PG&E

Hinkley_California_PGE_Water_Contamination_Case_Erin_Brokovich

November 27, 2023

Postcard from California: Why the ‘Erin Brockovich’ Chemical Is Still Unregulated

By Bill Walker

In 2001, California lawmakers passed a law requiring the state to set a legal limit for a cancer-causing chemical found in the tap water of more than 9 in 10 Californians called chromium-6. The legislation was spurred by the film “Erin Brockovich,” based on the true story of a small town’s David-and-Goliath battle against the state’s largest utility over contamination of its water supply.

The law ordered establishment of a health-protective standard for chromium-6 in drinking water by 2004. But nearly 20 years after that deadline, the process is still unfinished.

What’s worse, the weak standard recently proposed by the State Water Resources Control Board would leave millions of Californians at increased risk of cancer. And more than a decade after a US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) toxicological review concluded that chromium-6 in drinking water is a likely human carcinogen – a finding reaffirmed last year – there is still no federal standard to protect Americans nationwide.

The tortuous story of California’s long delay and the EPA’s inaction on chromium-6 shows how hard it is to regulate hazardous industrial chemicals in the US. It takes far too long, and a big reason is that polluting industries can stall the process with shady tactics.

In 1993, investigating unexplained illnesses in Hinkley, Calif., for a Los Angeles law firm, Brockovich uncovered decades of chromium-6 dumping by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E). Her firm sued PG&E on behalf of the town, and in 1996 the utility settled out of court for a then-record $333 million. The film based on the case won an Academy Award for Julia Roberts in the title role in 2001.

That same year, the state asked the University of California (UC) to convene an expert panel to assess the chemical’s health hazards. It was well-established that breathing chromium-6 fumes causes lung cancer – the reason California banned its use in chrome plating earlier this year – but there were few human studies of the risks the chemical posed in drinking water. Citing an obscure Chinese study, the panel’s report said a drinking water standard was not needed.

November 6, 2023

Proposed decision could deal another blow to California rooftop solar

By Shannon Kelleher

California regulators will vote this month on proposed key changes to programs that incentivize solar energy installations at apartment buildings, schools, and farms in a move critics fear will put the benefits of clean, renewable energy out of reach for many people.

“The proposed changes will hurt all rooftop solar, and the state’s decarbonization goals,” said Self Help Enterprises, a low-income housing program in Visalia, California, in an email to The New Lede. “However, low-income populations will be hit especially hard since a higher percentage of their income goes to rent and utilities.”

Hundreds of groups that advocate for clean energy and environmental justice, farms, and schools have signed letters protesting the proposals along with 135 local officials.

The vote is currently set for Nov. 16 after being postponed multiple times in the face of strong opposition. The vote comes about seven months after California’s net metering (NEM) 3.0 policy went into effect, which drastically decreased the value of the solar energy credits that homeowners receive when they share excess energy they produce with the grid.

The latest proposed net metering changes are related to the state’s Virtual Net Energy Metering (VNEM) and Net Energy Metering Aggregation (NEMA) programs, which benefits renters, schools districts, and farmers by allowing customers with properties that have multiple electric meters to install a single solar energy system. The programs enable customers with solar systems to receive credits for sharing the excess energy they produce with the grid.

The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC)’s proposed changes would require properties to sell the electricity they generate to the utility company before buying it back at full retail price.

August 24, 2023

California court dismisses lawsuit over nuclear power plant

By Shannon Kelleher

A California state judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by an environmental group seeking to force Pacific Gas & Electric Power Co. (PG&E) to adhere to a 2016 pledge to fully retire the state’s last nuclear power plant by 2025.

Instead of preparing to shutter its operation, PG&E is seeking approval to keep the Diablo Canyon plant open through 2045. The plant, which has come under fire for environmental and safety concerns, rests on the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The San Francisco County Superior Court decision, issued August 23, sided with PG&E’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit on procedural grounds. The decision followed a court hearing on Monday.

“It didn’t come as a huge surprise, but we’re still very disappointed in the outcome,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director of Friends of the Earth (FOE), which filed the lawsuit in April alleging that PG&E is violating the agreement it signed with the group in 2016. “It was very clear to us after the hearing that the judge didn’t want to touch this case with a ten-foot pole.”

The court decided to dismiss the case after taking the position that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) continues to have jurisdiction over matters related to the contract between FOE and PG&E.

“The issues presented by FOE’s claim are policy matters that fall squarely within the CPUC’s authority,” wrote Judge Ethan Schulman in the decision.

August 18, 2023

Critical hearing looms in battle over California’s last nuclear power plant

By Shannon Kelleher

Opponents of a nuclear power plant in California face a key court hearing next week, a potential turning point in a long-running battle over the fate of the state’s last nuclear power plant.

The environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) is set to square off against Pacific Gas & Electric Power Co. (PG&E) in an effort to keep alive the group’s legal challenge to PG&E’s continued operation of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which is located on the coast roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

FOE filed suit in April in San Francisco County Superior Court alleging that PG&E is violating an agreement it signed with the group in 2016 pledging to fully retire the plant by 2025. Now, with the support of state and federal officials, the utility is seeking approval from regulators to keep the plant running until 2045.

PG&E is asking the court to stay or dismiss the FOE lawsuit. Both sides will air their arguments on the issue Monday morning in San Francisco County Superior Court.

PG&E says the plant can “ensure the long-term availability of a valuable source of safe, clean, affordable and reliable electricity for more than three million Northern and Central Californians.”

In contrast, FOE, along with several scientists and environmental advocates, says the Diablo Canyon plant is a danger to public safety and the environment. Plant critics fear the plant’s continued operations put the state at risk of a nuclear accident, prevent the state from fully embracing a transition to clean energy, and saddle the public with an unnecessary financial burden.

November 18, 2022

Postcard from California: Regulators bowing to scheme to cripple rooftop solar

Once again, California is poised to sabotage its own climate goals.

After almost a year of heated public debate, the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has unveiled its latest proposal for changes to the state’s rooftop solar program. The so-called reforms could cripple what is by far the most successful solar initiative in the U.S.

More than 1.5 million California households, schools and small businesses have installed solar panels. For 2019, the latest estimate available, the state said rooftop solar kept 6 million metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – equal to taking 1.3 million cars off the road. That’s a big boost to the state’s goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045.

But California’s “Big Three” utilities – Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. – hate rooftop solar.

Under a program known as net metering, solar customers are freed from having to buy electricity from the utilities, whose rates are some of the highest in the country. Instead, solar panel owners generate much of their own power. If they generate more than they draw from the utility-owned grid, the excess flows back into the system, and the utilities must pay them for it.

Last year the Big Three pushed the PUC to deeply slash the rebates to solar customers and tack on a steep monthly surcharge just for connecting to the grid. In February, the PUC bowed to the lobbying and issued a proposal that could have slowed rooftop solar growth by half or more.

Public outcry forced the PUC to pull the first proposal back for revision. A new proposal in May still amounted to what outraged consumers, solar companies and environmental advocates called “a tax on the sun,” so the commission pulled it back again.

But round three, released Nov. 10, remains a severe blow to the future of rooftop solar. It scraps the connection surcharge, but still cuts the rebate for energy returned to the grid by about 75%, decimating one of the strongest incentives for consumers to go solar.

September 21, 2022

Solar power helping health care facilities gain climate resilience

By Pam Strayer

It is not easy to rattle Rosa Vivian Fernandez. As the CEO of a California healthcare clinic that primarily serves a low-income, largely Hispanic community, Fernandez sees the harsh struggles faced by disadvantaged populations on a daily basis. But when she traveled to Puerto Rico in 2017 to visit extended family members, Fernandez was shocked to see how deeply Hurricane Maria had devastated the island infrastructure, including the ability of healthcare providers to serve people in need.

More than 5,000 people died due to the violent Atlantic storm, which caused an estimated $92 billion in property damages, wiping out the electrical grid.

“All the healthcare centers–the ones that did not get flooded or destroyed by the storm–went down,” she said. “People died from the lack of services.”

Power to a children’s hospital in San Juan was restored when Tesla deployed its own solar panels and batteries after the 2017 hurricane, setting them up in the hospital parking lot. But this week most of Puerto Rico was again without power in the wake of yet another hurricane, forcing a cancer hospital on the island to relocate its patients when a backup generator failed.

After her 2017 visit, Fernandez realized the clinic she heads, San Benito Health Foundation in Hollister, California, could also be vulnerable to power failures that could jeopardize patient health. California’s record heat waves and other factors are increasingly taxing an already strained electrical power grid. Something had to be done, she decided.

Today, the 17,000 square-foot-clinic San Benito clinic is 100% solar powered, relying on a $1.7 million, self-contained microgrid of solar panels that collect energy, along with batteries to store the energy, and a controller that manages the system.

August 17, 2022

Postcard from California: Close California’s last nuclear power plant

The last nuclear power plant in California, vulnerable to earthquakes and priced out of the energy market by cheaper renewables, is slated to close in three years.

But now both Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Biden administration, citing the specious notion that nuclear power is needed to help address the climate crisis, are poised to give the plant’s owner billions of taxpayer dollars to keep it open. It’s a really bad idea.

April 28, 2022

Amid surge in solar adoption, several states see battles over consumer incentives

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s decision Wednesday to veto a controversial rooftop solar proposal is the latest round in a coast-to-coast battle over measures that utilities say are needed to ensure equitable and affordable energy solutions but which opponents say would ratchet back consumer incentives for adoption of rooftop solar.

The Florida bill would have phased out credits for new rooftop solar customers, erasing the credits entirely by 2029. Similar measures are being fought over in several states where solar energy is seen as a key to helping wean the nation off a dependence on fossil fuels.