LAKE COUNTY— This Thursday Pacific Gas and Electric officials met to discuss the progress of their current undergrounding project at Blue Lakes. Program manager of underground regional delivery Adam Kanter alongside general construction supervisor Kevin Pendergrass toured the construction area highlighting key components of the project and what to expect as they continue this work.
Beginning in January of this year the undergrounding project began in Lake County with two sites – a location in Clearlake Oaks and the one at this site in the Irvine neighborhood of Blue Lakes. The Blue Lakes project is 1.87 total miles and projected to be completed on July 7, which had been delayed due to inclement weather. Kanter noted “Six months is longer than we want to spend on excavating, but due to the rain and weather we didn’t get to mobilize construction.”
According to Kanter there are four parts to an undergrounding project, excavating trenches from 42 inches to seven feet deep, installing transformer boxes, conduit, and piping, followed by backfilling the trenches, and lastly re-establishing residential service lines. Kanter said, “Service lines do not create as much risk as high voltage power lines.” Once the high voltage lines and equipment are under ground, PG&E can then remove the pole, cut the pole down several feet for use with residential and telecommunications lines, or leave the pole which is all determined on a case by case basis.
After completion, PG&E expresses a “Ninety nine percent reduction in ignition risk, making it one of the most effective ways to reduce wildfire risk at the lowest long-term cost to customers.” The current goal for Lake County in 2023 is to complete 69 miles, and another 21 in 2024 for a total of 90 complete miles in the next two years. According to Kanter and Pendergrass in July 2021 PG&E made a 10,000 mile commitment to the state in hopes of reducing outages.
Although undergrounding has been an option for communities under the Public Utilities Commision rules, it has not been utilized to reduce risk of wildfires until recently. Kanter shared how PG&E is using scientific techniques to assess factors contributing to wildfires, prioritizing the highest risk areas and then completing those sites first. Kanter summarized this process. “What is the likelihood of a fire starting and what is the consequence of that fire,” he said.
Despite the inconvenience of construction, Kanter hopes that families will trade a few months of annoyance for an immeasurable amount of safety and security for their neighborhoods. Pendergrass explained how the crew will go back after completion and repair the roads damaged from construction and make it nice for the owners. “We don’t mind doing a bit extra to make sure customers are happier and safer.” The crews working on this project came over from the PG&E gas department but as mentioned by Pendergrass, they were much happier to work on this project because “It’s rewarding. We’re making a difference, we’re making everyone safer and customers are happy.” PG&E also formed a customer care team to address individual issues and to provide transparency throughout this process and has directed customers to their website pge.com/undergrounding for more information.
