PG&E undergrounds 1,000 miles of power lines along North Bay coast

By CBS Bay Area

Pacific Gas and Electric announced that crews have undergrounded about 1,000 miles of power lines in high-wildfire-risk areas across the San Francisco Bay Area and Central California.

“A thousand miles is longer than the state of California, so that thousand miles of power lines have now kept customers safe from wildfire risk,” Dave Canny, the vice president of PG&E North Coast Region, told CBS News Bay Area.

Canny oversees several crews, including the crews working in the mountainous neighborhood of Angwin in Napa County.

“These power lines at the top of the pole, once our project is complete, those will be removed permanently, permanently removing any wildfire risks associated with those lines,” he said.

Crews are paving trenches to install power lines underground, and in Napa County, will be installing throughout 50 miles in the community.

The project began back in 2021, and PG&E crews forecast they will lay about 1,600 miles of underground power lines throughout the service region by the end of 2026.

About five miles north, Jeff Alvarez is picking up the pieces from the Pickett Fire back in August.

“This is Schwartz’s Creek right here, and we’re in the middle of the burn zone. And the fire consumed about 8,000 acres from Calistoga to Aetna Springs,” Alvarez, the president of the Biological Field Studies Association, told CBS News Bay Area.

The association runs the Cleary Reserve, which is now bare due to the fire scorching 440 acres of the property.

“We’ve had a history here for 62 years of doing environmental education work and scientific research, and much of that is sent back to zero. It’s going to be many, many years before we can get students back up here,” he said

“We lost all these great pines here, they’re really fragile when it comes to fires. This entire area was covered in willow trees, which are now essentially black sticks in the creek bed,” Alvarez added.

He started an online fundraiser in hopes that the community could jump in and help with cleanup efforts.

“The county of Napa is really requiring us to clean up the site that we already have. All of that has to be removed. It has to go to metal recycling, hazardous waste, or whatever facility for dumping, and that costs a huge amount of money,” Alvarez said. “And since we’re just a nonprofit that really operates on volunteers, we have a really steep hill to climb.”

Alvarez added that while he appreciates PG&E’s efforts to mitigate wildfires across the Bay Area, he said more needs to be done.

“PG&E and others do have to work with CAL FIRE and the state to try to make protective zones, so shade breaks, fire breaks, more access and more money, not just for firefighting and prevention of fire in these areas,” he said.

That is the collaboration that Canny is pushing for. He said that starting with underground power lines, they will be a more reliable and safer power source for customers.

“Because our men and women live and work in these communities, many of them experienced wildfire personally, and are therefore particularly passionate about our wildfire reduction risk programs,” Canny said.

The company’s goal is to install 10,000 miles of underground power lines across the state of California.