Recent wildfires are affecting all of us - loss of life, destroyed homes and businesses and communities, purposeful power outages, environmental destruction, millions of trees unnecessarily threatened. We will all benefit if PG&E and the other huge for-profit utilities are mandated to improve the infrastructure that is continually failing and causing wildfires. Thus, 

We petition Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature to act immediately to address the wildfire emergency by mandating that PG&E and the other investor-owned utilities upgrade their distribution and transmission infrastructure systems to modern, essentially failsafe equipment within three years - starting with Tier 3, high utility-associated wildfire danger areas.

Specifically, prioritize two things:

·       Install computerized circuit breakers (such as high impedance arc fault interrupters or synchrophasers) that immediately shut off power to broken wires, preventing wildfire and electrocution, while notifying utilities of the break’s location for fast repairs.

·       Replace fragile, outmoded bare distribution conductor (wire) with stronger, insulated conductor to prevent frequent breakage and reduce fire danger.  

To accomplish this:

·       Focus funds and staff on infrastructure upgrades in this ongoing emergency, immediately stop the ineffective, environmentally destructive, massive removal of healthy, mature trees (over 100 million planned),

·       Fulfill the legally-required trimming levels, saving billions of dollars better spent on infrastructure.

Contact: Nancy Macy, Chair, Environmental Committee for the SLV, Valley Women’s Club of San Lorenzo Valley. 831/345-1555  nbbm@cruzio.com  www.valleywomensclub.org (Networking across California to improve wildfire safety and protect our forests, our communities and our homes.)