From the City of Lafayette:
LAFAYETTE, CALIF., Aug. 28, 2018 — California Public Utilities Commission members and senior PG&E management officials will be attending a special community meeting on PG&E safety concerns convened by the Lafayette City Council on Monday, September 10, 2018, at 4:00 p.m., in the Community Hall at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd., Lafayette, Calif. The regular City Council meeting will begin at 7:00 p.m., following the special community meeting.
Community members have voiced their dissatisfaction with the utility, and in many cases demanded that the City of Lafayette intervene with PG&E on residents’ behalf. This special community meeting will allow residents to make their concerns known directly to PG&E and receive answers to their questions about the utility’s operations.
Representing the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) will be Naveed Paydar, Local Government Liaison, Executive Division, and Lee Palmer, Deputy Director of the Office of Utility Safety, Security and Enforcement Division. PG&E, who will have senior management and topic experts at the meeting, will address more than 150 safety concerns raised by the community, which have already been forwarded to the utility in preparation for the special meeting.
Over the past several years, a number of issues related to PG&E and its provision of service in Lafayette have arisen. Those issues include:
- PG&E’s Community Pipeline Safety Initiative, in which the utility proposes to remove and replace 207 trees located in Lafayette, many along public trails and city streets, that the utility claims pose a safety concern;
- PG&E’s unexpected and sudden replacement of 6,000 linear feet of gas pipeline on St. Mary’s Road during Summer 2018, which work will have notable traffic and congestion impacts and also necessitate the removal of certain trees and vegetation; the city was first notified of this project only on March 29;
- PG&E safety concerns, including but not limited to the need for automatic shut off valves; exposed segments of gas pipeline that should be repaired; PG&E expenditure priorities; and PG&E’s representation of facts related to pipeline integrity testing; and
- New State rule changes related to tree limb trimming that will require more aggressive tree trims this summer and in the future, and which work may be conflated with the other issues listed above.
At the special community meeting, the public will have an opportunity to comment and ask questions of PG&E directly. The CPUC will monitor the meeting and answer questions that Lafayette’s City Council might have.
