[conspire] AT&T and CPUC

[Ron / BCLUG]

Rick Moen wrote on 2024-01-24 21:18:

> the relevant question is "Was PG&E (for most of the state) or 
> Southern California Edison (for SoCal) willing to pay to underground 
> the utility cables?"

> Everyone talks about undergrounding all utilities -- especially the 
> long-distrance power transmission lines that cause many wildfires -- 
> but nobody has ever wanted to pay for that.
I'm sympathetic to that argument.

The terrain, the ground / soil is likely not amenable to burying, the 
environmental damage, difficulty of inspection (not that PG&E do that),...


And now I hear that where utilities *were* buried, there was often 
leaching of lead, etc. into the soil (AT&T?).


Freakin' great.


I cannot think of a single example of a fire caused by utility lines 
here in BC. We've got ~300,000km if I recall correctly, and a lot of 
increasingly dry & dead forests, yet it isn't (yet?) a problem.

Probably those inspections, plus no profit motive.



Recently listened to a horrifying podcast about the Paradise / Camp fire.

I don't recall the name of it, but it was riveting.