Column: San Onofre and the wildfires: Why utilities need to be held strictly to their responsibilities

While everyone’s attention is focused on the wildfires spreading devastation across California, a couple of developments tangentially related have gone largely unnoticed. “To give utilities a blank check on the ratepayers’ backs gives them a disincentive to operate properly,” says Maria Severson, a San Diego lawyer who participated in the San Onofre negotiations. “And if we do that, our whole program, of trying to deal with renewable energy and mitigate climate change, would be adversely affected.” So he’s looking for a way to reduce the utilities’ liability without encouraging them to slacken their efforts to reduce fire risk — for example, by requiring them to file and comply with “fire mitigation plans” that include trimming vegetation around power lines. And last November, a PUC administrative law decision rejected San Diego Gas & Electric’s bid to pass $379 million in expenses from three 2007 wildfires on to its ratepayers, on the grounds that the utility failed to operate prudently in the fire zone and did not “reasonably manage and operate its facilities” prior to the blazes. As state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson asked at a Sacramento hearing Thursday on Brown’s proposal, “Why should we reduce utilities’ liability and expect them to do more” to mitigate fire risk?