the congestion.
How can someone say that this new power line
has no impact to our neighborhoods,
to our lives and to all his beautiful children
and community.
And just going to build this weight.
And when they putting advertisements
saying that they care about fire, care about people.
How can they even say that.
I'm sorry that I just am so emotional, we love this place.
We want to stay here for as long as we could,
but this is just outrageous how they're saying one thing
and then doing exactly opposite.
And I really, really appreciate you guys listening
to all of us.
And I know your job as elected officials
is to take care of the citizen.
And that's the best way you can take care of us
in our future and our kids to do the right thing,
stop this.
I don't really know it what's this environmental study.
It doesn't matter.
We have to stop this building because it's going
to cost more fires, that's for sure.
That is just going to be hundreds of lives.
When I watched the paradise,
I thought that's going to happen to us,
especially the way it is going.
So thank you very much.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Jessica Hines a rate payer.
You may go ahead.
Jessica: Yes, I'm here.
Hello.
My name is Jessica Hines and I lived in San Elijo Hills
for 13 years and I've been evacuated twice.
Most recently in the Coco's fire.
And I can verify the previous caller's statements
regarding the difficulty and being stuck
on San Elijo Boulevard for over an hour, not moving
because so many people are using the same route to evacuate.
PSE requested staff, to evaluate the SDG&E proposal
on a agenda item 10.
The report is inadequate and misleading in many,
many respects.
As detailed in the city of San Marcos
most recent brief to you,
the staff didn't consider community values and concerns
in determining that there was no significant risk
to the environment.
They ignored over a thousand public comments from residents
regarding threats to the safety, quality of life,
views and the protection of wildlife in the areas
of our community.
The wildlife, many of the species here are protected,
and you have a fire going through,
those protected species will not survive.
The threat of that problem will continue
starting with the construction
and continue for our lifetime.
I was very concerned that staff ignored
the city of San Marcos' official decision
to oppose the plan.
The city's vested with authority under the constitution
to protect the health and safety of their residents,
yet their information and reports to the staff
have been largely ignored.
I want to point out that 80% of the new proposed plan
for lines goes through dense foliage and wild fire areas,
which are considered a high risk by the city and Cal Fire.
And it's not just risk of fires,
it's also the fact that any fire not even caused
by arguing power lines can lead to brownouts.
And therefore residents who rely on ventilators,
refrigerated medicines and so on are at risk
simply because of the overhead lines.
And underground route, if seriously evaluated
would eliminate that problem.
Many of the views in San Marcos are a beautiful
ocean views and the photos used by staff--
-: Can you please conclude your remarks,
you're over your two minute time period.
Jessica: Okay, I sure will.
The staff report is so inaccurate.
It appears to me that it was prepared with actual bias
against the residents of the city.
And so the PUC should definitely require a full EIR
be completed.
Thank you for your time, bye.
-: Thank you.
Operator the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Howard Glickman,
a San Elijo Hills community board member.
Sir, you may go ahead.
Howard: Good morning, gentlemen.
Thank you for your time.
I know you're pressed and very busy.
I'm a member of the San Elijo Hills community.
I sit on the HOA here in San Marcos in the village
in San Elijo Hills.
I read the report, I read the documentation.
I listen to all the previous comments
for the last 90 minutes.
And to me, this is about one thing and one thing only,
why would you ignore totally the fire and safety concerns
of the members of this community?
Why would you re ignore the health and wellbeing
of the residents here?
If nothing else, you're about to make a decision,
which is going to have an impact for years to come,
decades to come.
Why not sit back, take a breath, let this go through
its normal process.
Please, I beg upon you and initiate the environmental
impact report and let these individuals
whose whole reason for being is to do research
and to come to a timely, not emotionally filled conclusion,
but a fact-based conclusion.
Don't make a decision today, which is going to have
an impact for centuries to come.
I ask you close your eyes right now,
close your eyes and envision.
There are only two means of egress
to get out of this community.
One is going West towards the ocean,
one is going East towards Escondido.
If one of those means of egress are totally blocked,
because we now have 18 individual high tension power lines,
how are 10,000 residents going to be evacuated from here?
The answer is they're not going to be evacuated from here.
And in your hands right now, you have the power
to do something about that.
You have the power to put this to the people
who know better, not to the people who are just trying
to push a piece of paper away
because they're probably understaffed and underpaid
and let's move on to the next issue.
I appreciate it.
My time is up.
Close your eyes and ask yourself,
would you want to live in a community
where your daily existence might be extremely
negatively impacted by decision you're gonna make today?
And I just let the thing take its course.
Thank you for your time.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Tanya Ingrid,
a Rancho Dorado resident.
You may go ahead.
Tanya: Thank you.
Again, this is on agenda item 10.
Besides all the aesthetics that people talked about
and property value, my first concern is the fire concern.
The community in San Marcos at this time has affected
our fire insurance.
We were canceled, we had to find an insurance company
that would cover us.
Life is important and environmental impact report
should be essential.
Wildfire risk is high in our San Marcos community.
We have experienced extreme wildfires in our community.
We need an EIR redirect lines underground.
Money should not be the first concern.
We have multiple evacuations in San Marcos.
Schools, property are in danger, people are in danger.
The project traverses in our community
is in the highest possible risk zone,
determined by Cal Fire.
We need to consider alternative projects.
And I stress that underground lines would be an alternative.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, caller.
The next caller, please
Operator: Our next caller is Michael Dosal,
a San Elijo resident.
You may go ahead, sir.
Michael: Yes, good morning.
Thank you so much.
My name is Michael Dosal, I'm a new homeowner
and residence in San Elijo.
My wife and I just moved in, I'm calling about item 10.
I don't have like a pre prepared speech or really
any kind of facts or anything as far as really doing
a lot of research, like some of the other callers have.
I can tell you when I moved in, it was very difficult
to get homeowners insurance because of the high fire area.
Obviously we all live in California,
we know the risk of wildfire.
But personally, I mean, I'm a civil engineer.
We do EIRs all the time.
It's pretty standard when doing major projects.
Given the amount of fires, we look at the state right now
of how many fires are currently are the active fires.
I'm concerned, I live there and I'm concerned
for the safety of myself and my wife.
And we don't have any children,
but we have some four children.
And obviously I'm concerned with them as well.
I appreciate you guys taking the time
to really listen to everyone.
It's what our democracy is based off.
I know it's sometimes tough to hear everyone's opinions
and discussions, but it's so important.
I can tell you in my line of work,
a lot of what EIR is determined is the right way
to do things is in sometimes the most cost effective.
I understand that there are private companies out there
that...
I work for private company and everything
is a lot of costs related.
But I think there's some common sense things we can do here
to make the community more safe.
I understand we need energy.
But it doesn't make sense to have any more
overground power lines.
If it costs more to put them underground,
it's the right thing do to keep the community safe.
I'll leave you on this.
I always kind of live and die by this
when in my work life and personal life.
Einstein once said doing the same thing over and over
and expecting different results is definition of insanity.
We know these power lines that go over land
and aren't underground cause issues,
it doesn't make any sense to put more in.
So thank you again.
I really appreciate you guys taking time to listen
to everyone and please definitely (beep)
Thank you.
-: Thank you caller.
Next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Tiffany Lena,
a San Elijo Hills resident.
You may go ahead.
Tiffany: Hi, my name is Tiffany Lena.
I a citizen of Santa Elijo since March, 2001.
And I'm calling in reference to agenda number 10.
And you can probably guess I'm not in support of it.
I wrote a lot of things, but I think my neighbors
have done an excellent job of explaining
that there's a fire danger here and that these lines
pose a huge danger to our community.
I can't believe in 2020, I'm actually having to argue
the cost of human life versus a business cost.
But here goes.
My dad's house burned down in the Cedar fire of 2003
and he was traveling at the time.
Otherwise he likely would have died
because the Santa Ana winds fueling that fire
burned at a rate of 3,600 acres per hour,
that's about five square miles.
As Irene told you, her the lines are about 100 yards,
I don't remember what she said,
but the throwing distance from her house.
That means that if a fire starts from these lines,
nobody will have time to get out, people will die.
I'm not exaggerating.
And we've evacuated three times since we moved here.
The last time, I didn't think I was gonna get out
because there were so many fires burning
over North County, San Diego, that it seemed
that the fire resources were all busy.
In fact, I had a contractor working at my house.
He ran out of his house yelling that a fire was near
his daughter's school.
I'm not one to wait and see what happens.
So we got on the road and we got out,
but I have plenty of friends who were stuck in traffic
for hours.
So I guess what I really wanna leave you with
is that you have a lot of information and evidence today
that the reports and mitigation suggestions downplaying
the potential fire danger and loss to life and property
are at best inaccurate and at worst untrue
and grossly negligent.
And if you, as an agency make a decision,
the in favor of this project,
that's based on the inaccurate information.
You're part of the problem.
And I appreciate you listening to me and taking all this
into consideration.
But you can't make a positive decision
based on inaccurate and untrue information.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, caller.
Operator, next caller, please.
-: Our next caller is (audio glitch)
a Rancho Dorado resident.
You may go ahead, sir.
Man: Good morning, this is Dr. (audio glitch)
I guess I'm an acoustical consultant
and I'm calling also about item number 10.
SDG&E should not be allowed to build those lines
without first going through an environmental impact review.
SDG&E has already touted the importance
of underground lines in an article that they published
their own website on December of last year,
saying how important it is to do underground lines
in Julian and celebrating the wildfire risk reduction
and energy efficiency benefits.
SDG&E in their report, they claim that they don't have
to explore alternative because they only do that
if there is an environmental impact review.
And then they say they do not get to do
an environmental impact review because
they danger introduced is not significant.
It's not significant because the danger already is high.
Of course, this is true, the danger is already high
for fire, but because of fire lines,
it has been published in the LA times and other outlets
several times over the last year,
how a power line failures have been the cause
of the largest fires in the history of California.
So fire is the cause of it,
I mean, power lines are the cause of fire ignition danger.
Therefore an environmental impact report is necessitated
because the product will increase.
The fire risks, which is already high because of fire lines.
Please vote no on item 10 and request more mandate
environmental impact review to proceed any new steps.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you caller.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is James Canton,
a rate payer.
Sir, you may go ahead.
James: I would start with referencing agenda item 10
and the Commission to vote no.
And to definitely pursue an EIR.
I would also offer as a engineer and retired executive
three areas that I hope would compliment
what my numbers have already so eloquently stated.
One is that an area we're overlooking
is there is a retired landfill, bottom of San Elijo Hills,
which is currently producing somewhere in the neighborhood
of about 40 tons of methane gas
that is being extensively used to drive power generators.
But if there was a fire to go on or to occur,
that would not necessarily be something
that would be controllable.
Second, I would say that from a financial perspective,
SDG&E parent company has doubled its earnings
in the last two years, and I have no problem with that,
but that's clearly indicative of a company
that's doing very well.
And then the third, I always look to the leadership.
And in this case, the CEO has tripled his earnings
in the last three years where he is now at $12 million
as of last year.
He doesn't live in our area, he lives in the Mission
Bay area, which is probably the least fire prone area.
And so I think the CPUC should be taking all of that
into consideration in terms of your informed
and wise decision on this.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, sir.
Next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Ramona Powell,
San Elijo Hills.
The line is open.
Ramona: Yes, hi, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
Ramona: Good morning to view Commissioners.
I'm calling regarding agenda item 10 as well.
Thank you for considering our concerns today.
My name is Ramona Powell.
My family has lived in San Elijo Hills for 16 years
and in Rancho Dorado for three years before that.
In that time we've been evacuated five times
due to wildfire in San Marcos.
During the last evacuation in 2014,
Tuneups Valley road was closed one way
and evacuating was impossible.
We had one way out.
Cars were lined up bumper to bumper along San Elijo road
while fire was coming up the Hill on double peak park.
I remember looking at my 17 year old daughter in the car
in front of me and thinking maybe we should get out
of our cars and run down San Elijo road
before the flames overtook us.
We were on the news immediately after that fire
as a community not prepare for evacuation in case of a fire.
We also are a documented fire prone area
with multiple devastating fires in their history.
Since the Coco's fire of 2014,
over a thousand homes and an additional school
had been built along that same San Elijo road
with no improvements in evacuation routes.
As it is, we cannot find insurance companies
to underwrite the policies on our home.
We could only find one company to write a policy.
This project will make it impossible to secure insurance
for you and your vote today are the only thing
standing between us and the next fire disaster,
costing us homes and lives.
Please do not vote in favor of the dishonest callous
and ingredient requests of SDG&E.
Please consider the fact that an environmental impact
study will not harm anything and only provide better data
with which to make a decision
on this very high risk project.
Property volumes will be impacted
and so will the aesthetics of our community,
but that's not in any way the number one concern
at this point.
The residents of Saint Elijo Hills are sitting ducks.
We are pleading with you to vote against this expansion
of power lines and for the many, many families
in this community, counting on you today.
(beep)
Please, please consider voting for the best interests
of the people in this community
and not a for a profit company.
Thank you so much.
-: Thank you,
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: The next caller is David Exner a citizen.
Sir, you may go ahead.
David: Hi there, can you hear me?
-: Yes, we can.
David: Hey, thanks for your time.
I think pretty much everybody else has kind of spoken
my thoughts, so I just kind of figured,
I'd say maybe don't be like what my wife says,
I'm like penny wise, pound foolish.
And let's just take the right forward thinking
kind of steps here. I mean, $30 million to underground
power lines.
And then you look up at the campfire
and how much in damages, $16.5 billion.
It just seems like the state that we live in,
like we should be the leader in moving
in the right direction.
There should be no more new power lines should be going up.
It just seems absurd in this day and age
with what's happening right now,
today that we're talking about putting up more power lines.
It's just nuts, I mean, SDG&E will make money off of it
because they make money maintaining power lines.
So if they underground, that means, "Oh no, it works.
"And there's nothing to fix 'cause it's all underground."
So, I stand with everyone else.
I'm against this project line item 10,
the timeline project and San Marcos.
And yeah, thank you for your time,
I'm glad you listened to all of us.
It seems like there's a lot of us that take serious issue
with this entire project.
So thanks again for your time.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, next caller, please
Operator: Our next caller is Pamela Lopez
with True Connect, you may go ahead.
Pamela: Thank you.
I am calling regarding agenda item number 11,
which is on the consent calendar.
We are very concerned about the item 18691,
which would adopt resolution T--
-: Excuse me, ma'am, this is Anne Simon,
the chief Administrative Law Judge.
You're representing a party in this proceeding.
Is that correct?
Pamela: Yes, representing True Connect.
-: I'm sorry, ma'am but the Commission's rules
do not allow parties to open proceedings
to comment on them during the public comment period.
Pamela: Very well.
-: Thank you.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Alexis Avudo,
a San Elijo Hills residents, you may go ahead.
Alexis: Yes, I'm calling with regards to agenda
item number 10.
I'm a San Elijo Hills resident.
I currently live in the area where already
there's an existing power line.
It also, they raised running through the existing habitat
preservation area that links up with the Escondido
Conservancy Creek area.
If these power lines were fully approved
without having a full environmental impact report,
there would be an increase in the sizing of these power
lines in addition, because I live in an area
that literally butts up my backyard
to a preservation area, I am not allowed to remove
or mitigate any of the brush area.
Therefore that puts my home at even greater risk.
In 2014, my entire family had to evacuate them.
Then my son was very little at the time,
as well as my children.
It took us over an hour to leave this community.
Since then, we have had other smaller fires
that have had to been put out.
And because again, we are surrounded by brush
and the power line, the risk is high
and we are always ready to evacuate if needed,
because we understand how long it takes
for over an hour vehicle watch the plane go.
And they would cheer as each of the planes over
would pull down water or flame retardant.
And when we made our ultimate turn
where we can no longer turn back and see,
but we're still locked in gridlock,
we could see the sky just redden
and fires continue onwards.
The power lines that will then be expanded,
would create a bigger fire danger,
as well as whenever the winds are substantial,
such as this current Santa Ana,
the power grid is been turned off.
How will we have access to the medical equipment
that we need in my house or any form of communication
that we need if these power lines are turned off,
just because of the high winds that come through
and the need to turn them off
because of the potential fire danger.
The risk is great.
This community cannot (beep) another long fire.
Please, we implore you to look
at a full environmental impact report
before you make this decision.
Thank you very much for your time.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is Jerry Block, a rate payer.
Jerry, you may go ahead.
Jerry: Hi, thank you very much.
Thank you board for doing this for everybody
because the CPUC is responsible to protect the lives
and the property at reasonable costs,
I do believe it is better to do an EIR
instead of an uninformed decision, which now may cost lives.
And of course, increased rate payers cost.
The possible SDG&E bankruptcy could happen.
And it's quite simple that the prudent steps
to higher construction costs can save dollars
rather than suffering unimaginable loss of the future.
I think about 9 cents to monthly billings for a short time
paid for underground construction of Incan bedded,
non EIR rate of $90 million.
More likely about half that cost,
meaning about maybe 4 cents a month has a public entity
created by the state to manage public utilities
in a fair and impartial manner.
I ask that you require an EIR to decide whether or not FDG
needs cheapest way to erupt overhead electrical structures,
which is unknown source of fires is the right way or not.
SDG&E by the way, has been advertising and constructing
underground utilities for over 30 years in San Diego
touting the benefits of the underground lines,
such as it's safer in adverse weather better in case
there's a car accident, hitting a pole, human contacts
and of course fire.
The comparison between San Elijo and the campfire remarkable
about the same population, three escape routes.
And as we know SPG&E did file bankruptcy at $16.5 billion
worth of damage.
It's a costly aspire to date, not just in the state,
but worldwide.
85 deaths over 18,000 buildings gone 153,000 acres.
And on June 16th, PG&E (beep)
85 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
So let's go ahead and get an EIR, please.
Thank you very much.
-: Thank you.
Operator the next caller, please.
Operator: Next caller is from Kristen Connelly,
a San Marcos resident.
You go ahead, ma'am.
Kristen: Thank you.
Yes, my name is Kristen and I live in the Santa Elijo Hills,
neighborhood of San Marcos.
And I would also like to address agenda item number 10
and respectfully request that you vote to conduct an EIR.
Commissioners, thank you for listening to all of us today.
Like many others you've heard from I'm extremely concerned
about the increased risk of wildfires
in this high wildfire risks zone that we live in
as well as the increased difficulty
in getting home insurance policies
and the decrease in property values.
But even though you've heard all of these, please,
for those reasons just on its face,
there are flaws in the MND that was conducted.
And it was mentioned before, but Simmons family park
is just one of those examples.
It's a beautiful place and it's shocking to see
that one simple photograph in a unflattering viewpoint
was used to say that the aesthetic impact
would be minimal to and not require
additional consideration.
That park is beautiful, the picture that was taken
was not taken from the highest advantage point in the park.
When you stand there, there are views all around.
You can see on a clear day, you can see islands
that are 65 miles off the shore in the Pacific Ocean.
It's just a wonderful aesthetic place
in the middle of our neighborhoods.
And the one picture that was used was facing
to the Southwest, and it's not representative
of everything that you can see from that vantage point.
And the pictures that are community members sent in
as mentioned before were dismissed
as in their consideration.
So the report was flawed and I encourage you to please
just collect more facts, conducted an EIR,
listen to everyone who has calling in today.
Thank you so much for your time.
-: Thank you for your call.
Operator, next caller, please.
Operator: And the last caller is Susan Pepper,
a Rancho Dorado rata resident.
You may go ahead, ma'am.
Susan: thank you.
Good morning, Commissioners.
My family and I live in Rancho Dorado.
As a former elected official for 20 years,
I was a mayor, a chief deputy for California Governor
and assistant secretary in Washington DC
for a former president.
I certainly understand how difficult your jobs are
and I respect what you do.
But it seems sometimes no matter what you do, excuse me,
there's always someone who disagrees
or they angry with your decision.
But the one thing I do know is that you can never go wrong
when you listen to people who trust you to help them
and you vote to protect them.
One of the most frustrating and disturbing things
I've experienced in my professional life
is when another governmental entity who I trusted
to provide me with accurate information fails to do so.
SDG&E failing to provide accurate information
and omitting critical information to this Commission
is the same as intentionally lying to you.
There is no excuse for it, and it is never acceptable.
One of the most important requests made by this community is
to do an EIR or at the very least
to bury these lines underground.
The response from SDG&E has been the supposed expense
to bury them.
First, SDG&E hasn't provided an accurate realistic cost.
And second, if an accurate cost were to be factored out
among all rate payers, that would be a small cost
we would be willing to pay,
especially when faced with a tragedy and devastation
of a wildfire caused by these overhead lines.
The families in these communities have desperately
been trying to tell you that you do not have full
and accurate information about this project.
We're not only in a high fire area as SDG&E said,
we are in the highest fire danger,
which is submitted by Cal Fire.
This is an extremely high risk, dangerous project.
Please don't wait until this community
becomes another city of paradise.
Please, when voting today,
please do the right thing for the families
in this community.
All we're asking you to do is to take a step back
and require an EIR.
Thank you very much for your time
and thank you for your help.
-: Thank you, Ms. Pepper.
Operator, the next caller, please.
Operator: Our next caller is John Lee, a citizen.
Sir, you may go ahead.
John: Is that me?
This is John Laisat.
-: It's really that you're the next caller.
John: Okay.
Commission, I would like to point out something
a little different than my fellow callers.
I'm also discussing item number 10.
The people that have spoken so far,
I think it's easy to dismiss their comments
as sort of nimby nonsense.
But I urge the Commission to see the important policy
considerations that this project raises,
because the proponent is used the permit
to construct process, this Commission is not independently
evaluated the need for this project.
And the opponents have not had an opportunity
to challenge the need for this project.
The projections that the supposed needs for this project
are based upon are wrong.
They are going down, not up,
probably because of the adoption of distributed solar
in the area.
Then this project is not necessary.
In addition, because the permit does construct process
was used and no consideration of alternatives
has been conducted and because mitigated
negative declaration is being adopted,
no alternatives or preteen being considered
through the environmental process.
As a result, the unnecessary project
through a Cal Fire designated high fire threat district
is not having any consideration of whether the safest route
is being chosen the best route,
or whether there's any other routes
that might not need to go
through the higher fire threat district,
such as undergrounding.
As the last caller pointed out, the underground option
has not been fully costed out, although SDG&E
dismisses it as two to three times more expensive.
So the end result of this policy environment
is that this body is poised to approve an unnecessary
above ground power line project
through a Cal Fire designated high fire threat district
without any consideration of whether that route
is really necessary or is the safest for the citizens
in the area.
This is an abdication of this Commission's responsibility.
Thank you.
-: Thank you.
Operator, is there another caller?
Operator: Our next caller is Brett Nanigan,
a San Marcos resident.
You may go ahead.
Brett: Thank you Commissioner for your time.
My points on this are that there no issues with
(distorted sound)
I'm also calling about issue number 10.
Infrastructure improvements certainly have to be considered
in a growing area than it is.
But the cost of those infrastructure improvements
should be fully burdened with the risk or potential risk
they bring in.
I don't believe that assessment's been done,
meaning it's one thing to say,
"Great, we need to expand these power lines."
The second thing is then, "Great, all appropriate risks
"we burned all against that costs,
"the incremental cost."
Falling to which Creek fire and other fires,
where these power lines slapping together
or sparking hitting brushes causing fire.
It seems that that's another factor that need
to be dialed in which Creek happened
miles outside and populated area.
Well, before this area was planted around it.
Since we've all moved in, we've all learned a lot more
about fires.
And then the third point I'd like to bring up
is that when you look at the overall merits
of adding power lines that SDG needs
is that why would they be against an environmental
impact study.
It seems like it's a balanced scorecard, if you will,
of how things should be considered.
And I don't know why that would be sort of off the table
or not part of the consideration.
Thank you for your time.
-: Thank you, sir.
Operator next caller, please.
Operator: And President Batjer,
there are no more speakers on the public telephone
comment line at this time.
-: Thank you operator.
With no more colleagues on the line,
the public comment period is now closed.
Thank you all for calling in today.
We will now move on on our agenda to the agenda changes
either held or withdrawn.
I believe that Commissioner Rechtschaffen has a point.
-: President Batjer, thank you.
I would like to request that item number four
be moved through the regular agenda.
I'd like to make a motion for that to happen.
-: Okay, is there a second to your motion?
-: Yeah, I have a second.
Yes.
Second, Mr. Randolph has seconded the motion
to move item four today to the regular voting agenda.
Will the clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Aye
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: And President Batjer.
-: Yes.
So it's unanimous vote to move item number four
to the regular agenda.
I believe Commissioner Shiroma, you have also a comment.
-: Yes, President Batjer, I would like to request
and make a motion to move item 10 to the regular agenda
for our next meeting on September 24th.
-: Okay, is there a second to--
-: Action.
-: Oh, I'm sorry, I just don't wanna be clear.
So it's a hold it and to place them on the regular.
Okay.
(speaking in the background)
-: To hold and to move it to the September 24th
regular agenda.
-: That's correct.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: And that motion has been seconded.
Will the agenda clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: Yes.
Thank you.
The vote is unanimous to hold and move
to the next Commission meeting on nine 24th item number 10.
Is there any other points for the Commissioners?
Okay, seeing none.
These are the following changes to today's agenda.
Item two will be held until October 22nd meeting 2020,
item four, we have already discussed
and moved to the regular agenda.
Items six will be held for 9/24/2020 meeting.
Item seven will be held until the 11/5/2020 meeting,
item 10 will be held and moved to the 9/24/2020 meeting,
item 12 will be held until the 9/24/2020 meeting,
items 15 will be held, Oh, excuse me,
item 15 will be held to the 9/24/2020 meeting,
item 20 will be held until the 10/8/2020 meeting
and item 24 has been withdrawn.
All right, we will now move to the consent items.
Is there a motion?
-: So moved.
-: And a second.
-: Second.
-: Okay.
-: Second.
-: Moved and seconded.
Will the agenda clerk please call the roll.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: Yes.
The Consent Agenda items have been passed unanimously.
Thank you.
We will now take a 45 minute break
before we take up the regular agenda items.
So we will break for 45 minutes.
It's now 12:10, we'll be back at 12:55
12:55, thank you all.
(upbeat music)
Operator: Thank you all for standing by.
Today's conference has resumed.
-: Thank you, Operator.
And we need to establish quorum.
So will agenda clerk, please call the roll.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Present.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Here,
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Here.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: I'm here.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: Here.
We have established quorum, thank you all.
We will now take up the regular agenda items.
The first item is item number four,
settlement of Megan C Marie's citation appeal.
This item is for discussion.
And after discussion, the Commission may vote
to hold this item to September 24th, 2020 voting meeting,
Mr. Rechtschaffen.
-: Thank you, President Batjer.
I request a discussion hold on this enforcement matter
to explain my concerns with the draft resolution,
which I will cover quickly.
The resolution approves the settlement
between our consumer protection and enforcement division,
which is known as CPED and a company called right time,
which is a charter party carrier in our CPAC transportation
nomenclature, right time provide the end shuttle service
for students in Southern California.
The resolution resolves the citation that was imposed
by our CPD against right time.
And that was subsequently appealed.
And the standard for our approval
is whether the settlement is reasonable
and in the public interest.
The violations outlined in the citation are numerous.
They total 88 and serious.
They included operating after CPED suspended
right times operating authority,
operating without insurance, employing drivers
without workers' compensation.
All the company attested that there were no employees,
failing to enroll drivers and alcohol and substance
testing programs, employing drivers
without adequate certification
and using cars without license plates or CPC
required identification.
Again, these are cars that we're picking up
school aged children.
Right time admitted all of these violations.
The citation imposed a $20,000 penalty,
which was the maximum allowed.
The proposed settlement and the resolution
weighs the penalty entirely with what in my view
is an insufficient incomplete analysis
to conclude that the settlement is reasonable.
Just very briefly, the stated rationale for the settlement
and the resolution approving it are that right time
admitted to the violation, is not in a financial position
to pay the fine and that if Righttime continues to operate,
it will comply with all CPUC requirements.
The resolution finds that the settlement
will further the public interests in encouraging compliance
with our regulations rather than causing
a business to cease functioning.
And in my view, these rations are just not adequate
in terms of the financial resources as a company,
which is something that we consider,
there's no analysis at all about the company's ability
to pay, including the ability to pay a lesser fine
anywhere from zero to $20,000 or perhaps pay the citation
over time or any other arrangements.
More importantly to me, simply agreeing to comply
with state law going forward does not justify
waving a penalty entirely.
All operators need to comply with our rules.
If we filed the approach of totally waving a penalty,
we would severely undermine incentives to comply
in the first place you comply,
and then you don't pay a penalty.
You agree to comply, you don't pay a penalty
for the fact that you were out of compliance in the past.
The operator's actions here ignored a regulatory process
and they endangered the safety of its customers,
including school age children, employees and the public.
And fortunately there was no harm,
but there was certainly an end danger
to the public and others.
And then lastly, the precedents that were cited
in the resolution as justifying the outcome,
mostly involve resolutions that reduced
the amount of the citation imposed,
but don't waive the penalties entirely.
So that's an overview of where are.
And in my view of it, as far as next steps,
there are at least three options.
If the majority of you agree with the resolution,
the item can be taken up at our next meeting.
And I know, excuse me, if a majority of you disagree
with the resolution as I do,
we can take it up at the next meeting.
And if they're a majority votes,
we would reject the settlement
and the Administrative Law Judge will continued
the proceeding.
The parties might not sense wish to discuss settlement
again, or the ALJ would proceed to a hearing
or other processes.
So again, one option is to take it up next time vote no
and continue with the proceeding.
Another option would be to prepare an alternate
that rejects the settlement or approves it
with modification, including more analysis
and support for the outcome.
This alternate would be circulated for comment
and appear in a future agenda.
That's my preferred option to have an alternate
that modifies the settlement and provide more analysis
and support.
Alternatively, if the majority of you believe
that proposed settlement as presented today is reasonable,
we could vote for that.
I will vote no in that scenario,
but certainly if a majority of you agree
that it should be approved, that's your prerogative.
So I welcome hearing your perspectives as we consider
these next steps.
-: The comments on item four.
Yes, Commissioner Randolph.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
I to share your concerns about completely waving
a fine particularly given the lengthy list of violations
that need to be corrected.
And if they can't don't have the financial wherewithal
to pay the fine,
I'm concerned that they would not have
the financial wherewithal to make the correction.
So I guess I have a quick procedural question.
I think the alternate approach to me make sense,
and I guess my question is would the alternate
have the opportunity to deal with the merits because,
or would it simply reject to the settlement
and send it back to the parties?
-: I think the alternate can deal with the merits.
I don't wanna say I'm not a 100% sure
that's the case we have, the settlement,
we have the parties motion approving the settlement.
I think if we approve the settlement with modifications,
we would have to get the parties approval
of the modifications or else it would then go back
to the regular process.
But I think we have the ability to change the merits
and come up with a different, an alternate resolution
that comes to a different conclusion.
-: Okay, thank you very much.
-: Do we need to ask the general council
or the chief ALJ to weigh in on the procedural questions?
-: This is our equation.
You are the general counsel and Commissioner Rechtschaffen
is correct that the Commission under our rules
can approve the settlement rejected
or suggest conditions that the parties
would have to agree to.
So those would be the options available to the Commission.
-: I have a follow up question on the procedure.
Our pleased is so today before what emotion would have to
make made on one of those three choices, correct.
We would vote on that.
-: No, I think what you would do
is if the Commissioner Rechtschaffen would like to pursue
an alternate, I would recommend holding it
for more than one meeting to give Mr. Rechtschaffen
adequate time to propose an alternative.
You would not be voting on anything
other than holding it today.
-: Okay, that's what I thought when I required
that clarification.
-: Yes, this is Anne Simon, chief ALJ.
And if I can just elaborate a bit on the scenario
or an alternate Commissioner Rechtschaffen
can borrow an alternate resolution to be proposed,
it would need to be sent out for public comment for 30 days.
So this item would be held pending the conclusion,
the drafting circulation,
and conclusion of the comment period
for any alternate resolution that will be proposed.
-: I'm happy to proceed that way
if that's the sense of the body that I have support
for an alternate.
I'm happy to hold it and prepare an alternate
again if that's the sense of the group.
-: I think that this needs to be held
so you can prepare an alternate resolution.
I agree with the comments that Leanne and you both made.
The list of citations or violations is quite extraordinary.
And when you think about that and the transport of children
to and from school is quite frightening.
And that they don't seem to have the wherewithal
like grievously am.
If they don't have the wherewithal to pay the penalty,
are they gonna have the financial worthiness
to make the appropriate fixes to their vehicle fleet
and get their drivers properly trained
and properly licensed, et cetera.
So that would be my sentiment.
-: I would suggest a two meeting hold
and Chief Simon is correct, it would require the mailing
of an alternate 30 day comment period.
And it could always be further held at a future
Commission meeting, but that would give the Commissioner
an opportunity to decide exactly what he's going to propose.
-: Okay, well, thank you very much, that's--
-: I need a motion.
-: Yes.
Now, you need to make a motion to insect the item
and hold a vote on that motion.
-: Okay, can I be the movement, I move to hold this item
for two meetings.
Well, I don't have the ability to arc, please.
Do I have the ability to...
I do, I do have the ability 'cause this is just a...
We haven't held it yet.
So I moved to hold the item for two meetings.
Woman: I'll second.
-: Okay, the motion has been made and seconded
to hold item number four and hold
for two Commission meetings forward.
Okay, will the agenda clerk, please call the roll.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: Yes.
The vote is unanimous on item number four.
Okay, thank you.
We're now moving through the regular agenda items
and we're on item 21,
which is Commissioner Guzman Aceves' item.
-: Thank you.
This is order instituting rulemaking regarding the Broadband
infrastructure deployment and to support service providers
in the state of California.
And I'm very excited to be discussing the opening
of this rulemaking today,
in particular because it's not really focused
on how we are improving our current failed systems,
but it's really asking what the different ways
and approaches we can take to systemically change
our current system around providing the critical service
of internet.
We've been forced by our federal government to succumb
to rules and based on imaginary definitions
of what the internet is,
which then block our ability to ensure universal service
and affordable service through regulation.
The justification that has been made
is that competition will solve before it all,
that the carriers will compete and bring down the prices
and serve everyone.
This neoliberalism economic theory
has failed many Californians.
In fact, as you all know, 23% of California households
do not have the internet at home.
That's leaving 8.4 million Californians
digitally disadvantaged and unable to participate
in many of the benefits of economic and civic life.
And this has to change.
We all know this so intimately today,
as we take refuge in our homes, not only from COVID,
but from the clouds of smoke and particulates
that spread across our state.
The internet has been able to save many jobs,
many people's health and our children's education.
And every Californian, every neighborhood needs the internet
to be resilient.
Before the internet came to be, our strategy for serving
all Californian telecommunication needs
was to incentivize carriers based on our regulatory
monopoly utility model.
But as the internet came in and as competition was replaced
by regulation, what we have left is really
only an incentive based set of strategies,
which have failed to meet the needs of universe
at universal service and affordability.
And a major reason why this incentive based approach
through competition is not working
is because there is no competition.
Only a very small group of Californians have choices.
Less than 7% of Californians are served by three
or more providers.
About half of us have two choices.
But over 40% have one or fewer
if they even have service at all.
So in summer, throughout the state,
there has an example of this 40% that have one
or fewer service providers available to them.
There's not any areas of state where a cable company
is competing with another cable company.
If that cable company chooses not to serve all the residents
in the community, there is no cable options.
This is due once again to the perverse federal construct
and the lack of obligation to serve all Californians.
As an example, Commissioner Shiroma's great leadership
in proposing a lifeline for broadband will be dependent
on ISP's willingness to participate
in providing free internet for the low income Californians
in our state.
So what does this result in everything that
you know already tried the rural communities left behind
with poorly maintained infrastructure
with insufficiencies.
Neighborhoods and urban communities that are red lined
and excessive pricing due to this monopolized
and oligopolies markets that we have across the state.
Unaffordable internet is particularly unacceptable
as 2.5 million Californians are unemployed
and millions of low wage workers continue
with their essential work.
Until the federal government or the Supreme court
or Congress decide that the internet needs to be regulated
to ensure universal and affordable service,
we need more incentive based approaches.
And that's what this OIR is all about.
It's about any and all ideas to bring forward
new alternatives to our current structure.
This will making we'll develop approaches and measures
for increasing infrastructure deployment
that builds to areas that lacks fiber infrastructure,
and to make that infrastructure open for all providers.
We need fresh participants with new providers,
public networks, open access,
more collaborative network designs,
and especially public private partnerships.
We can use what is already out there
in creative and collaborative ways.
Vertical structures, such as towers, poles, streetlights,
street furniture, and underground conduit
that will drive down the cost and deploy quicker
to the market.
Partnerships like those that other States have.
And even some counties within our state like Imperial County
and like the investor on utility partnerships,
that Virginia West Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri,
and other States are deploying that utilities
are installing fiber while doing their own hardening work
or repair work or extensions,
or like the state of Utah has done with this department
of transportation, coordinating fiber installed with highway
and other right away projects.
We can look into many other ideas like unused
and dormant fiber.
We can add fiber to infrastructures
that are in the pipeline.
Like when we were rebuilding our communities
from these fires, we can revisit agreements, licenses,
contracts out there that are on public property and find new
ways to leverage them.
The Governor recognized these opportunities
for leveraging these partnerships
as part of his executive order that he issued on August 14th
for broadband for all.
He directed us to work on these partnerships
as one of the 15 orders in that executive order.
So today I'm very excited, as I said, to ask the public
to engage in this proceeding and offer their ideas
for developing strategies,
for deploying more fiber in areas that lack it.
Which can also provide for actual competition
and ultimately affordability and universal access.
This is a call for innovation through pilots,
through new partnerships and new strategies.
We all know the urgency and I'm very excited
to get moving on these transformative solutions.
So with that, I wanted to thank my Bagley chief partner,
President Batjer and her advisor, Michael Malaney
for all their support, not just in this drafting of the OER,
but everything that's really led up to this.
And to the communications division director, Osborne,
Michael Mingus, Karen Eckersley, and Serena Shao
who have particularly know these issues so well
and the systemic causes that we're finally attempting
to address.
And thank you to the legal team, Helen Miscavige,
Tim Lippy, (beep) and the assistant chief
L James Anthony Colbert and Brian Stevens.
And to my adviser, Jonathan Cold, Sarah Sharp
and Stephanie Crespi.
So with that, I asked for your support.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
I am enthusiastically supporting the opening of this OIR.
Your outline was excellent.
And for all of the reasons you stated this is so needed.
And I'm particularly excited about your call to innovation
and for all those reasons, this is extremely important.
And as you said, it's extremely important
and we must work quickly and fast.
And I really look forward to holistically
reviewing the Commission's responsibilities
and the authority to get all Californians connected.
And I'm too very excited about the Governor's
executive order that you outlined in the Broadband executive
order broadband for all.
So I thank you for your very help, your very robust outline
of what the OIR will do.
And I appreciate it, and I will support this item.
And there are other comments on item number 21.
Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Yes, thank you, President Batjer.
And thank you, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
I'm also very excited about this OIR,
which has quickly followed Governor Newsom's
executive order on broadband for all.
And it is so important to bridge the digital divide
in our state.
It has been very eye opening for me to see the disparities
as described by Commissioner Guzman Aceves
in terms of the access or lack of access.
According to geographical gaps in some areas providing
levels of Broadband that are not sufficient
for current needs.
I'm especially enthusiastic about this effort
because the pandemic has really pointed out
the critical importance of connectivity,
addressing public safety, public health needs,
remote learning, rural communities with limited
Broadband infrastructure, tele-health needs.
They're all amplified.
So I look forward to the cross agency efforts
with this OIR and that we will fill the gap once and for all
for all California.
I'm pleased to support this effort.
Thank you
-: Is there any other...
Yes, Commissioner Randolph.
-: Thank you, I'm also very supportive of this OIR.
I really liked the idea of taking a look
at other jurisdictions.
And as you mentioned, even jurisdictions within our state
and sort of picking the, those most creative
and innovative ideas and figuring out
if we can bring them to scale.
And for all the reasons stated by my colleagues,
we know that internet access is extremely important.
So thank you for this effort and I'm looking forward
to voting for it.
-: Rechtschaffen.
-: I also wanna thank you, Commissioner Guzman Aceves
for your leadership on these issues
and the communications division for their very hard work
on developing this OIR.
Everyone said it's incredibly timely,
given the COVID pandemic and the disparities
that it's underscored,
and it very much the product support the broad
and comprehensive view that this is gonna take
looking for new models, innovative models,
and of course, a special focus on low income communities,
those in high firefight areas and those with low broadband
adoption rates.
It's very important issues that merit consideration
in this dedicated proceeding.
I will be enthusiastically voting, yes.
-: Excellent, thank you all Commissioners.
Are there any other final comments on item 21?
Okay, seeing none, I move the agenda clerk,
please call the roll on item number 21.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Aye,
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: The vote is unanimous for item 21.
Now moving on to item number 22,
that's Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Thank you, this is an order extending time
in the Callahan belt flower acquisition matter.
This proceeding relates to the proposed acquisition
of Bellflower by Cal American water company.
As you recall, it touches on important issues
relating to the valuation of water systems
in the context of acquisitions.
A proposed decision was issued earlier this year,
subsequently withdrawn.
However, as we decided to reopen the record
of the proceeding to take additional evidence
for the appropriate valuation of the Bellflower system.
The parties have met and conferred to discuss
possible settlement of the contested issues
and those discussions continue as a result,
we need an extension until March, 2021,
to allow the parties to continue this settlement discussion,
take new evidence and fully assess the fair market value
of the system.
I asked for your support for this extension order.
-: Are there any comments on item 22 from the Commissioners?
Okay, seeing none, will the agenda clerk,
please call the role.
Clerk: For item 22, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: Yes.
The vote is you and unanimous on item number 22.
Moving on to item number 23,
which is Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you, President Batjer.
This is the order extending a rulemaking
that is related to direct access pursuant to SB237.
I'm requesting an extension until September
from September, excuse me, of this year
to March of next year so that the energy division
can issue its study that will then inform
our recommendations to the legislature.
After parties will have an opportunity to comment
on the study and consider those comments
can adopt a decision.
And I asked for your support to extend it until March.
-: Are there any comments on item 23?
Okay, seeing none, will the agenda clerk,
please call the roll on item 23.
Clerk: Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Aye.
Clerk: Commissioner Randolph.
-: Yes.
Clerk: Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Yes.
Clerk: President Batjer.
-: Yes, item number 23 has been unanimously voted.
Thank you all very much.
We will now move on in our agenda to management reports.
There is no report for item 25,
which is report and discussion on recent consumer protection
and safety activities management report.
And no report on item 26, which is a management report
on administrative activities.
Item 27 is the activity update by the Klamath River
Renewal Corporation for 2019 and 2020.
Mark Bronson, chief executive officer of the Klamath River
Renewal Corporation, KRRC and Laurie Hazlitt,
chief financial officer and chief operating officer
of KRRC will present the update.
Mr. Benson and Ms. Hazlitt, you may begin.
Mark: Thank you, President Batjer, Commissioners.
This is Mark Bransom, chief executive officer
of the Klamath river renewal corporation.
I believe we'll have a presentation coming up
on the WebEx for us momentarily.
We're pleased to be with you today for our annual update
on our activities.
So if we can move into the presentation
and advance to the next slide.
Thank you.
So we'll be moving fairly quickly
through the agenda topics today.
The purpose of our presentation is to provide the Commission
on an update of the implementation of the funding agreement
that supports our activities.
To that end, we'll provide you with a high level
financial overview, review some of our accomplishments
since March of last year,
look ahead to some of our critical path tasks
and activities, and then stand for any questions
you might have.
So next slide, and I will hand it off to Laura Hazlitt
to walk us through.
Thank you.
Laura: Thank you, Mark and thank you President Batjer
and Commissioners for the opportunity to present today.
Next slide.
So as a brief reminder, we have 450 million
in funding for the removal of four dams
along the lower Klamath river.
200 million of that funding comes from Oregon and California
public utility Commissioner, dollars and accrued interest.
16 million or 8% of that 200 million is from California
rate payers.
And then the remainder of the 450 million
comes from a top one water bond for $250 million.
Next slide, please.
We are and have been in phase two of this project
since mid 2017.
On the current schedule, which is at risk,
significantly at risk,
we would remain in phase two through June of 2021.
At which point we would move into phase three
for facilities removal.
The budget is based on a timeline of dam deCommissioning
in 2022 and being on site for some site prep items
such as moving the Lyrica water line
and upgrading the Fall Creek hatchery in 2021.
If that schedule shifts, this budget breakdown
will also shift.
And we will need to, as you can see right now,
we're intending to use the $450 million.
If there were a shift in schedule,
we will need to be creative in terms of how to make
the budget work and potentially identify some new sources.
Next slide please.
So this is just a graphic of how much money has been spent
in each of the phases.
You'll see that roughly 70% have been spent in phase two.
And again, depending on the timeline,
we may need to adjust these numbers
and add a little bit more budget to phase two
and possibly phase three.
Next slide please.
And this is just the breakdown of the CPUC 16 million.
It follows the same breakdown of the total project.
As we get out of phase two and enter phase three.
At that point, the public utility Commission dollars
will have been spent and the last money to be spent
is the bond funding.
Next slide, please.
One final item before we move on to our accomplishments
that we've achieved since last year,
one final comment on the budget.
So if there is a delay, as I mentioned,
we are going to need to come up with ways
to continue to tighten our belts and be creative
with the project and potentially
find some additional funding to make the project proceed.
We believe we can do that.
But I wanna be very clear that we have a set amount
of contingency for the project from the time
that we actually began work in the field.
And that contingency is based on a Monte Carlo analysis.
And it's based on the PAT results of that analysis.
And the thought is if there is a delay
and there is some need the fact that additional funding,
in no circumstance, would we deviate from the plan
to start the project based on a level of contingency
that comes out of that Monte Carlos simulation.
So I wanna be very clear that we have assessed
the risks of this project.
We believe that there is a certain amount of contingency
that is necessary for those risks.
And if there is a delay, we do not intend to dip
into the contingency for the cost of this delays.
Okay, moving forward to the next slide.
So just very quickly, you have these in front of you.
But a few highlights from our accomplishments
since last time we presented.
We've had another year of clean audits.
So we have an independent auditor who comes in every year.
They're actually working on the fiscal 20 audit right now.
The fiscal 19 audit was clean.
Separately, the Oregon public utility Commission
does their own audit on the calendar year.
And we had a clean calendar year 2018 audit
from Oregon public utility Commission.
And then the budget is obviously very important
for us to set every year.
And we set it on an annual basis
with the full project budget in mind.
The fiscal 21 budget was approved.
It does assume that certain activities will happen
to gear up for construction in late 2021.
And obviously if that schedule gets pushed,
the annual budget for this year will come in
significantly under.
Next slide, please.
On the operations and technical preparation,
it was a very big accomplishment to negotiate the GMPs
with Kiewit and Rez prior to the February 2020
folks the middle, that took a lot of work
across the full project team and to come up with a project
that the 60% design level and a price
that's appropriate for that 60% design
that is also within budget.
Significant accomplishment during this period
was engaging Mort McMillan of McMillan Jacobs
as the owner's representative.
His role for the project is to do very detailed review
of all design drawings of all costs elements,
of all of the existing conditions,
so that when we get into the field,
A, we've been as efficient as we can to match the dollars
to the design, but also so that when we get into the field
and there are some things that are unexpected,
we have a really clear understanding with the contractor
of what was within their guaranteed maximum price
and what might be considered an uncontrollable
or an uncontrollable circumstance.
And so more McMillan has spent significant amount of time
with our contractor team working to optimize the budget
and make sure that we fully understand everything
on a line item basis so that when we get in the field,
there aren't any surprises in terms of how we deal
with what may come up.
And then I mentioned earlier, the Monte Carlo analysis,
this is really important because we update our risk register
on a regular basis.
And that informs the contingency level.
Over time, the risk register gets updated as certain risks
get resolved.
And we have indicated the both FERC
and the board of consultants that we will updated
on a regular basis, which we do.
And we will run a final Monte-Carlo right after we have
all of our permit terms and conditions
to determine that final P80 level for our contingency.
And then finally we completed the definite
deCommissioning plan.
The updated definite deCommissioning plan
will be submitted to FORC
along with the licensed surrender application
once the parties agree to do so.
Next slide.
We continue stakeholder and community engagement.
This has been really important for us
because there are several neighbors alongside the project.
Some people whose property we need access to
in order to create access to the project site.
So there's been a lot of work with not only the tribe
and on certain issues around cultural resources,
but also with the local community
on how they may be impacted
in order to get as much knowledge as possible out there
about the project.
And also to enable, again, some of that access
that will be needed.
Next slide.
On the regulatory front, the biggest accomplishment
I would say is with submitting the guaranteed maximum price
in February, 2020, along with the updated Monte Carlo,
we were at the point in July of 2020,
where we now have what we need to submit the amended license
to render application, which is really the next step
to get the surrender order going.
We continue to engage over time
the board of consultants is they have questions
relating to the project and their opinions
will obviously be very important to FERC in FERC review.
And then of course, we received the final FERC license
transfer order in July of 2020.
Next slide.
From more of a environmental perspective,
we've received the final four,
one water quality certification and the final
environmental impact report from California.
We've submitted our clean water act, section 404.
And then we continue to advance items
such as the property transfer agreement
between Pacific Corp and KRC,
which the thought is over time, once the project is done,
that property will transfer to the state.
And so they've been in close collaboration
with Pacific Lauren KRRC on that negotiation.
There are several other ongoing regulatory efforts
that we take.
And over the last year, we've made quite good progress
on all of them and have had very good productive,
and collaborative conversations with the agencies.
And Mark, back to you for next steps.
And next slide, please.
Mark: Thank you, Laura.
So KRRC continues to push hard on all fronts,
as the Commission knows FERC did issue the license
transfer order July 16th.
And so a major focus for the KRRC currently
is to continue our support for the principals
to address issues associated with FERC's transfer order.
And we are working on that closely
with all of the principals while we continue
to make progress on all of the technical regulatory
and legal efforts that will get us to a position
to be ready to commence with dam removal
once all the parties are prepared to proceed.
We are currently looking at the 90% designs
and specifications for dam removal and completing work
that will allow us to proceed with a number
of the enabling projects that need to be done in advance
of reservoir, draw down and dam removal.
We hope soon to finalize several memorandum of understanding
with state agencies and local counties that will spell out
terms and conditions of various permits and KRRC obligations
with regard to monitoring and reporting protections
and improvements of local transportation infrastructure
and other such things.
We are hopeful that we can continue to move forward
on license surrender activities that will further
reduce the uncertainty around the final permit
terms and conditions that will allow us to move forward
on NEPA, to move forward with Endangered Species Act
consultation once we submit the final biological
assessment to FERC,
Laura mentioned that we're working to submit
the property transfer agreement to the PUC
in the near term for the asset transfer approvals.
We're in the process of standing up a local impact
mitigation fund and hiring an administrator
to address private property impacts
and other claims in advance of undertaking the dam removal.
We will complete the annual audit that's getting underway
and continue with our regulatory processes
and stakeholder outreach,
all with an objective of being prepared
to initiate dam removal, but at the earliest possible time
once all the principal parties are agreed
that they're prepared to do so.
So with that, I will finalize the presentation
and stand for any questions.
President Batjer, thank you.
Commissioners again, appreciate the opportunity to present.
-: Well, thank you.
This is a fascinating, great progress.
I was thinking as I was looking through the slides earlier
in preparation for the meeting,
that when I was cabinet secretary quite some time ago,
the negotiations was still going on.
It was very nice to come back to the state
and see the progress that had been made finally.
So appreciate the presentation very much,
Mr. Ramson and this has what I will turn over
to my fellow Commissioners to see if they have any questions
or comments.
Yes, Commissioner Randolph.
-: Thank you, Laura and Mark for the presentation.
I have a couple of questions.
The first is, it sounds like it is critical
to meet these timelines in order to keep the budget
where it needs to be.
And I guess my question is, are you able to continue
making progress on the work with FERC
as the parties are sort of engaging
in additional discussions after the FERC order?
In other words, as you mentioned, there's gonna be
a lot of detail that needs to be provided by FERC
so you understand all the work that's gonna need to be done.
Can that proceed while these discussions are going on?
Mark: Yeah, Commissioner Randolph,
thank you for the question.
There are a number of areas where we are able to continue
to make significant progress.
Those are primarily related to advancing the design
and certain regulatory work.
But we remain hopeful that the parties
will soon get to a point where they are comfortable
and prepared to move forward with filing the amended license
surrender application at FERC to file
the biological assessment so that FERC can undertake
the important regulatory steps that they need to do
as they develop their decision on the license surrender.
So the parties continue to discuss the issues,
as I mentioned, that were raised by the FERC order.
We have done some preparations to assess budget implications
of at least a one year delay.
Laura could speak to that more if there's interest.
But we need cooperation from Pacific and from the States
and the tribes to aggressively advance the discussions
that are currently underway.
And hopefully soon we will get to a position
where we're making these important filings
and then moving forward on those regulatory front
so that we have the best chance of getting in the water
as quickly as possible and not sustain
any significant delays in implementation.
-: And do we have representatives of the company
available today?
Dustin: Good afternoon, Dustin Till,
I'm assistant general counsel is available for Pacific Corp.
-: Okay, great, thank you.
So, as I understand it, the principals
are having conversations around the company's concern
that FERC is requiring them to remain co licensee.
Is that correct?
Dustin: That is correct.
We're in the meet and confer process that the settlement
agreement established.
And so we're working with our settlement partners.
We can't really get into the details of any negotiations
that we're having right now,
but are working very closely with both California, Oregon,
private stakeholders and the renewal corporation
through the agreed to dispute resolution process
within the settlement.
-: Okay, is the company still prepared to move forward
with the project?
Dustin: Well, Pacific Corp continues to support
the KHSA settlement and the kind of the negotiated outcome
within the settlement and what we're all working together
right now is to figure out how, and whether we can conform
FERC's to order with the settlement agreement
that was reached between the parties
and with the ultimate objective
of trying to move this project forward while delivering
all of the negotiated benefits that the parties agreed to
back in 2010, and then again in 2016
when the settlement was amended.
-: Okay, 'cause I guess my concern
is we have a huge opportunity of $250 million
worth of bond money that the state of California
is ready to put forward towards this project.
And obviously we want that used to happen
and that money goes away and it doesn't,
if it's gone, if the agreement falls apart and it's gone,
then Pacific Corp is left with these assets
that are a on rate payers and have lost $250 million
worth of money that could have taken that burden
away from the company.
So I think we really want to see this agreement succeed.
And I hope the company is committed to doing so.
Dustin: Well, Commissioner, Randolph,
I appreciate that comment and we're very aware
of the kind of the dynamics around the California bond money
and are aware of the dynamic that you described.
And that's certainly a factor that everyone's taking
into consideration is we all work together
to try to chart a path forward with this project
in light of FERC order.
-: Okay, thanks, I'll let my other colleagues
make comments or ask questions.
-: Other questions.
Yes, Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Well, I appreciate impart those comments
in response to Commissioner Randolph,
but I was hoping for a little bit more of an enthusiastic
joinder about Pacific Corp's intent to leave no stone
unturned to make sure that the project goes forward
and that the parties work out the concerns raised by FERC.
I understand you can't get into confidential settlement
discussions, but surely there has to be a path forward.
And it's not just in the interest of the state
and rate payers for some of the money we spent in
and all the environmental benefits,
but it's in Pacific Corp's strong interest,
I think, and certainly consistent
with the environmental path in the direction
that the company has been moving
and your parent company's moving forward.
So I'm just a little bit underwhelmed
by your response.
But I'll take it from what it is
unless you wanna add anything about your commitment
to resolving this?
Dustin: No, thank you for the comment.
And I certainly don't want to leave you,
leave the Commission with the impression
that of the Pacific Corp's support for the settlement
is somehow less than enthusiastic.
We've been working with the settlement coalition
for over a decade and we're continuing
to work with the settlement coalition at the highest levels
of our company.
And we're committed to trying to find a pathway forward,
whether it's within the settlement,
as it's currently envisioned or within an alternative
to that settlement that would achieve the benefit.
We recognize the kind of the public policy preference
in the state of California and the state of Oregon.
We recognize that we have facilities
that have an outstanding relicensing obligation.
And so we're trying to find a solution we're confident
that we'll be able to, if anything, the settlement coalition
has proven over the last decade
that it's a durable coalition
and it's a resilient coalition.
And when we've been faced with challenges in the past,
we've always found pathways for success.
And I'm certain that we'll be able to do that here.
-: Okay, that sounds a little more optimistic.
I had one other question, if I could for Laura or Mark.
And on one of your slides, there's a mention of insurance,
which you didn't really have a chance to cover.
But could you provide any more background
about the insurance and liability protection
that you've been able to obtain for the corporation.
What it covers?
Mark: Yeah, Commissioner Rechtschaffen,
thank you for the question.
Laura, would you provide a response please?
Laura: Sure.
So with respect to insurance,
I think the policies that we're most focused on
are the excess liability policy
and then also the pollution policies.
And we have worked with Kiewit.
Kiewit, will be using their corporate policy
with $200 million of a project specific limit
for liability coverage.
The restoration contractor will have 75 million
of project specific insurance for the project.
And then on top of that KRRC will hold
an owner's interest policy with the States and Pacific Corp
is it as additional insured.
And right now that is recommended at $50 million.
With respect to the pollution, we'll have
the pollution legal liability and the contractor's pollution
liability with 50 million in length limits.
There are other policies such as workers' comp,
which will be at the statutory level.
And all of the insurance, like the excess insurance,
et cetera, were determined based on a Monte Carlo analysis
that was performed by Aon
of something like 50,000 simulations.
And they recommended coverage at pretty close to the 99.5
percentile level.
And so that 200 million in liability coverage
exceeds that level.
-: All right, so it doesn't sound like there are any sets
of risks that are not covered by what you've been able
to obtain if I'm hearing you correctly.
In fact, any of your liability insurance,
is that a very conservative level.
Laura: We believe that our liability insurance
is at a very conservative level.
At the end of the day, though, what the insurance
actually covers gets down to when you go in place
the insurance, which we cannot do until we're
a few months in front of construction.
And so at that point, what's gonna be very important
for us to do will be the negotiated way as many exclusions
as we can to make sure that we have
the maximum possible coverage.
-: Thank you.
-: Yes, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you.
Well, and thank you for acknowledging
the commitment to adapt, whatever terms are necessary
to continue to move forward.
I know many times as we discussed earlier
in our meeting today, the federal government has thrown us
for a loop on things that we did not anticipate.
And this is no different.
But I am very encouraged to hear the Pacific Corp
sees a path forward.
I wanted to ask if you could give a little more background
on what a year delay is due to.
Mark: Commissioner Guzman Aceves,
thank you for the question.
Yes, as a result of first July 16th, partial transfer order,
it raises a number of issues that as we've discussed,
require the parties to come back together
to ensure that the, as Dustin Till from Pacific Corp
said that the terms and conditions are consistent
with the settlement agreement.
And we were looking at a fairly narrow window
just prior to the FERC order to get FERC underway
with other federal regulatory steps, NEPA in particular,
to allow us to stay on our schedule
to initiate the draw down in 2021
and facilities removal in 2022.
While that window may remain partially cracked,
it is closing quickly.
So in the absence of our ability to file the amended license
surrender application and request that FERC
quickly undertake surrender activities,
we are doing contingency planning for the prospects
more and more likely prospect of a minimum of a year delay.
So that's the situation we find ourselves in,
and we will continue to make every preparation necessary
to allow us to be ready to go
as soon as the principal parties tell us to do so.
At this point, the best we can do is hold out,
slim hope for 2022 and do appropriate contingency planning
for that a minimum of a one year delay.
-: Okay.
Present Batjer.
-: Yes.
-: Thank you.
Okay, a comment on a question.
For a harvest from Pacific Corp, just your answer
sounded so guarded that it made me wonder
where this project is going,
but then when you followed on,
I felt better about it because I think that we're
all in concert here that we wanna see success
for this project.
And I am sensitive to the interplay with FERC
and the federal administration or our state effort here
that the tribes and so forth.
My question is for Laura or Mark is on the stakeholder
and community engagement.
You talked about some tremendous efforts being made,
but what were some key takeaways maybe,
two or three takeaways in terms of what the stakeholders
have to say about the progress, the proposal,
and maybe in particular, the tribal governments
who signed on to this.
Any feedback from your outreach efforts and key takeaways.
Mark: Yes, Commissioner Shiroma,
thank you for the question.
There have been a number of key takeaways.
I think that the signatories to the settlement agreement
and additional stakeholders are sending
a very unified message around ensuring that the parties
have a sense of urgency to resolve any outstanding issues
that will allow us to make progress.
And so to that end in our communications stakeholder
outreach efforts, we are getting a clear indication
that we should proceed with Pacific corp's agreement
to file the amended license surrender application at FERC,
but we need Pacific Corp to endorse doing so.
There is the sense of urgency leads
to the need to advance the other enabling projects
so that we stand ready to get underway
as quickly as possible.
So I think the sense of urgency and related things
are primary among the takeaways from our outreach effort.
-: Okay, thank you.
Understandable, yeah.
I thank you and for the presentation today.
-: Any other follow up questions or thoughts?
Okay, well, thank you very much, Mark and Laurie,
I really appreciate your presentation
and the answers that you've provided
as well as those from the company.
So thank you very much.
We appreciate your involvement in our Commission meeting
today in this update.
Thank you.
Mark: Thank you very much.
Laura: Thank you, bye bye.
-: Bye.
All right, we will move on in our agenda now
to agenda item 28, which is the three large investor owned
utilities who are here to present and provide an update
on the utility customer outreach during this week,
public safety power shutoffs.
I will now turn to acting executive director,
Rachel Peterson to introduce the topic
and the presentations, Rachel.
Rachel: Good afternoon Commissioners.
Thank you very much for this opportunity.
My name is Rachel Peterson, acting executive director.
And as you noted earlier until recently deputy
executive director for safety enforcement and policy.
And it was in that capacity that we had originally
planned today's briefing.
We meant it to follow up on the public briefings
that the utilities provided to you the week of August 10th,
about their preparation for public safety power shutoff.
As occurred this past week.
Instead, what happened was they were actually required
to execute public safety power shut off
because of a strong wind event and red flag warnings.
And so instead of the broader questions
that we asked the IOUs to follow up on
such as deployment of batteries
and permitting and preparation of community
resource centers,
I requested that they provide a different report today.
They're each going to report on their execution
of customer notifications before
and during the shut-up events of this week.
And the word customers entails a pretty large
and different diverse group.
That includes customers who hold accounts with utilities
and anyone else who signs up for their alerts,
medical baseline customers within the medical baseline
customer group.
Those who are on critical care or life support devices
at home owners of critical facilities
like telecommunications providers and water
and wastewater facilities.
And of course the public safety partners there
who are at cities, counties, and tribes.
And just before I turn it to SDG&E to start,
I just want to give you a sense of the CPSC staff effort
during the events this week.
Among the three divisions that are focused on wildfire
and electric system safety,
which are safety and enforcement, safety policy
and wildfire safety, we now have a team
of nearly a dozen people who themselves
become very active and engaged when these events happen.
So for example, we've had staff, sometimes several staff
on every executive and operational briefing by the utilities
to the CPUC, Cal OES and Cal Fires that occurred
essentially starting Saturday of last weekend.
With participation in those Cals,
they're monitoring every aspect of the IOUs execution
from weather modeling, meteorological forecasting,
their notifications, their communications and relationships
with public safety partners, their restoration effort.
We also have staff who are embedded in the virtual EOC
themselves.
So they have even closer contact and monitoring
of how the utilities are executing the events
and our new tribal advisor Ken Holbrook has been in touch
with each utilities tribal liaison,
and has been participating in their tribal calls
and ensuring that they are coordinating well with tribes.
So those are just a few examples of the staff work
that's gone on over the last week as these events unfolded.
And so we've invited the three utilities here today.
They're going to present in the same order
that they briefed you the week of August 10th.
So SDG&E first, then Southern California Edison,
and then PG&E.
Again, they are focused on execution of the events
this past week.
And so I do wanna extend my appreciation to them
for all three utilities, their virtual EOC
is still activated, whether it's for PSPS
or for the wildfires that are burning.
And so the folks who are presenting to you
are also still working actively on crisis response.
And so to start, you'll hear from Scott Crider,
chief customer officer from SDG&E.
Next from Mike Marelli, vice president
of the business customer division at Edison,
and then Laurie Jimona, senior vice president
and chief customer officer at PG&E along with Aaron Johnson,
vice president of wildfire safety and public engagement.
They'll eat, speak, but they know to expect questions
from you, so I think you can feel free to ask them questions
after each one presents as you see fit.
And with that, I'll turn it over to Scott.
Scott: Well, great.
Thank you very much President Batjer, Commissioners.
Thank you for the invitation today.
Again, I'm Scott Crider, chief customer officer for SDG&E.
And this has certainly been a challenging three weeks
for our customers due to the really unprecedented
weather conditions that we've really experienced
across the Western United States.
We've navigated load curtailment risks
during record setting heat waves,
a major wildfire that's still impacting the San Diego region
and a red flag warning and wind events that resulted
in a brief public safety power shutoff recently.
Fortunately, the extreme weathers abated,
first responders are making good progress on the fire.
However, we know that the peak of fire season
is still to come and, but we are well prepared
for the upcoming season and the season
that we're already in.
As I mentioned, we initiated our first PSPS of the season
earlier this week.
And I'm pleased to report that is executed successfully,
from an engagement with public safety partners,
to customer communications.
Our customers were aware of the event and we completed it
really without incident.
And I think in fact that this is the end
is a really good example of how we can use PSPS
as a last resort to reduce fire risk
in a very surgical manner to limit the impact
on our customers.
And our meteorologists said we're anticipating a moderate
Santa Ana wind event across our service territory,
coupled with low humidity.
A red flag warning was issued
by the national weather service and a fire potential index
was rated as extreme.
Based on this forecast, we initially notified
about 16,500 customers on Monday,
more than 24 hours in advance that dangerous fire
weather conditions were expected
and power could be turned off for safety.
We're closely monitoring the events
and the weather conditions
and our virtual emergency operations center.
And in the end, we only de-energized about 49 customers
overnight on Tuesday.
And weather conditions this time allowed us
to restore power Wednesday morning.
30 customers were without power for about three
and a half hours while 19 customers were without power
for about 13 and a half hours.
Now the weather conditions don't always allow us
to restore that quickly.
But again, this was an example of how we could take action
and get customers restored in relatively short order.
And, I know today's focus is on communications
and engagements.
So let me briefly outline some of the additional steps
that we took to ensure our customers,
our public safety partners and key stakeholders
were informed and prepared for the event.
We began agencies, public safety partners,
tribal partners on Sunday, more than 48 hours in advance.
It did penitential events can be stayed
in very close communications
with those stakeholders throughout.
We had daily calls with San Diego County
office of emergency services.
We had four daily briefings with Calloway
and CPUC staff.
We had several updates each day to Callway tribal affairs,
as well as CPUC tribal affairs.
We had frequent contact directly with individual
tribal leaders in our region.
We had daily calls with two one San Diego,
which is helping to support our AFN communities.
And at the same time, we had our SDG&E fire coordinators
at the command post for the Valley fire in San Diego,
making sure that we had good situational awareness,
that they know about the coming weather
and what our plans are potentially for PSPS.
We also began notifying critical customers
like the telecoms water districts and local school districts
on Sunday.
And we stayed in contact with them,
really thrilled the event.
And really from a customer communications perspective,
we had broad messaging about the potential for dangerous
fire weather and potential PSPS really started
on Monday more than 24 hours in advance.
As I mentioned, we had initially notified
about 16,500 customers who we reached them via texts,
cell phone, email landline.
We did it in eight prevalent languages in San Diego.
We also had extensive media outreach
to print radio and broadcast.
And one of the advantages that we have in San Diego
is that we're covered by a single media market.
And that helps us to have access to six
or seven TV stations, print, radio,
that's covering just our service territory.
And so we're able to create really exceptional awareness
about any potential dangerous fire weather.
We were very active on social media,
kept our website up to date with the new PSPS page,
our SDG&E newsroom.
For the first time we put out 24 portable signs
along major roads and thoroughfares,
again to try to find other channels
to make sure that we're creating awareness.
We use for our first time, our new PSPS app
that that is both customers and non-customers sign up
that they can get notifications
and really track the progress from a potential PSPS
all the way through reinterpretation.
But we also recognize, and we've talked a lot about this,
about not relying solely on technology,
'cause we recognize not all of our customers have phones
and not everybody has access to the internet.
And so for this first event this year,
we tried something also a little different,
very analog approach,
and actually created a paper flyer
describing the upcoming PFPs event.
And we distributed that to partners
really to kind of our back country, rural communities,
but they could post it in community centers and common areas
and areas like libraries.
This was suggested actually by our wildfire safety
community advisory council.
And so that's just one example of how we're working
with stakeholders and local communities
to try to find new ways to reach customers
and make sure they're informed.
Again, this was just the first time that we did it,
so we're gonna review how it worked
and we're gonna continue to iterate
and see how we can continue to improve this tactic.
And then really finally, we've talked a lot about
kind of mapping the metered customers as well.
And we actually ended up doing live person calls
to all impacted mobile home parks
that were within the potential PSPS area
to make sure that park owners were really aware
of the upcoming event and could share
a lot of that information with residents of the area.
We also activated the counties or work with the County
to activate its AFN partner network.
And as we previously reported to you,
we've established a partnership with 211 San Diego
to help us support vulnerable customers,
make sure that there's good awareness of the upcoming event
and that there's a support network in place.
We also shared our messages with hundreds of community
based organizations to amplify our messages.
And again, 211 was also conducting outreach
to their partners to make sure that services were lined up.
And so luminary data indicates that only about 40 customers
called 211 mostly just seeking basic information
about the event.
But we do think this is a partnership,
a longterm that's gonna be very beneficial
for our customers.
And then in terms of medical baseline
and life support customers,
we had about 800 that were in the initial notification,
although only about six were actually impacted
by the PSPS this week.
And the way that we approach those vulnerable customers
is we reach out to them via our emergency
notification system.
If we do not get a positive contact through that system,
we have our call center agents actually make live calls
until we can get ahold of them.
And in the event we can't still get ahold of them,
then we actually will send an SDG&E employee
to go knock on their door.
And I'm pleased to say that we had a 100% positive contact
rate for this event.
And then finally, in terms of community resource centers,
we were prepared to mobilize for CRCs for this event,
based upon the expected impacts.
In the end, only one was needed since conditions
really improved overnight on Tuesday.
The information was posted to the website
early Wednesday morning as planned.
And it opened at 8:00 a.m. and was actually demobilized
by 10:30 a.m. again, because this was a very short event.
And then for, at that CRC, we had fewer than 30 customers
go to the CRC, which is really expected
just given the very short duration of this PSPS event.
So, in conclusion, I know this is a lot information
and as in a pretty short period of time,
but I wanted to ensure that you understood
really the scope of our customer engagement
and like we do for every PFPs, we're gonna continue
to assess our performance this week
and really seek to improve and gather some additional input
from external stakeholders to make sure
when the next one comes, that we're even more prepared
and ready to serve our customers.
So with that, I will stop there
and be happy to answer any questions.
-: Do any of the Commissioners have any questions of Scott?
Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Yes, thank you, Scott, for your letter that you submitted
responding to our various questions.
But would you just give to a drill down a summary
of your outreach to people with self identified
disabilities?
Scott: Yeah, so--
-: And it was smaller universe of customers who were affected
in this last PSPS, but maybe just a little more application
on that group of customers.
Thank you.
Scott: Yeah, absolutely.
So again, I mean, we use a multitude of communication
mechanisms to reach out to those customers.
So, as I mentioned, we reach out to them via cell text,
email, landline, and a portion of those customers,
again that are medical baseline.
We'll go knock on their door if we cannot get ahold of them.
But really, as we think about this segment of our customers,
again, we're really looking at this partnership
with 211 and our community based organizations
to really help get our message out there.
And so, again, so we think that this approach
between our art normal outreach to all of our customers
creates a lot of awareness coupled with the partnerships
that we've established regionally with experts
who can actually provide the services.
We think that that's gonna be the moderate
really going forward.
-: Can I ask a follow up to that question.
-: Yes, of course, Randolph.
-: Thank you.
So for the kind of the three-stage contact,
you try to reach them by phone and you try to get a response
and then you actually go out and have somebody
knock on the door.
Do you track the time that that takes
and do you have sort of a target of like,
when you wanna get affirmative reaction
from your medically vulnerable customers
before the PSPS begins?
Scott: Well, thank you Commissioner.
And so we don't have a specific timeline,
but we wanna make sure that really,
when we put out that 24 hour initial notification
about potential PSPS, that's when we really start,
that second and third tier contact.
So, we're really trying to get that to those model,
again, that medical baseline community well in advance
of actually potentially de energizing them.
So really our goal is to try to get them
the day before a potential PSPS event.
But certainly we wanna make sure that we reach them
in any case before we actually de-energize.
-: It's got okay.
It seems like it would be useful to kind of track
that just to see if it can get shortened over time.
Scott: Yeah, absolutely.
We'll take that as an action item.
-: Scott, I have a question.
This is Maribel.
I wanna make sure I've got my numbers right.
Initial contact for impacted customers with 16,500,
but in the end you actually de-energized 49 customers,
is that correct?
Scott: That's correct.
-: Okay and on the medical baseline,
you had 800 initially and six were actually impacted
by the PSPS, is that correct?
Scott: Yeah, that's correct, for this event.
-: Okay.
This event was happily fortunately much shorter
in actuality than predicted.
Do you have any, I know this is about customer service
right now, but have you had any analysis on that?
I mean, you have such great set up
in terms of your meteorology and all the cameras
and sensors and everything that you all have
out in your service area.
But I'm curious because we had both the North and the South
were very concerned about the initial predictions
of the wins and then it expanded.
It expanded and veracity and broadness.
And less than 24 hours later, thank goodness
you were already the energy.
I just was wondering if you had any analysis
of that, that the San Ana Ana's were not in the duration
and as ferocious as we had feared.
Scott: Yes, President Batjer.
It probably be better if we could follow up
with our meteorologists to provide the why,
but certainly what we saw and I was in our emergency
operations center virtually the entire time.
And so we were expecting, again, a moderate
San Ana events, but again the very low humidity.
And again, our fire potential index,
as I mentioned, was extreme.
And so we were certainly expecting winds to develop.
They did, but certainly not as expansive fortunately.
And the duration of the wind event was,
we did not expect it to be a long event,
but fortunately they peaked very early
and we did not need to take additional actions
for de-energized circuits.
But we'd be happy to provide probably a fuller explanation
from a meteorology perspective in terms of
kind of what we saw from the science perspective.
-: Okay, thank you.
One final question.
Your long list of things are very, very helpful
to receive from you.
Was there anything that you with your colleagues
feel that you missed, that all your preparation
during the winter and spring, early summer months
working for PSPS as a last resort.
Was there something in your game plan
or is there something in the preparation
that you guys just did not hit in this last.
Anything that you're going
"Okay, we've gotta improve on that one next time."
Scott: Well, President Batjer is what we will do.
So there's nothing directly comes to mind.
Again, this was a short duration event
and we hit our marks on our customer notifications.
We hit the marks, I think in terms of continued
engagement on with our public safety partners.
But we still need to go through,
this is only a, you know, a day old.
And so what we will be doing is bringing the whole team
back together to do a full analysis in terms
of what did we miss, what can we do better?
So there's nothing that comes to mind
from a customer perspective.
But I think that we're gonna need to some sit down
with our emergency operations staff,
our electric services staff,
and just make sure that we go through that process
like we do after every PSPS to assess how it went
and we'll continue to make improvements
and get even better next time.
-: Okay, thank you.
Any other questions for Scott?
All right, thank you, Scott, very much.
Rachel, back to you.
Rachel: Thanks President Batjer.
I will turn it straight over to Mike Marelli from Edison.
Mike: All right, good afternoon Commissioners and P--
(talking over each other)
-: All right, I wanted to just make sure
we had John on, thank you.
Mike: Okay.
Good afternoon, I'm Mike Marelli.
I'm the vice president of the business customer division.
Probably more relevant for this discussion.
I also served as the incident commander
for the recent emergency heat outages, PSPS fires,
everything over this last weekend.
So I'm gonna share with you some comments and thoughts
on that, try and direct it to the impact on the customers,
but some of those events inter-relate to the communications
relative to the PSPS activation.
And we really appreciate the opportunity
for the public briefing and to explain how we've applied
our lessons learned from our PSPS program.
And the extended outreach we've done before
preparing for this year.
So we continue to learn, we think a lot of things
went really well, but there's always opportunities
to learn going forward.
The events this past week, obviously put tremendous pressure
on our instant management teams and how they work
around the clock to ensure our customer's safety.
But they also revealed the critical value
of the enhancements that we worked hard
to complete over the past year.
And one key example is our ability to use
sectionalizing devices to further isolate the circuits.
And I'll go through our exact numbers of notifications
versus the energization.
But they're probably in a similar ratio that Scott covered.
And these are all related to these circuit switching
playbooks that you may have heard about
in previous briefings.
And we really put those two to use in this event
and they really did help us to dramatically reduce
the number of impacted customers.
In addition to the technological advancements,
we also improved our communications
and our customer care response during the disruptions
to help our customers manage the PSPS events.
Our partnerships were key with State County,
local community agencies,
including the office of emergency services,
emergency medical services, fire officials,
community based organizations, independent living centers.
And 211, all provided valuable input into how we utilize
our community resource centers
and our community crew vehicles in particular.
They also provide us with important feedback
on website performance,
which has helped us to stay engaged with our customers
and supply them with the important resources
and information during all these events.
I'm gonna touch just briefly on the CAISO supplier
emergency and how it relates to what we were managing.
So we stood up our instant support team on Friday
and recognizing that the supply constraints
were in the flex alert were for Saturday, Sunday, Monday.
We also knew we were looking at an upcoming PSPS event
in that Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.
But that really started our thinking on how these two events
should come together.
We made some changes.
For instance, we put what we call skip flags
on our rotating outage customers for those that were located
in high fire district.
So if we got into a rotating outage,
we didn't want to de-energized customers
for a rotating outage and then be prevented
from automatically bringing them back in an hour
while we'd have to potentially patrol the circuits
in a high fire area.
So our solution to that was to separate those groups.
We still had plenty of customers if you will,
that we could rotate out in our blocks
if we got into a supply deficiency.
But it also helped mitigate,
I think the confusion for the customers
that may be receiving both PSPS and rotating outage notices.
And it worked out, I think really well in that regard,
but we'd never had the rotating outage and PSPS obviously
coexisting at the same time.
So it became interesting to manage at times, I'll say.
And then also we were explaining this
with our, especially at the community level
with our County partners to make sure they understood
the differences of how we were managing this as well.
The other part of this is we had demand response programs
and there was messaging going out on demand response.
And unfortunately that covers both rotating outage customers
as well as high fire areas.
But we tried to make the messaging distinct and informative.
So our customers were understood the differences
between that.
And then frankly, we just had a logistics
process to work through.
So for instance, we started sending out PSPS messages
on Saturday afternoon, evening to our public safety
partners, our critical infrastructure.
But on Sunday we advanced our PSPS notices
in early afternoon, so that we could just frankly
get the rotating outage messages out.
There's certain system constraints from our vendors.
There are certain, you could get flagged as a spam entity
if you're sending out too many moses too quickly.
So we stage that to make sure those notices,
we created runway space in essence for that.
And I do have to say our customers responded in a huge way
to the Governor's executive proclamation,
as well as to demand response.
So the other complicating factor
that was maybe more impactful for Southern California
Addison, and then others was the Creek fire,
which was obviously very devastating,
currently 175,000 acres and 0% contained.
But it impacted us both from a supply perspective
where our big Creek system was taken out of Commission.
It also quite frankly impacted us personally,
as both the community and a number of our employees
were evacuated.
And then we also had a couple other major fires.
The Bobcat fire started Sunday and Eldorado fire
is still burning and impacting us.
Some of those, Bobcat in particular had transmission
implications, which again, complicated the supply
perspective, particularly on a Sunday evening.
I do wanna just take a moment to thank
the first responders.
They've been amazing and quite frankly, again,
for some of our employees,
they helped escort a number of employees
out of the big Creek area on Saturday night.
And we're very grateful for that.
As far as the PSPS specific event, it really did reaffirm
our decision earlier this year,
where we assembled what we called up PSPS readiness IMT.
And that was really around advancing
our operational enhancements well ahead of the fire season.
And so I've mentioned a little bit that one hand spent
was our sectionalizing capability.
And that continues to substantially reduce the PSPS
impact on our customers.
So we shared in August that we accelerated the installation
of remote closing devices that allow us
to isolate segments rather than needing to de-energize
the insights entire circuit.
And we developed over 1100 of what we call
these switching playbooks.
We use these playbooks and we develop these
for all our lines in our high fire areas.
So we use these playbooks very much for the event this week
to perform switching and reduce that impact.
We did employ de-energization during this event.
They were used as a last resort when the forecasted
weather conditions manifested
and when no other options were available
to mitigate the danger.
The Santa Ana winds that we predicted Tuesday evening
manifested, were appropriately prepared starting Sunday.
We notified upwards of 85,000 customers
across seven counties that they may be subject to a PSPS.
Of these 85,000, approximately 1900,
were medical baseline and 350 were critical care.
The PSPS was for a period of concern
starting Tuesday evening around 6:00 p.m.
It actually emerged a little bit later,
but then concluding noon on Wednesday
was the forecast.
In the early hours of Wednesday, we de-energized
segments of six circuits in Los Angeles.
And we had one circuit that was actually feeding
one customer that was de-energized by PG&E
impacting our customer in Kern County.
And every instance, we were able to isolate
circuit segments, meaning we invited impacting
entire circuits.
And in total we had 253 customers were de-energized
and including one critical care customer.
The sectionalizing also helped our field crews
re-energize our lines quickly
due to the smaller scale of de-energizing
requiring inspection.
So it really lessened the impact on customers on both ends
on de-energizing them to begin with,
and then shortening that period when they were brought
back into service.
And six of the seven were re-energized within hours
of the all clear provided.
We still do have one circuit that is impacted
by the Bobcat fire, where we were unable
to get into requires aircraft patrol.
We were unable to get clearance to patrol that circuit
yesterday.
I do not know the status today,
but we are still 20 customers that are de-energized
in a portion of our territory and impacted
by the fire area or as well.
We did have in addition to the 253
and so I hope, and I know we've had a lot of communications
with the PUC, and I know there's a lot of numbers
bouncing around.
I do wanna make sure you're aware
that we will tick and tie and make sure the numbers,
anything we talk about today
should be conserved preliminary.
There are often good reasons why a number may evolve.
And for instance, on the 253, in order to sectionalize
those circuits, we actually did have to take down
some other customers for five to 10 minutes,
open up the breaker towards the end of the circuit,
and then reenergize that.
But we will clarify all those pieces
when we make our filing, I think next week
or shortly thereafter.
So we do strive to meet our timeline notifications.
There were some situations where we had circuits
on our period of concern.
They were monitoring, they would bounce around if you will,
a little bit, some circuits would come on,
some would come off.
We did have a couple of circuits that we had to notify
the date of the event.
So they did not get the 24 and the 48 hour notice.
And that was for 20 customers on one circuit.
And then one set of customers, nine customers receive
the eminent notice,
and again, did not have the pre event notice.
So I think to the previous question,
what happened with the wind?
I think we'll need a more fulsome response to that.
But ultimately the weather is really variable
in these types of events.
And I think hopefully what the continued expansion
of weather stations and training our weather model
will get better and better on it.
I don't know if we'll ever get perfect
on the exact impacts on our assets on a forecast basis.
But we do, as I often talk with our customers,
we try and notify and provide outreach on a forecast basis
on what we think will happen,
but we really do make decisions
based on actual weather conditions.
I do wanna talk a little bit about our community
resource centers and our community crew vehicles.
We actually deployed some of these for heat related outages
as well, so where we had some areas.
And I do wanna make sure there's basic understanding
that these heat wave outages are very different
than like a wind storm or a snow storm
where you may have an outage that takes out
hundreds or thousands of customers.
And so one repair can bring customers back very quickly.
These heat related tend to be a lot of transformer failures.
And so it's a smaller number of customers
that are impacted by each outage.
So we did work very diligently to get as much crew resources
out over the weekend to respond to it.
But there was a lot of work to do out there.
To help our customers, we did deploy some pop up CRCs,
we call them for the heat related outages.
And then for PSPS, we specifically deployed six CRCs
and two CCBs on Tuesday and four CRCs and two CCBs
on Wednesday.
So we deployed them proactively
obviously before the de-energization to allow communications
with our customers.
And then of course, we followed all the CDC COVID protocols
for social distancing and PPE.
On agency outreach, our public safety partners
and critical infrastructure received the 72
and the 48 hour notices.
And similar to other PSPS events,
we held two daily briefings, accounting coordination call
and a state executive briefing.
And we have multiple points of contact
with every city County and tribal government
in our service territory.
And the contacts and include everything
from emergency managers, law enforcement, fire officials.
I should also mention that for the fires,
we have embedded agency representatives
with the lead fire agencies.
So our folks are closely coordinated
on those major fire outreaches as well.
We also held regular operational area calls
with local governments, and we provide situational awareness
and the latest status and the possibility of de-energization
and solicited feedback on CRC and CCV activation.
And we also obviously responded to questions
that were raised.
And then we will, again, detail this in our ESRB
eight report on a specific government outreach.
We do have a dedicated liaison officers that work
with our emergency partners.
And again, they were in close contact with many of those.
And we sent situational awareness notifications each day,
starting on the fourth and on Tuesday evening
into the morning Wednesday,
we sent out eminent de-energization notifications
as circuits became available for patrol
and re-energization.
I believe in our last briefing, we shared that sc.com
performance has been upgraded
and we've increased the capacity and the reliability.
And I'm not aware of any issues that we had with website,
the timeliness of posting the information on the website,
things like that.
I think as far as I know at this point,
everything worked pretty well there.
We did do other outreach.
So we have what we call an energized by Edison story,
which we posted that a lot of media outlets picked up.
And then we responded to a large number of media
and we shared PSPS messaging, including alert signups
wildfire awareness on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
We're really trying to use a lot of social media earned
and paid in that space to get that notice out.
We also shared on next door as a relatively new program
or platform for us that we're using pretty extensively
these days.
And we ran advertising over the radio
and multiple digital channels as well.
So we really worked hard to get the message out
in that regard.
We do have our interactive maps on our website.
Customers can zoom in to street level and see the areas
under consideration are de-energized
and de-energized circuits with estimated restoration time
and date, and then location of community crew vehicles
and CRCs.
So we really tried to get that information to our website.
And I think, we will do what we call a hotwash,
which is an after action review and trying to capture
any issues, but there's nothing major that I'm aware of
on certainly the website and the communication
that we had via that.
So, in closing, I'd just like to thank you again
for providing us an opportunity.
And as with any of the many emergency situation
where we have been responding to over the past week,
we always remained committed to the safety of our customers
and our employees.
And we look forward to build on the good work
and continue improving our programs going forward.
So I'll answer any questions you may have.
-: Well, thank you, Mike.
That was very helpful.
I see lots of hands already up.
Commissioner Randolph was first right.
-: All right, thank you, Mike.
And I wish your employees in the big Creek area,
the best of luck, having up in that area
it's quite beautiful.
And I'm sure this is all very devastating for them.
I have a question about, in fact, both of the utilities
so far mentioned that you were able to reduce the scope
of the PSPS after doing a larger notification.
So I was just wondering, what is your process
in terms of notifying customers who received
the initial notification, but then did not end up
being de-energized.
Did you have any further communications with them
after those initial notifications?
And did you receive any feedback from customers,
any kind of follow up questions or concerns
if they didn't receive a notification?
-: Yeah, good question Commissioner.
Part of our process is we issue an all clear
when the event has passed.
And so that is our process to say the warning
did not materialize, everything is good.
And as far as feedback,
I'm not aware of any specific critical feedback.
We actually did receive some positive feedback
from some of our County partners and state partners
that they really felt like we were connecting
and communicating and they were very appreciative of that.
I didn't really mention it, but we also had,
because of the Creek fire, some issues on transmission.
We also had a local potential transmission emergency issue
in the central Valley.
And so we were in close communication with our County folks
there so that they understood what was happening
and what we were trying to mitigate.
-: Thank you.
-: Commissioner Scott, we have a similar process
for an unfair message once the event is over.
-: Commissioner Rechtschaffen, I think you have a question.
-: Mike, I had a follow up.
It's sort of a two part question about your notification.
In the past, maybe you don't agree with this viewer
or concern in the past.
My understanding was that as compared
to the other utilities, Edison weighted closer
to the actual event to provide notification
as opposed to notify more people, a broader number of people
sooner, you waited closer to the event
to notify fewer people.
So my first question is, regardless of that,
if that's correct about it,
did you change the number of people you notified
or did you do anything earlier or later this time around.
And then secondly, you said that you had 1100
switching playbooks and a lot of sectionalization.
Do you attribute those factors as the reasons
that you went from potentially 85,000 people to 253 people
that you actually de-energized?
How much of a factor in reducing that number dramatically
were the switching playbooks and the sectionalization?
-: Okay, the first question on, did we change kind of
the notification process.
No, I'm not quite sure I understand kind of the basis
of that question 'cause I don't think we've ever delayed
notifying customers if we thought they were forecasted
to be at risk.
I do know--
(speakers talking over each other)
-: I'm Sorry, it wasn't so much a delay,
but you didn't make the decision about till later on,
you sort of waited, you tried to gather more information
at the later on to make the decision.
I don't wanna characterize it as a delay.
Sorry to interrupt you.
-: Yeah, I do know that we have put quite a bit of effort
into our weather modeling over the last.
And at one point we kind of had two different weather models
and sometimes they were competing with each other.
And so that may be what that is referencing
is that if one weather model said, yay
and the other said, nay, then what do you do about it?
So I think that was kind of early last year,
we had that issue.
So we've resolved that.
We do think as we get more weather stations out there,
we get more data, we get more experience.
Our weather modeling will continue to improve.
And I think quite frankly, I think that's one of the lessons
we learned from SDG&E over 10 years they've been working
this issue a lot more diligently
than maybe the other two utilities out.
And so hopefully we'll get better
whether better at forecasting to actual.
So, if we have a period of concern and we have customers
in that, for this case, Tuesday night
into Wednesday morning, we were pretty diligent
about stepping through Saturday night
public emergency responders, public service entities,
infrastructure, critical infrastructure,
and then customers 48 hours on Sunday 24,
so on and so forth.
As I did mention, we did have some circuits
that came on that were not on our radar screen,
where unfortunately we did have to de-energize them
with little to no notice.
And so we are definitely trying to avoid those scenarios.
The other question on the switch books, the playbooks.
I think it helped us from taking whole circuits out
to taking partial circuits.
I don't think it would be fair to represent that
as that's why it took us, we went from 85,000 to 250.
I think it did take us from potentially
thousands of customers to hundreds of customers though.
when we get down to looking at the circuits.
Last year during the events, we were still looking
towards switching options and protocols,
but quite frankly, it was hard.
It's hard to do that when you're in the incident,
there's so much stuff lying around.
And especially this weekend, I have to be honest with you,
these incidences were so complex this weekend.
It was mind boggling with all the information.
And that's the worst time to be kind of thinking
of a new plan, you should be executing your plan.
And so that was the thinking behind the playbooks
is in the off season, if you will, we developed a plan
that we can then really execute in a time of emergency.
And I think, we are gonna have some lessons out of it.
But I think it worked really well for this event.
We were pleased with those results.
-: Mike, this is Maribel again.
Oh, I'm sorry, Genevieve, you go ahead.
I've already had one shot.
Go ahead, please.
-: Okay, thank you.
And I saw tuition, this is my seventh hand up.
Okay, so Mike thank you also for Edison's response
to our earlier questions.
And similar question that I asked Scott,
and this has to do with your customers
self-identify, they maybe get disabled
or have a vulnerability.
And let me preface by saying that years ago
in our Sacramento area, I've a acquaintance
who uses a wheelchair for mobility,
and there was a multi-day outage due to a storm.
And he was not able to leave his house
because his egress was through his garage.
The garage door was relying upon electricity.
There was no battery backups.
So, he was housebound for a number of days.
And so the question is that in terms of drilling down
to your contact system, I see that since 2014,
you've been looking at such customers and what it means
for them to be disconnected.
And you have the efforts for the medical baseline,
but somebody kind of servers may not qualify
for medical baseline.
So really what it is is that in the event of a PSPS,
you have a specific communication effort for customers
who are not medical baseline,
but are self certified or self-identified as disabled
or vulnerable.
-: Yeah, we do have a process for customers to self identify.
And I think somewhere to Scott's answer,
we are really working with our community based organizations
to help us in that as well.
So we have our own processes, but we're also
appreciate any help our community based organizations
can provide and in that space as well.
But we do have a process somewhere to how Scott described
for confirmation that messages were delivered.
The only thing I'll also add is that
we often find a lot of those customers,
critical care in particular have multiple channels
and multiple people identified as contacts for them.
So, it would not be unusual to have eight or nine contacts
for a critical care customer.
So I don't wanna give the impression that there's only one,
you get one email, if you don't read it,
then you don't get the information,
that is not the case at all.
We often find that there's a number of channels and contacts
with our critical care customers in particular.
-: Thank you.
-: Okay, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Thank you Present Batjer.
And just as a followup to that,
so you do have a similar tracking for confirmation,
including that if you don't have confirmation
of connection to phone call, you do a home visit.
-: Yep, we do what we call a door knock.
-: Okay.
And then do you do a summer program as Scott described
for the mobile home parks?
-: We do an annual outreach to those master meter,
but we did not do as Scott described.
And so I was actually gonna take that down
as a follow up with SDG&E is maybe a lesson learned
for us out of this and get a little more detailed
on exactly what they did and if we should enhance
our services.
I should also make mention that as part of our preparation
for this year and going forward,
we actually have a team of staff that we've put together
that we call the customer care team.
And so they're there for during events for outreach,
but they're also there when under blue sky
to look at enhancements of our programs as well.
And so that is the type of activity
that we are constantly keeping an eye on.
So we are gonna reach out to SDG&E,
get a little more information on that.
-: Right, 'cause I know just from that at work, obviously
on our jurisdiction, we know that this mobile home parks
really lack connectivity.
And so a lot of times they're not getting
all the social media information and other things
that your folks may be working on.
-: Commissioner, we do have the...
We did set up zip code alerts and others.
So, there are to the extent they have devices
to receive information, they can sign up for those alerts.
But the piece on proactively reaching out
behind the meter was the specific part that I was interested
in Scott's comments.
-: Yes.
-: Can I just say, I think if once I could do this program
that Mike, is there interest in, did you call
the master meter customer or the customers
behind the master meter,
the individual medical baseline customers
who are behind the master meter individually,
who did you actually reach out to?
-: So for medical baseline customers,
even if they're behind the master meter,
we treat them like a medical baseline customer
that would be our customer.
But in terms of the program I was describing
for general outreach to the mobile home communities,
we place calls generally to the park manager
to help then get the information to the park residents.
But if they are a medical baseline customer,
they aren't met, we do have again customers
behind the master meter that we consider medical baseline.
And we had the same process that we would use
for our normal customers.
-: I have a follow on a couple of comments
and some questions if I may too.
Really appreciate very much what you said
about how complicated this weekend was.
I can say from our perspective,
Lian Randolph and I were in constant contact
with Cal ISO and CEC and OES and the Governor's office.
And we appreciate how complicated it was
for all of us, frankly.
And I too want to mention that your employees
at big Creek, we were very worried.
We saw the fire encroaching.
We knew the limited egress and regress one,
two lane road and very, very challenging area.
And we were all very concerned.
So we do express our ongoing concern for those employees.
One of the things you mentioned that was extremely
concerning to us, and we tried to emphasize it
to all of you, but I think you referred to it
as a skip flags.
We wanted so much that for the two incidents,
the two events to be separated
'cause we knew that customers were going to be
very confused by the blocked outages
and then going into a PSPS.
So there might be some lessons learned for all of you
to share in terms of that consequence,
because not only knows we don't wanna have that again,
but with the severe weather and climate change
driven that we are experiencing
and you put pandemic on top of all of that.
And you were really dealing with some very, very
challenging things.
So I appreciate your description of the skip flags
'cause we were so worried about that communication.
And I've mentioned this before my colleagues have,
we do have great concerns
for people behind the master meter.
So I appreciate any and all that you can do,
all of you can do to up the game with those
that are in mobile home parks,
those that are in section eight housing,
medical baseline, as well as people that need electricity
to do basic functioning of life.
So appreciate any ongoing efforts there.
I think I had a question,
but I think one of my colleagues asked it.
So I'll leave it at that.
-: President Batjer, can I just do another acknowledgement
as well?
-: Sure, of course.
-: First, of course as you said for his folks up
in Huntington and all of the communities up there.
As some of you know, one of my advisors has a family home
up there.
So she actually texted me some time
before we all realized that the hydro was down
and that it was as serious as it was
to the rest of the state.
So really feel for all of your employees there as well.
But the other thing I just really wanted to recognize
because it's something we heard really loudly
from the public at our last meeting
is that they see an outage, whether it's from a heat storm
or it's from a PSPS or it's from some other events,
the heavy winds that may not have been forecasted,
which would, those should all be forecasted.
But just thinking through the need to notify them
and the need that you mentioned that uses established CRCs
for those non PSPS heat related outages.
I just wanna acknowledge that leadership
because that is something that we're likely gonna have
to continue into be prepared for and that you didn't try
to bifurcate kind of, well, we need a CRC
'cause is a PSPs event, no.
You need a CRC because your customers are gonna be
out of power and maybe this one just needs a pop up,
as you said.
So I just wanna acknowledge that because we heard
so much from the public recently on,
they don't know the difference.
They just know their power went off, they had no notice.
And that's important that we're talking about
knowing us here today that we carry out those protocols
across the board, regardless of the source.
So thank you for that.
-: I appreciate that.
And just another, maybe this is too much information,
but we're part of EEI.
And so they just have gone through a huge storm response
with a lot of mutual aid.
And so there were some briefing docs
out of lessons learned on that.
And so some of the other utilities back East,
I don't think they call them community resource centers,
but they have a similar concept.
And again, we read some summary docs that,
we're gonna reach out to a couple of utilities
and figure out their history and how they use
that kind of concept, certainly broader than PSPS.
But they had a large response,
which indicates there's a big need.
And we're gonna see if we can learn
whether it's from our California utilities
or other utilities across the nation,
or even some of our technology on our PSPS across the world
we're trying to learn from.
-: Okay, thank you, Mike.
Really appreciate the thoroughness of the presentation.
So Rachel, back to you.
-: All right, thanks President Batjer.
I did forget to mention at the outset
that the three utilities did respond by letter
to your request following the August briefing.
And those three letters are all posted on our website,
cpuc.ca.gov/psps in case anyone listening in
would like to read about their responses
to the broader question.
And with that, I will turn it to Laurie Jumona
from PG&E.
Thanks Lori.
-: Right, thanks Rachel.
Good afternoon, President Batjer and Commissioners.
As you know, I'm Laurie Jimona.
I'm senior vice president and chief customer officer
of Pacific gas and electric.
And I wanna first start by expressing my deep gratitude
to the first responders who have been working tirelessly
across California to keep our customers
and our community safe during these recent wildfires
and challenges presented by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
I also wanna thank our customers for their patience.
We appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today
to answer your questions.
And today I plan to provide an update on the PSPS event
that has been taking place this week
in our service territory and how the improvements
we made this year reduced the impact on our customers.
Joining me on the call today by phone is Alan Johnson,
our vice president of wildfire safety and public engagement.
Before I begin, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge
the terrible tragedy that occurred in San Bruno
10 years ago.
It's a day that all of us at PG&E will never forget.
And for me personally, as the Bay area native
and someone who grew up in San Bruno,
it continually guides my work at the company.
We continue to work hard every day to improve our system
and keep our customers and communities safe.
It's also been five years since the Butte fire.
And even though we've made significant improvements
and changes in order to prevent wildfires,
we know that we have more work to do.
The devastation caused by wildfires in recent weeks,
have served as a stark reminder of the risk
our state faces and the importance of doing everything
possible to stop wildfires before they began.
We don't take the decision to turn off power lightly.
We recognize the PSPS events this week
came on the heels of so many other issues
as Mike articulated and Scott
and challenges that our customers are facing.
Not withstanding the rolling blackouts,
ongoing wildfires and the COVID-19 pandemic.
So today I'd like to give you an update
on this week's event.
Late last week, our meteorology team began tracking
severe wind events.
On Friday, we activated our emergency operations center
and began reaching out to County, tribal
and state agency partners.
On Saturday, we began notifying our customers
of a potential PSPS event.
This included advanced notifications
to public safety partners, including telecom partners,
to ensure they had adequate time to plan.
By Monday, the national weather service
had declared a red flag warning
for the majority of PG&E service area,
which included approximately 1.5 million of our 5.4 million
electric customers.
And on Monday evening at the last resort for safety,
we began be energizing our system to 172,000 customers
in 22 counties and seven tribes.
We began line through early Tuesday morning.
On Wednesday morning, we received the all flare
and by Wednesday evening we had restored power
to the majority of our customers.
Approximately 2,900 customers as of right now,
as Rachel mentioned were still activated remain out of power
in locations where smoke and fire
has impeded inspections, patrols.
However, we expect all those customers to be restored
by this afternoon or early evening pending their ability
to accept energy.
Approximately 7,000 customers who were impacted
by PSPS events are now de-energized
solely due to wildfire impact.
These customers will be restored at the direction
of first responders for wildfires.
Our entire focus this year, as you know has been to reduce
the impact of public safety power shut off.
Our efforts are twofold, operational improvements
to shrink the size and length of events
and additional support for our customers and communities.
For example, on the operations side for this event,
we've new weather technology and our expanded weather
station network to be much more precise
with our weather forecasting.
Our sectionalizing devices were used to reduce
the outage size and temporary generators
or so stations and micro grids and the humble Bay
generating station to keep approximately 71,000 customers
energized were utilized.
Those 71,000 customers would have been in scope,
had not had the use of the generators and micro grids
and the generating station at Humboldt Bay.
These improvements allowed us to reduce the size
of the event compared to our operations last year.
For our customers, especially those that with access
and functional means, we know there is no good time
to be without power.
And they depend on good information, resources and support.
We've been listening and learning from our customers
all year and we have focused our efforts in the areas
where they have the greatest concern.
As we all know last year, our website crashed.
There were issues with our notifications
and we let our customers down.
For this event, our notifications
provided more detailed information
and in more languages about when power would be turned off
and when it would be restored.
The websites managed 1.6 million hits per hour
and remained stable.
In fact, during tests and our PSPS websites
successfully handled 240 million hits per hour.
And during the rotating outage event on August 17th,
pg.com handled 12 million hits per hour.
Customers were able to access new math and online tools.
And our call center wait times average,
just seven seconds throughout the week.
Many of our customers who visit our website,
we're looking for community resource centers near them.
For this event, we were able to set up 50 community
resource centers in 18 counties and tribal communities.
13 CRCs were still open today and will remain open
until all of the customers are energized.
As of yesterday, the centers had served approximately
6,500 visitors and handed out approximately 6,200
grabbing bell bags with device chargers, water, snacks,
and information cards.
Customers were also able to safely charge
their medical devices.
We know that not everyone is able to make a trip
to the community resource centers and may need more support.
And that's why we've established and funded partnerships
with community based organizations who know these customers
best to provide specialized support and services.
For example, for this event,
we were able to fund and supply groceries
that said families of four for a week.
They were distributed to over 730 families
through partnerships via local food banks,
and the support will be ongoing.
For our meals on wheels partnership,
266 seniors received additional meals and wellness checks.
467 customers in the high fire threat areas
received portable backup batteries
through our partnership with California foundation
for independent living centers and other organizations.
And we also partnered with the California hospital
association and hospital council of Northern
and central California to execute
our hospital energization plans.
Through this partnership, we provided backup power
and coordinated the switch to and from the grid
with hospitals to minimize the destruction to patients.
We've listened and we've learned a lot since last year.
We are especially grateful for our agency partners
who have patiently worked with us as we grapple
with the communications challenges
associated with public safety power shut off.
Because of their direct feedback,
we've improved our lines of communication,
created new information sharing tools,
and establish a deeper bench to support event response.
We'll continue to adapt and refine our coordination efforts.
In closing, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity
to speak about our most recent event and the improvements
we're making for the safety of all of our customers
and our community.
Well, we have made progress from last year,
we know that we have more work to do,
and we're determined to continue to do it.
Once we conclude this event, we'll be conducting a hotwash
and we'll seek input from RAFN advisory council,
our community partners.
And we'll certainly be leveraging the learnings from SDG&E
and Soquel Edison and continue to refine
and improve our processes.
The letter we provided, as Rachel mentioned,
outlined more specific answers to the questions
that you had from our last session.
And then we'll have additional details in our 10 day report
that will come at the commencement of our event this week.
And I'd be happy to answer any questions at this point.
-: Thank you, Laurie, very helpful outline of events.
I'm likely to ask both Scott and Mike,
what regarding behind the master meter.
I don't think you talked about how PG&E contacted folks
behind the master meter, mobile home park residents,
residents of section eight housing, et cetera.
And I know regulate in your tier two and three areas.
You do have quite a few mobile home park residents
that are your customers.
-: We do, thanks for the question.
We've been focusing on really ensuring that we're sharing
information in advance of wildfire season,
enabling those customers that are behind the meters
that would have the opportunity to qualify
for medical baseline, get access to medical baseline
and ensure that the master meter account holder
has the relevant information.
Once we go into an event, if a customer behind the meter
in a master metered environment is a medical baseline
customer, we follow all of our medical baseline protocols
with those customers.
In addition, we do outreach to the account holder
at the master meter.
We still think there's more we can do there.
And we'll be partnering both with SCE and San Diego
to leverage their best practices and really focus
on how do we have stronger engagement with that community.
But if in fact a customer is behind the meter,
behind the master metered or in section eight housing,
and we have them on a medical baseline profile,
we then have the standard protocols of notification
and then personal contact and then door knocking
for a wellness check
that if we haven't had positive confirmation.
-: Okay.
And I missed the number of people that you had provided
portable backup batteries to.
-: Yes, we provided 467 batteries for customers.
And that was through the foundation
for independent living centers,
escalations through our contact centers.
We have batteries prepared to continue to deliver
throughout wildfire season as we take inventory of those.
But these were batteries in customer's hands
and then batteries that we deliver throughout the event.
-: As you probably are aware,
we had a great deal of public comment and public need
in the last two Commission meetings
regarding break need for batteries
and the small on batteries.
I always forget the name, if you'll remind me.
But I think the more all three of you can do in that areas
the better, because there is a great need
in your customer base and the public.
comments to us.
Plus I think you had your hand up.
-: Some of the batteries of the Yeti batteries,
President Batjer, but I just had a followup
to that question from President Batjer, Laura,
'cause in the letter when you were here in August,
in your letter, you said you've deployed 467
and you anticipate the 6000 by the end of October
and of course, 9,500 by the end of the year
or the end of November.
And I'm wondering, and this is based on,
you're identifying a need of about 10,500 customers
in the air is most prone to PSPS events.
I don't know if you know this yet,
but all of the areas which would be energized
in this last event, how many people
that you hope to get batteries to,
but haven't yet were affected.
And how were they served,
has been didn't have the batteries yet.
Did they go to the CRC or do you have any visibility
into what happened to those customers?
-: Thank you for the question.
We're still gathering the input, but we did have customers
who, if they didn't already have a stage pre-staged battery,
they called the contact center.
They also contacted the CFILCs
or they contacted the community based organizations
that we designated.
We'll have those reports over the next several days
as to how many contacts we've received.
But we really worked hard to make sure
that customers knew that we had batteries
and they were accessible.
And in fact, in our press briefings each evening,
we made sure to mention that if there was a need,
to please contact us directly, contact the CFILC
and continue to promote that information.
But we're gonna continue to gather that data
and continue to learn.
We also secured hotel rooms so that if in fact
the batteries might not be appropriate for our customer,
which we know it's not appropriate for all customers,
we had hotel rooms secured, should the CFLC
or another agency want to move a customer
to a safe hotel room.
-: Thank you.
-: Yes, Commissioner Randolph,
and then Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: So I had a question about one of the issues
that Mike raised on the Skip flag process
and the ability to sort of try to separate
your rolling outage block from your PSPS customer potential.
Was PG&E able to do that for this past week of events.
-: Commissioner Randolph, thanks for the question.
Yes, we were able to do,
we followed the same protocol that SDG did rather,
and we were able to remove those customers
from our rolling blocks
so that it would not confuse customers.
So they didn't receive two different types of notifications.
But should we have had to de-energize
based on the rolling blocks,
the customers that were impacted by the PSPS events
would have been removed.
-: Okay, thank you.
-: Well, I'll just follow up on that part.
It sounded like you said that you had kind of the inverse
where 7,000 of your PSP has been back to the customers
are now remain impacted because of fire.
Did I get that right?
-: Yes, approximately 7,000 customers have not been allowed
back into the area due to active fires.
And so we have not obviously re-energized those customers
as of yet.
-: So they're evacuated then.
-: They're evacuated, yes.
-: Correct.
-: So, we have 2,900 customers as of today
that we have still been patrolling to determine
if we can safely re-energize them.
We have found damage throughout the area.
And so some of those customers are taking a bit longer
to get energized based on our foot patrolling,
because we couldn't get all of our helicopters up in the air
due to the weather conditions and also to restore
based on the damage that we've been finding.
-: Okay, two more questions for me.
One is, of the seven tribes you said were impacted,
did each of the tribe have a CRC?
-: I'm gonna ask Aaron Johnson to respond.
I believe we only had a request for one tribe to have a CRC.
The other CRCs were located in close enough proximity
to the tribe, but we coordinated with the tribes
to make sure that we were supporting them.
Aaron: Laurie, this is Aaron.
Good afternoon, President Batjer and Commissioners.
Laurie, can you hear me?
-: I can, yeah.
Aaron: Okay, I just want to confirm what Laurie said,
we had one CRC when the Yurok tribe came into scope
in the last 24 hours as the weather event expanded,
we did set up a CRC at the Yurok tribe up in Humboldt.
But there were no other tribes.
We did provide generation at our substation,
which is right near (distorted sound) tribe as well.
-: Okay, and then this is a question
for all of the utilities.
One of the obvious responders are coordinated
critical entities are the telecommunication providers.
And they've recently been visiting us
because of a separate proposal as the president
is undergoing right now on their resiliency.
And some of them have alleged that they only get
email notifications from you on PSPS or other shutoffs.
And I wonder if you could each talk about
maybe what, in addition to your 48 hour notification
you may be doing.
And if you have actual point of contact
that does a follow up, do you have a similar tracking
for confirmation that the local providers
are aware that this is gonna happen
and they need to turn on their backup generation
or whatever they need to do to prepare.
-: Thank you for the question.
We've actually had the telecommunications providers
in our service territory participate in all of our drills
up until this PSPS event that we called.
In addition to that, we're giving them advance notice
when we notify all of our other partners.
We also embed a role within our incident command structure
that their sole focus is to coordinate
with the telecommunications providers.
So in addition to notifications,
there is somebody on staff to do outreach,
respond to concerns, challenges, and really coordinate
with the telecommunications providers at PG&E.
-: This is Mike from Madison.
I'll just kind of add to that as well.
So we coordinate through CUEA during an incident
as one touch point,
but each telecommunications providers and assigned account.
And so they're getting outreach
from account management as well.
And also it's available, I believe all the telecoms
are using the integrated GIS mapping layers
that we provide to public safety partners as well.
So that information on the potential event areas in that
so that they can overlay, as you can imagine,
the telecoms have thousands of accounts,
some of the larger ones.
And so trying to really figure out the footprint of PSPS
in what it actually means for them.
We've had many conversations,
we've held a dedicated telecom resiliency workshops.
We've had leadership meetings,
one-on-one with a number of them as well.
So I think we've done a lot
to try and coordinate with them.
But again, if we have some feedback from this event
on what went well or didn't,
then we would consider that for future actions as well.
-: Commissioners, this is Scott with SDG&E.
It's very similarly, yeah, we don't just send an email
and hope they get it.
We have a dedicated business services representatives
and appointed contact to that reaches out
to the telecom companies and stays in close contact
with them throughout the entire event.
-: I have a question.
It might go to all of you, but I think for first PG&E.
I'm trying to remember when you last appeared before us
early in August, it seemed to me that some of you,
you had varying preparation of the CRCs at the time.
And don't remember all the numbers
off the top of my head right now,
but so how far in advance Laurie, did your customers know
where the CRC is that you did stand up the 50,
that you stood up and then you said
you still have 13 remaining today.
Were folks aware that and how were they made aware
of that in the impacted counties and in the tribal areas?
Of course you just said that you only had one product,
but how did you notify them?
And, I don't wanna put a negative on it,
but were you scrambling at the last minute
in some of those areas, or was your pre-planning
useful and helpful?
-: Thanks for the question.
Our pre planning was very helpful and useful.
We were tightly coordinated with the County,
so we were able to activate our CRCs.
We had it up on our website 24 hours in advance
and sort of pushing it out through all of our media,
social channels and advising customers
as to where those CRCs would be.
I think the one challenge we had is that we were dealing
with active fires as well as smoke.
And so as we put them up and they were ready to go
and we could operate them with the hours of operation,
we did have throughout the event,
some that at the request of the...
And in support of the counties,
we had to shut down for periods of time,
just given that the measures with air quality
or impending wildfires.
But we certainly have the ability to scale.
And I think the pre planning really helped us
and enabled us to provide the right environment
for customers and really in partnership with our County.
But we were able to leverage all of the pre-work
that we had done, so we were not scrambling for agreements
or staging.
We had even done some dry runs and does some practice drills
by setting CRCs up and then operating them.
And then earlier in August,
the weeks are starting to blend together,
but we had the requests during one of the fires
to support CRCs in the back hill area.
And so we had the opportunity to stand up
two of our mobile sites, so it wasn't a PSPS event,
but we were responding to the county's need
to provide charging and support for customers.
So we were able to do that earlier.
And that again gave us that ability to test that mobile CRC.
And we already had the agreement,
so when the counties requested,
we were able to just quickly activate.
-: So of the 50 that you did stand up,
I know that you had a mixture of brick and mortar
and then tenting because of the pandemic,
you had to make some changes there.
I remember your reporting on that.
Of the 50, how many of those were those,
the preplanned brick and mortar.
-: We were able to activate five of the brick and mortar
again, based on our coordination with the County.
And then we did the remaining 45 were mobile
and drive through sites.
But they had tents and customers were able to safely charge.
We had customers that stayed at the mobile site
and for those customers that simply wanted to drive through
and get information we were able to provide
as we mentioned, the go bag for them and supplies for them.
-: Going back to your operational discussion
on how many of your temporary generations,
and this is for the PSPS event, not for the heat
and the need for demand response and so forth
over the weekend.
But for the PSPS event, how many of your temp gen,
temporary generation your substations
did you stand up the temporary generation
or is it still ongoing.
-: It's still ongoing.
Aaron, do you wanna provide the details for that?
Aaron: Sure, Laurie.
So we stood up a five temporary micro grids
two are what we call a mid peter micro grid
or a temporary micro grid.
It's actually in an area with fire weather.
So it's like an oasis operating in that area.
Three substations, we were able to power up
Hoopa and Willow Creek, both in Humboldt County.
And then the Brunswick substation in Nevada County
in Grass Valley.
We also provided backup generation for six ICU hospitals
and pandemic response units.
And then we received six ad hoc backup generation
support requests that we were able to execute on,
a couple of which were to provide power
for the North Firebase camps, which were in scope
and obviously needed to maintain their operations.
-: And those are all diesels, correct?
-: Correct.
-: And I know you mentioned Laurie, that you really,
some of the new weather stations you had.
And the sectionalizing that you've been able to do
was seen as very helpful.
I'm sure we'll get the, after you, the hotwash,
I'm sure that Rachel
and the SCD team will receive your after action report.
So we look forward to really seeing
whether additional weather stations
and your predictive modeling,
as well as some of the things that are really working
to your circuits, the sectionalizing,
how much they have really improved your...
I guess it's your goal to have shorter length.
I forget your three...
I won't call it a slogan, that sounds negative.
But your goal to make it smaller, less and so forth.
And I just hopeful of seeing some actual backup
and data on the things that you have done
to your system from an operational perspective
that has made those changes
and that those are meeting those goals.
-: I think as Michael presented back in August,
we're referring to that as smarter, shorter, smaller,
shorter, smarter.
And yes, we'll have all that documented
in our after action reviews,
as well as in our 10 day report.
We're looking forward to that as well.
-: Yes, I'm sure you are.
Thank you.
I'm sure all of you are.
So that after action reports are critical.
Any other questions of P...
Yes, Commissioner Shiroma.
-: Yes, thank you.
So again, for all three utilities,
I appreciate that you are working closely
with the access and functional needs stakeholders.
And for PG&E in your letter, you talk about,
and Laurie, you talked about the center
for independent learning partnership.
And so my question is simply, you have an advisory group
called the people with disabilities
and aging advisory council.
And so after you've done your hotwash and so forth,
are you going to be circling back around
to these advisory groups and potentially to the customers
sort of like to find out about the customer experience
and about any kinds of lessons learned towards,
to take as all of you have said, to do things even better.
-: Absolutely, we will be including them for feedback.
As I think we mentioned in August,
we were getting ready to do our third drill,
and we have been including our advisory councils
in as well, both as participants and observers.
So we're anxious to spend time with them
through the hotwash, to get feedback, input,
and understand where we can really improve.
We also wanna leverage the really good work
that Mike and team, and certainly Scott and team have done
so that we can leverage best practices
really across the utilities as well.
But we'll be getting that feedback
and certainly looking for direct feedback from customers.
I would offer that this was the first time
we've gotten actually positive comments from tribes,
we've gotten positive comments on the website
and really a positive response from customers.
I know there will be negative comments as well
because certainly being out of power
is a grave inconvenience.
But it's reaffirmed the fact that we're making
the right improvements, we're never going to be done,
we're going to have to continue to be diligent
in focusing on really minimizing impact
and supporting customers.
But I think this event really has helped to give us
some confidence that we're headed in the right direction,
but much more work to do.
Commissioner Shiroma, you also asked a question
about food banks when I presented in August,
and I mentioned that we've established partnerships
with the food banks to provide meal replacement
for vulnerable customers and vulnerable families,
as well as meals on wheels.
We were also able to provide backup battery generation
for food bank in Nevada County.
And it's a model we think that we can replicate
as we have these events going forward.
But that enabled that food bank to continue
to operate in the County and support our customers
in that area.
So you'd ask the question I wanted to follow up from August
and we're gonna continue to focus there.
-: Thank you.
If I can also want to say again, you'll,
I mean, anecdotally, I would say observing what happened
last year versus what happened this year for PG&E,
they did very, very big differences.
And I did catch one of your live YouTube presentation.
I think the first one, the first 6:00 p.m. telecast.
And I thought that and providing information for the public
and then allowing for questions from the press
was really good just towards providing a holistic view
of things.
And then Rachel, thank you for arranging for many of us
to participate in some of the tabletop exercises
with the utilities to see what did the virtual
operations centers look like through their practice run
to help that was very, very important.
Anyway, thank you, Laurie.
-: Thank you.
-: Are there any further questions of Laurie
or Scott or Mike at this time?
This has been extremely helpful.
Rachel, thank you so much for organizing this
along with every other ball you had in the air
over the last 72 plus hours.
As you said, Laurie, the weeks and days
seem to definitely run together these days.
So I appreciate the time, I know you all have had
your hands full and that of your staff,
just as we in the last many days.
So I know that this is probably a bit of a stretch
to report today, but I think it was critical for our public,
your customers to hear all the things that you are doing.
You've done things that you know you still need
to improve upon and learn from each other
and learn from other States, et cetera.
So I appreciate the report and we do look forward
to the after action reports.
We will hear from the public,
they will be encouraged by that.
There may be some lessons learned
that we hear from the public
that we can share with you as well.
So was that Rachel, I'll return it back to you.
-: I only want to add my thanks to Scott, Mike, Laurie,
and Aaron for taking the time to brief us,
to brief the Commissioners.
And me, I learned, even though I was
on many of your briefing calls,
I learned some more detail today, so that was very helpful.
And really it was very rapid turnaround requests.
I made this request to them midday Tuesday.
So thank you again.
I know your emergency ops centers are still
in activated mode,
so I very much appreciate the time you took
to brief the Commission today.
That's all President Batjer.
-: Okay, thank you all very much.
-: Thank you.
-: We will be moving on with our Commissioner reports.
Who would like to go first.
Yes, Commissioner Guzman Aceves.
-: Okay, I'll be very brief.
I just wanted to highlight two workshops that are coming up,
that I would really invite you to participate in.
The first is a proposal that I mentioned
last voting meeting.
I put out in relation to the consumer fraud
within the net energy metering program,
the solar consumer fraud program,
and a proposal for a recovery fund.
We have been working with our state agency partners,
contractors, state licensing board,
and department of business oversight.
We'll be holding a workshop on September 22nd,
Tuesday, September 22nd.
And of course you can check in with energy division,
on any details, but I invite you all to participate in that.
And secondly, frontier, as you know,
earlier this year filed for bankruptcy and the Commission
has received that restructuring application.
And I will skip all the details I was gonna share with you
on the update on that,
but just to Mark your calendars for a workshop
on the 7th of October.
And this will be both have a morning and afternoon sessions,
we'll have two folks from local government,
tribal government and sharing their experiences
and their visions, and we'll have a panel of experts
as well and of course, public comment period.
So hopefully you can join me for that workshop as well
on October 7th.
Thank you.
-: Sorry, he was muted.
Commissioner Shiroma, please.
Sorry.
-: Okay, thank you.
Also brief, just wanted to report out on September 3rd,
judge Newsome and I held two public participation hearings
for the suburban water companies,
a proposed general rate case.
And we had once again, good attendance.
These virtual public participation hearings
are allowing for, I think more people,
more customers to participate
and we receive a presentation from the utility.
Also we'll receive a presentation from our California public
advocate's office.
And this time around, we had 35 participants
at the 1:00 p.m session and 10 speakers.
We had 29 online for the 6:00 p.m and nine speakers,
including some Spanish translation.
And I think it's continues to be very important
that we provide for these opportunities for customers.
Sometimes we've had more speakers, sometimes less.
All of it is very important for not providing
for an opportunity for customers to call in.
And then I want to highlight that we have our low income
oversight board meeting coming up on September 17th.
It'll be on WebEx.
We're gonna be featuring our sister agency,
the California conservation Corp.
We'll hear from Bruce Cyto the executive director
about the work that they're doing, the energy efficiency.
And also by the way, the California conservation Corp
has 17 firefighting work crews and they are out.
They're helping Cal Fire and the forest service
in fighting fires.
And then on Tuesday, September 22nd at 1:00 p.m,
we'll be holding our universal lifeline telephone service
administrative committee.
And they are the advisory committee on the lifeline program.
And we'll be hearing about the kickoff of the efforts
by university of California at SAC state on acquired
assessment of the effectiveness of the program.
And then the advisor committee will also be talking about
what kinds of things will be going into their annual report,
in terms of advising, the Commission.
Thank you
-: There you go on mute again, Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
-: Next Friday, the 18th, the disadvantaged advisory group
is going to be having one of their quarterly meetings
over their monthly meetings.
And part of the agenda will be a discussion
of transportation electrification priorities,
both by at the energy Commission and the PUC.
So people are welcome to join that.
I know it's late and a great deal has been said already.
And I don't wanna be labor what's been said very much.
But I do wanna echo my thanks for the program yesterday
and all the remarks about San Bruno.
I wanna thank in particular, you President Batjer,
conditional Randolph, Rachel, Pearson,
Wendy Allen (distorted sound) David and Shuki
and entire team for their very deeply moving remarks.
Karen's I hope you don't mind me quoting you.
You said something very, very profound.
You said hope doesn't prevent tragedies, but action does.
And I wasn't at the PUC in 2010,
but I've heard that as a described as a watershed moment
for the agency.
And I think we have done quite a bit.
We see that in many efforts that President Batjer
just mentioned today and others,
and I'm privileged to be the lead
on the risk mitigation safety policy
that was born out of San Bruno.
I think that's one of the very tangible things
that's really helped us move forward.
And I think we're trying to do it.
And we got great advice from Senator Hill today who said,
we need to do that with humility and gravity.
I think that's very, very profound.
And just on the fires, again, an extraordinary amount's
been said and I don't need to be labor
how remarkable the efforts to conserve water
and the response was across the board in California.
We are suffering from unprecedented challenges.
I think this is a true sign to come
that the extent of the fires is not limited to California.
We're seeing in Oregon, the fires behave in ways
that define modeling, just like they do here.
Earlier this week, Portland gas and general,
Portland gas and electric, excuse me,
instituted a PSPS there for the first time.
Governor Kate Brown said that thousands of homes
are affected entire communities maybe lost.
And she was worried that the loss of life
may be the greatest of any wildfire on record in Oregon.
I participated in the discussion
with other Western public service Commissioners
earlier this week and had been touched
with some of the Oregon public utilities Commission.
We are all in this boat together
and the impacts of climate change
continue to defy predictions.
As Governor Newsome said, there's no patients,
no time for climate deniers.
This is happening right now at an unprecedented rate.
And we are taught so with our colleagues elsewhere
in the Western.
We stand ready to support them in any way we can.
Thank you.
-: Thank you, Commissioner Rechtschaffen.
Any other comments?
I'll just make very quickly cause it is late in our day.
I want to say that it was really an extraordinary,
as you just said, Cliff, that the customers, the public,
both residential commercial, industrial,
the customers for electricity responded incredibly well
to the need to cut their demand of energy.
And as a result, their fellow Californians
were not put in the dark.
And it was really extraordinary to see the demand curve
begin to flatten and begin to flatten quickly.
And we still have a lot of reviewed to do,
our own after action reports to be done by both Cal ISO,
CEC, California energy Commission and the PUC.
But it really gives you great heart
that folks do really realize how important it is
to sacrifice a bit for the greater good.
And without that, we would have really had
some devastating impacts in terms of power being cut off
in these rolling blocks.
And I also wanna, again, thank Commissioner Randolph
for all of her great partnership with me
over these few days.
And Commissioner Rechtschaffen is my partner on PSPS.
So thank you both very much.
You kept me straight and you kept me on track
and I greatly appreciate it.
So thank you.
Okay, with that, the public meeting is adjourned.
Thank you all.