Posted:
09/26/2014 08:12:30 PM PDT
0 Comments | Updated: about 22 hours ago
SAN BRUNO -- San Bruno officials are demanding a fresh
batch of documents, including emails and visitor logs, to determine if
the state Public Utilities Commission and PG&E have coordinated
public announcements about an email scandal linked to a fatal explosion
of natural gas in San Bruno.
A PR problem is solved by throwing money at it - you can't get back the lives lost, money isn't a replacement for a life and failure is not an option for PG&E
For PG&E it's a zero sum game.
San Bruno officials want to uncover more information about what
sorts of communications occurred this year between PG&E and the PUC.
The city also demanded the PUC visitor logs from early 2011 to the
present and wants to obtain information about contacts between the PUC
and Wall Street analysts. San Bruno outlined its requests in a
regulatory filing with the PUC on Friday.
Skeptics believe the PUC and PG&E maintain a cozy
relationship, even though the commission is supposed to regulate the
utility. Investigators say the San Bruno explosion occurred because of
flawed record keeping and shoddy maintenance on PG&E's part -- and
lax oversight of PG&E on the PUC's part. The blast killed eight and
wrecked a quiet San Bruno neighborhood in 2010.
Of particular interest to San Bruno are the back-to-back
announcements by the PUC and PG&E that detailed actions the two
organizations took in response to a series of emails in a rate case on
gas transmission and storage that's linked to the San Bruno explosion.
The emails showed that PG&E spent several weeks this year shopping
for a PUC judge to oversee the rate case and that the PUC sought to
accommodate the utility's requests and desires throughout that process.
"The fact that the PUC and PG&E issued news releases within a
half-hour of each other raises questions about whether they were
communicating and
coordinating with each other," Britt Strottman, an
attorney representing San Bruno, said Friday night.
When you're charged with lying to Federal Investigators at any level you're emails, phones and communications allow for wiretaps and intercepts but this explosion isn't just about a leaky pipe it's about over pressurization of a Pipeline via a SCADA Failure.
Forget the China Syndrome this failure was Insider Terrorism
San Francisco-based PG&E on Wednesday said it will provide,
within one day, disclosures about of any communications it conducts with
an array of state regulatory officials at the PUC.
"Progress is being made, but we still have a long way to go," San
Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson said Friday night. "This is a
relationship that remains too cozy."
PG&E earlier this month ousted three regulatory executives
involved in the email scandal. For its part, the PUC removed Carol Brown
as chief of staff to the PUC's powerful president, Michael Peevey,
although Brown could resume her prior role as an administrative law
judge.
"We voluntarily conducted our own review of nearly five
years of emails, we found these violations, we self-reported them to our
regulator and took immediate and decisive actions." PG&E spokesman
Keith Stevens said. "We also provided a courtesy notice to the PUC that
we would be filing a notice as part of that process."
Separately
on Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law six bills authored by state
Sen. Jerry Hill that grew out of the fatal San Bruno explosion and a
mysterious 2013 sniper attack on
PG&E's Metcalf substation in south
San Jose. The Metcalf measure requires the PUC to adopt statewide rules
for physical security of electricity substations.
Contact George
Avalos at 408-859-5167. Follow him at
Twitter.com/georgeavalos.
