PG&E; Plan to Fell Oaks Fuels Anger

Plans to cut down hundreds of oak trees to make sure the power stays on this summer are generating a high-voltage protest in this usually quiet retirement mecca on the Central Coast.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. says it must remove trees under its power lines to prevent fire from knocking out the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant at a time when the state will need every watt it can get.

Critics say the utility just wants to save gardening costs.

“The bottom line is the dollar,” said Jim Johandes, 51, whose avocado ranch backs up to PG&E; property in a rural canyon. He drove his vehicle to the top of a hill one day last week and parked under giant towers bearing power lines that carry 500,000 volts of electricity.

“Everything you see under these lines will be history,” he said, pointing to a thick canopy of oaks straddling the rolling brown hills.

The controversy over the oaks has not helped the battered reputation of the utility.

Johandes, a big, white-bearded man who owned a Whittier company that installed burglar and fire alarm systems until moving to the Central Coast eight years ago, has opened his property to demonstrators.

Some sign-carrying activists pressed their case before the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors last week. One supervisor, Khatchik Achadjian, called on PG&E; to put the tree-chopping project “on hold until a compromise can be developed.”

So far, PG&E; has shown no indication of scaling back plans to begin clearing away undergrowth this month. Utility officials say protesters overstate the damage, as well as the project’s intent.

“Trees and the environment are very important to everyone, including PG&E;,” said Bill Roake, a spokesman for the company.

If PG&E; has done anything to be ashamed of, he said, it is failing to communicate effectively with the public. “We did not do a good job,” Roake said.

Some have accused PG&E; of planning to clear-cut 15 miles of right-of-way from the bluff on the coast where Diablo is located. Utility officials say fewer than half the trees will be removed from a swath of brushland less than two miles long between Carpenter and Price canyons. That is about 104 acres altogether.

The goal, Roake said, is to open up the canopy so that fire cannot race along the tops of the trees and threaten the power lines.

“The lines are right above a very, very heavy [wood and brush] fuel load,” said Roake. “If there is a fire, you could have lines disrupted coming out of Diablo.”

Diablo Canyon is PG&E;’s single largest producer of power. Even if the flames did not reach the overhead lines themselves, smoke from a fire could put particulates in the air causing an arc, or crossover between adjacent lines.

Known as “phasing,” that would essentially short-circuit the transmission lines. Last year, Roake said, a small brush fire in the area knocked out the lines for more than six hours, though part of that problem was an unrelated equipment failure.

A worst case scenario, however, could knock out Diablo Canyon for three to four days, Roake said.

PG&E; said the cutting is being done to satisfy the state’s Independent System Operator, a nonprofit corporation whose job is to ensure the safety and reliability of the state’s energy grid.

Stephanie McCorkle, a spokeswoman, said the ISO did not order PG&E; to remove trees. “PG&E;’s preference was to remove trees rather than trim them,” she said in an e-mail response to The Times.

Roake acknowledged that the ISO didn’t tell the utility to remove the trees. “We felt this was the best way to keep the [grid system] safe and reliable,” he said.

As for allegations that PG&E; is cutting down trees to save money on maintenance, Roake acknowledged that safeguarding 108,000 miles of transmission lines is a big job. The utility spends $138 million annually to trim or remove trees and brush.

But the tree project has nothing to do with its cash crunch, according to PG&E.; The Carpenter Canyon project was planned two years ago.

Johandes doesn’t believe it. “They are doing it so they don’t have to do routine maintenance,” he said.

PG&E; has not made the argument, but conceivably could say it’s not anybody’s business what it does with vegetation on its property. Oaks are not endangered. There are 11 million acres of oak woodlands in California, according to the California Oak Foundation.

On the other hand, the oak looms large in the California myth. “It is kind of our signature tree,” said Janet Cobb, president of the foundation.

The state has lost 1.5 million acres of oaks since 1945, according to Cobb. The PG&E; plan, she said, is “a travesty. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking. Yes, some trees need to be thinned out, but this is butchering.”

Roake denied that. PG&E; said it is approaching the project cautiously. The first thing that will be done when work begins next week will be mowing down the grassy underbrush known as ladder fuel. That could be an ignition point for fire. After that, dead and diseased trees will be taken out.

“Then we’ll see what that does for the canopy,” he said.