Neighbors Locked In Battle With PG&E Over Trees And Power Lines
SACRAMENTO COUNTY (CBS13) — Neighbors are locked in a battle with PG&E to save trees the utility plans to cut down.
A viewer contacted CBS13, but it's the entire neighborhood is behind the effort. But PG&E says the trees are growing into a public safety risk.
Nola Castle is fully committed to the cause of saving potentially dozens of trees, but especially a ginkgo biloba tree.
"This is the tree that I would chain myself to in order to save it," she said.
That, the retired teacher says, is no exaggeration.
"I will do all I can to save the trees," she said.
Her community off of Howe Avenue is called Woodside—after all, that's why people live here.
"That just what makes Woodside, Woodside, and the people that live here love their trees," she said. "These trees have been here over 50 years. Why now? Why now, I don't understand it."
PG&E says it may have no choice but to take the trees out to prevent branches from growing into high-voltage lines. Federal standards forbid any outages caused by vegetation. Utilities can face fines of up to $1 million a day.
PG&E says the lines are tied into the Western power grid, and an outage could potentially impact millions of customers. If that scenario sounds unlikely, spokeswoman Brandi Ehlers says it's played out before in 2003.
"It started in Ohio and affected 50 million customers and lasted multiple days," she said. "They traced the root cause of that outage to a walnut tree that had grown into high-voltage transmission lines."
As it's done for years, the utility is negotiating with the Woodside HOA trying to reach a compromise.
Castle hopes no trees have to go, but if it comes down to it:
"If all the other trees must go that's fine, but this one must stay," she said.
It's not the first time for this fight. PG&E say it's worked with the HOA going back several years, n some cases, even funding replacement trees to be planted.
The two sides are meeting this Wednesday to hash it out.
