{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Trees coming down in Willits","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":389,"description":"April 4, 2022 — As PG&E’s tree-cutting crews move into more neighborhoods, some property owners are slowly starting to think in terms of an organized response. But the enhanced vegetation management program, with its multitude of contractors and the lack of education or publicly available documents, is bewildering to most landowners. \r\nLauren Robertson is a resident of Pine Mountain in Willits. She described the approach she’s seen in her neighborhood. “PG&E has been masterful at dealing with people individually,” she opined; “doing favors for some property owners. And as soon as they do a favor for a property owner, that property owner is suddenly not mad anymore. And that’s a little disturbing.” Robertson is scrupulous about hardening her property for fire safety. “We could bury our houses also, and that would prevent fires from burning our houses down,” she reasoned. “But we’ve hardened our houses. And I think that’s what PG&E is not doing. They’re not hardening their lines. Or hardening their infrastructure by cutting down trees.” \r\nA recent report by acting State Auditor Michael Tilden blasted the privately owned utilities and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them. Tilden wrote that the Energy Safety Office, which is part of the California Natural Resources Agency, approved PG&E’s 2021 safety plan, in spite of its own review, which “found that the utility failed to demonstrate that it was properly prioritizing other mitigation activities, particularly power line replacement and system hardening efforts,” like insulating bare cable in high-risk areas. Tilden added that, “The CPUC does not consistently audit all areas in the utilities’ service territories, it did not audit several areas that include high fire-threat areas, and it does not use its authority to penalize utilities when its audits uncover violations.”\r\n“There’s no authority that can tell them what to do. They can just do whatever they want,” according to Walter Smith, a former logger...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}