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The Camp Fire rages through Paradise, Calif. , on Nov. 8, 2018. (AP file photo/Noah Berger)
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) California regulators on Thursday placed beleaguered utility Pacific Gas and Electric in the first stage of an enhanced oversight process that could lead to the state’s largest provider of power and natural gas losing its license to operate in California.
The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved a resolution to move PG&E into the first stage of a six-step enhanced oversight process, citing its failure to prioritize wildfire prevention work in areas that posed the greatest risk of fire last year.
In a unanimous vote, the CPUC placed PG&E into step one of the enhanced oversight and enforcement process for failing to focus vegetation management around power lines with the highest risk of causing a catastrophic wildfire.
“We will continue to monitor very closely,” CPUC President Marybel Batjer said before the vote.
But safety advocates, like Nathaniel Skinner with CPUC’s Public Advocates Office, were not satisfied. Skinner says the commission must do more in light of PG&E’s failure to cut down a leaning tree identified as the cause of the deadly Zogg Fire last year.
“We are seeing the same old PG&E management of deflect, defer, ignore and obfuscate,” Skinner said. “They are playing a game of dodging accountability, when what they should be doing is accepting their failure, coming clean about it and being accountable.”