Category: Power (Electricity, Gas)

  • Transit Taxes: Beware the head fakes

    If it were not so sad, it would be humorous to follow the discussion at the SF Comicle about the forthcoming transit taxes for BART, et al and the SMART train up in Marin. The catalyst was a letter to the editor titled “If we’re willing to pay billions to maintain highways, why not fund BART?” I’m betting the author knows a half-dozen reasons why, but is playing the faux equity game to push the new taxes. Y’all come to this blog to see the onion get peeled, so let’s assess the “community value” of our “highways” and our city streets, such as they are, compared to BART, VTA, SMART, Caltrain, etc.

    Which bits of infrastructure enable police response? Fire response? Ambulance response? Utility (electric, gas, phone, internet) response? I am always impressed when the Safeway 18-wheeler makes the sweeping right turn at Howard, maneuvers the extra-long trailer into the parking lot and manages to back the thing into the loading dock. If you have never seen it, you’re missing out. And if we don’t see it every couple of days we will be missing out. Let’s not forget the Walgreen’s semi that got shoo’ed away from the big El Camino Project groundbreaking because it was noisy and inconvenient to the proceedings. You want your antibiotic? It ain’t coming on Caltrain or BART.

    Is a commuter rail line a good thing? Sure. Should it cover its costs at the fare box? No. But let’s dispense with the faux argument that transit can hold a candle to the streets and freeways that keep this whole show on the road. I’m not saying vote “no” on the tax–yet, but San Mateo County appears to be the tail that isn’t wagging the dog once again as the monies flow elsewhere.

  • Broadway: Gas Leak Lawsuit

    I was pretty sure a lawsuit would be filed over the extended closure of businesses on and around B’way. I didn’t see the merchants being represented by one of the top 25 plaintiff law firms in the country, but offering local merchants support is meritorious. From the DJ piece

    A class action lawsuit on behalf of merchants in Burlingame’s Broadway area has been filed against the owner and operator of A&A Gas & Mart, who were previously named as responsible parties in a gasoline leak that caused days of power outages and road closures in the business district. 

    Burlingame law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy chose to move forward with the suit, filed Feb. 23, to seek an undetermined amount of damages for businesses that lost customers, revenue and inventory as a result of those outages and closures, attorney Nanci Nishimura, who is representing the plaintiffs, said.

    The merchants mentioned range from Maverick Jack’s at the old train station to Bonne Sante at the other end of B’way. The total number is more than 100.

    In a real twist of fate, the A&A Gas website’s “About us” page shows the B’way station! They appear to have four of their six locations on the Peninsula. We’re not talking Shell or Chevron here so expect some sort of settlement as they realize what they are up against. In the meantime, Broadway is lovely shopping and dining district and there has been a lot of free parking as the city deinstalls the old parking meters and waits to install the fancy new ones.

  • PG&E: Unhappy New Year

    It’s been a rough start to the New Year for PG&E customers from EssEff to B’game and now to San Mateo. Fire in the city caused major problems including for the huge Waymo fleet. Here in B’game the multi-day outage on and around Broadway and California was especially tough for businesses and even more so if they happened to have perishable inventory. The news, like this report from ABC7, keep calling the leak into the utility vault a “petroleum product”. I suppose it could be diesel (does A&A sell diesel), but most likely it’s gas. ABC7 reported:

    Even though PG&E provided generators for those impacted, businesses were told they had to hire a private electrician to do checks before the utility company would hook them up. “To be able to certify that it’s okay to turn on the power and use the generators so we don’t have explosions,” said John Kevranian of the Broadway Burlingame Business Improvement District.

    That sounds odd and not very customer centric. If that is different skill set than PG&E electricians, then shouldn’t PG&E have hired a commercial electrician on the customers’ behalf? (kudos to John for stepping back in after his BID term ended to keep everyone up to date with many texts, etc).

    And of course, all of this happened right as the Little Big Dig started halving the capacity on El Camino and thinking vehicles could reroute to California. As one of our regular, shrewd commenters pointed out on the Drop the Green Flag post, post-holiday rainy season wasn’t the best time to start taking down massive trees and figuring out power line routes.

    ABC7 noted “PG&E is still working to extract all of the petroleum product from the vaults and identify where it’s coming from. They say it’s not something they use with their equipment.” Transformers use heavy oil as an insulator, but this isn’t that. Eventually we will find out if A&A gas was up to date and up to code on the tanks. Note that the station at the other end of B’way did theirs a couple years ago. And both the Chevron (finished) and the Shell stations on Peninsula are doing the same. The Google machine spit out this timely tidbit:

    Older, single-walled tanks face strict deadlines for upgrades or permanent closure (e.g., by Dec 31, 2025, for many systems) due to corrosion risks.

    Here’s a pic of the big generators that got people back online. Reports are they are just as noisy as the folks in the Richmond district reported. Caterpillar stock is up 75% in the last 12 months……

  • No Mo Waymo: Power outage chaos

    Social media is brimming with photos, videos and commentary about the on-going power outage in EssEff from a sub-station fire. It peaked at about 130,000 customers and the last 20,000 or so might get power back tomorrow morning (that would be two days of no power). Aside from all the other inconveniences and possible dangerous situations, we can now add confused and disabled Waymo’s to the list. Per the Comicle:

    Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service remained suspended Sunday morning after a sweeping power outage knocked out traffic signals across large swaths of San Francisco.

    On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them. Waymo halted service citywide around 8 p.m. Saturday.

    The outage started “late Saturday morning” but Alphabet didn’t take the robotaxis fully out of service until 8 p.m. even though the software can’t treat a missing traffic light as a four-way stop. And some cellular internet service was affected which Waymo needs to work. Go figure.

    I took my first Waymo ride three months ago with a couple non-dangerous wrinkles as noted here. But we have very erratic PG&E power in town. Just this morning I got a Citizen app notice of two outages in the B’game-H’borough area. There was a major outage about a week ago as well and we don’t particularly handle failed traffic lights well in town either. Putting a sawhorse in the middle of ECR with no lights or a flare that went out an hour ago is standard protocol.

    You may have read about a woman who gave birth in a Waymo on the way to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. Better to stick with Uber or Lyft if it’s urgent.

  • Smelling smoke in Sacramento: Is there fire?

    I’m smelling smoke in Sacramento and wondering how big the fire might get. When the SF Comicle decides to do a full-page piece on a corruption indictment of a very senior Newsom ex-staffer you know they are getting in front of something that blew up on X just a day or two ago. The SacBee led four days ago, and the WSJ was on it two days ago when one Dana Williamson appeared in court, but the Comicle has a way of ignoring or burying these stories on A10. Before anyone’s TDS gets triggered the WSJ writes:

    A federal investigation involving prominent former aides to Democratic politicians could generate uncomfortable questions as California pols seek higher office. The feds allege a conspiracy among former aides to raid a campaign account by billing it for bogus services. Since the investigation began during the Biden administration, it won’t be easy for Democrats to dismiss it as Trump lawfare.

    Apparently the Feds first reached out to Williamson asking questions about the Gavinor but she told them she Knew Nothing. She now sees where that got her. The smell of smoke is strong because all the support Newsom gave Biden before his TV crack-up. It couldn’t be retribution.

    Williamson was Newsom’s chief of staff until last November when she alerted Newsom of the investigation. Her little team is accused of (and two have plead guilty to bank and wire fraud) skimming $10K a month out of a dormant Xavier Becerra campaign account totaling $180K. The would-be governor Becerra called it a “gut punch”. But wait, there’s more from the SacBee:

    The charges also accuse Williamson of filing false tax returns, claiming more than $1 million in business deductions for personal expenses, including trips to luxury resorts in Mexico, designer handbags, jewelry, home furniture, and travel on private jets. The indictment also alleges that Williamson provided government information to a company involved in litigation with the state and lied about it to the FBI.

    All sorts of money has been sloshing around Sacramento for a long time. High-cost rail is billions over budget. Lost EDD money totalled $31 billion and Williamson is also accused of filing a fraudulent PPP claim. Non-profits and NGOs get grant money all the time for all sorts of things. The Newsom tab to solve homelessness is somewhere between $24 and $37 billion. And Williamson worked as director of public affairs for PG&E from 2006 to 2011. I bought extra popcorn today.

  • Natural Gas Gets a Reprieve?

    This is an interesting month in the climate wars with Bill Gates issuing a statement that basically said “nevermind” after years of haranguing us, eight miles of rainforest cut down for a climate conference in Brazil and some of our local governments trying to keep their all-electric “reach codes” on life support. Per the DJ:

    After some legal hiccups, cities throughout the region, including San Mateo, are revisiting policies that incentivize use of electric appliances and penalize reliance on gas infrastructure in homes and buildings.

    That “legal hiccup” was the Ninth Circuit eviscerating Berkeley’s overreach on natural gas. Our neighboring city to the south is reacting with a revision that

    Would require single-family homes, duplexes, townhomes and commercial buildings to install either a heat pump or higher-efficiency air conditioner at the time the original AC unit needs replacement.  The potential reach code would also require the addition of electric infrastructure when certain types of renovations are already underway.

    Then San Mateo broached a “scoring” system to award points to homeowners for choosing various electric-only options. You would not be wrong to compare that to the CCP’s Social Credit system. At least one councilor has a glimmer of understanding about complexity (i.e. staff time) and costs although it apparently didn’t deter her from plunging ahead.

    This is already going to be really complicated to understand, but it’s also an opportunity to really bring our community along because with a number of the other reach codes, there have been real cost issues associated with them, where people thinking the cost was going to be X, and the cost ends up being X plus 50%,” Councilmember Lisa Diaz Nash said.

    Here are a few of the costs that get us to X + 50% —or way more–2X, 3X?. Things have gotten even more expensive than when I wrote that five years ago. Some day I would love to see the DJ or the Daily Post survey council members up and down the Peninsula (and County supes) to see if any of them are all-electric. Aside from new construction, I’ll be it’s very very few.

  • ECR: T-minus Two Months and Counting

    Caltrans stopped by the city council meeting on Monday to tell everyone that the Little Big Dig project to improve El Camino Real is on track to start at the end of December or early January. You would not be wrong to ask, “If you are within two months of starting a $130 million dollar project that will disrupt a whole city for at least four years, shouldn’t you have a firm start date?” The plan, described here, is to start at the south end, working up the northbound side, then turning around at Millbrae and working down the southbound side. PG&E in the meantime will be starting on the north end and working its way down the southbound side burying the power lines and whatever else is hanging off the poles. That will take an indeterminate but long time. We got a tiny taste of it here.

    Stage 1 (about 2,000 feet long) will remove the first 136 trees which are marked by a medallion. Tree removal needs a “full closure” of that section of the state highway which opens up a set of questions that mostly went unasked by council or were answered superficially by staff and Caltrans. How police, fire, and ambulances get rerouted is the top concern. The response is essentially “we will be in contact with them”–check out slide 13–and you will see I will be on the leading (bleeding?) edge of these questions. How Recology picks up the garbage and recycling and how delivery services get to residences and businesses is another. SamTrans will also have to squeeze through. We should probably institute a no-left-turn zone for each stage and ensure BPD has a good overtime budget for the next four years.

    I’m still hoping the city or Caltrans will alert people to the doomed trees with some marker or ribbon larger than the little metal tags that are attached now. It’s gonna be a shock beyond just the street closures. The official response is “we are planting twice as many trees as we are taking out”. They’re just 10% as tall.

    Stages 2 through 6 are queued up much the same way, taking us through the Fall of 2029. That’s not a typo. Neither is this caveat in the slide deck “Timeline subject to change, contingent on PG&E undergrounding coordination and other key challenges“. That is going to put quite a magnifying glass on the general contractor, Teichert Construction, who councilwoman Donna Colson noted is a woman-owned company led by a someone she grew up with in Sacramento. As Bill Murray said in Caddyshack about his relationship with the Dalai Lama, “So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.” At least we know who to call and Donna noted she expects 100’s of calls. What is the biggest voicemail box you can buy? Public works director Syed Murtuza chose his retirement date wisely as the ribbon-cutting will also be his farewell.

    Council talked about public notice, banners, traffic advisory email lists, project website, social media posts on X, Facebook et al, and snail mailed notices. Prepare for incoming. In the meantime, see if your favorite Eucalyptus has one of these.

  • Power Pole Preview

    PG&E needed to replace a pole (one!) in my neighborhood recently. Watching it all happen got me thinking about the El Camino Real project (aka the Little Big Dig coming next year). We all got multiple notices about the new pole by mail and phone indicating a 30-minute planned outage on the morning of the work and another outage near the end of the day. A crew of about 15 guys rolled in with at least eight vehicles and two trailer-mounted generators. After they de-energized a section around the pole and disconnected it, the two generators kicked on to keep the lights on for the neighborhood.

    The job took the whole day with all 15 or so guys here all day. A long rig delivered the new pole and the guy in the bucket truck started disassembling the power, phone, and cable wires. All I could think of was what a massive task it will be to move miles of the El Camino wiring underground–and how many longer outages will occur. As with the loss of 90% of the eucalyptus trees, I doubt many people have any idea what is coming. It also made me glad to have a gas stove, heat and outdoor grill. Having dual power sources has been smart forever and not likely to change anytime soon.

  • A Cautionary Tale: Caltrans and Guerneville

    The SF Comicle has brought us a cautionary tale about the Caltrans project to upgrade Guerneville's main drag which is also a state highway.  The four block long project has echoes to the B'game Ave. streetscape project done years ago, but I'm hearing warnings about our forthcoming El Camino Real project that I've taken to calling the "Little Big Dig".  Here are a couple of snippets from the Comicle piece starting with the blunt advice from a local business owner that concludes the article:

    “If I had advice for the next community — get a lawyer,” gallery owner Douglas DeVivo said.

    Caltrans spokesperson Jeffrey Weiss said the project to upgrade Guerneville’s sidewalks to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act was originally slated to begin last summer. Caltrans delayed the project start “to minimize construction impacts on merchants during the town’s busy summer season,” he said in an email. The agency said that “additional delays occurred when the contractor encountered unrecorded, abandoned underground utilities, railroad ties, and large redwood tree stumps and root systems,” and that “you never know what you’ll find in an old community when you start digging.”

    Truer words were never spoken.  You never know what you'll find once the backhoe arrives.  And they weren't cutting down hundreds of huge trees and undergrounding three or four types of overhead wires.

    Like many small towns across California, a state highway also serves as Main Street in Guerneville.  That has left Guerneville residents few avenues to weigh in on how revamping their town — from business disruptions to aesthetics — might unfold.

    The project included widening sidewalks, installing 23 curb ramps to accommodate wheelchairs, adding traffic signals and sidewalk bulb-outs at corners crossings as well as two pedestrian beacons.  County Supervisor Hopkins said that some delays have been understandable, given the lack of documentation for the pipes or old-growth redwood stumps under the sidewalk’s surface. 

    Weiss also said that during the sidewalk excavation, crews “noticed that the roadway drainage was in poor condition and extensive repairs were made.” 

    We certainly have that to look forward to.  It's really the main issue that needs to be resolved, but the rest of the add-ons to meet Caltrans code and bury the wires will make our roughly three-mile project seem longer.  I worry about the fire, police and ambulance response time.  And the illegal delivery truck blockages need to stop.  While ECR isn't our central commercial district, our Broadway and Avenew businesses will probably feel some of the same effect as Guerneville did.  Let's hope it's mild and nobody has to lawyer-up.

  • ECR: The Big Dig schedule eases into next year

    The massive project to "fix" El Camino Real known around town as The Big Dig after the Boston tunnel project has slipped to a Fall 2025 start with the PG&E part slipping into 2026.  The Axeman still cometh for 90% of the eucalyptus, but it looks like they may live to see another winter.  Finalizing the easements from ECR property owners is causing the slippage.  Per the DJ piece

    There are two major elements to the project. One, a Caltrans effort to repair the road, sidewalk and street lights that will span from Millbrae to San Mateo, may begin work by fall of this year, however, that construction may start in one of the other cities first. 

    The second aspect of the project is a Burlingame-specific push for PG&E to underground utilities. The construction start date for that work has been delayed to the second quarter of 2026, Okada said. 

    Delays to Caltrans’ work on the road revamp are being caused in part by the need for signed reconciliations that affirm property owners are aware if their driveways, gardens and retaining walls in the public right-of-way will need to be removed to make way for sidewalk work.

    The city has committed to paying for the reconstruction of those facilities if property owners allow them to be temporarily removed, Burlingame Councilmember Donna Colson said, but has still run into trouble obtaining all of the necessary documentation of the easements.

    Slipping timelines equate to slipping funding and budgets even though inflation is moderating.  Thus, this uncertainty could be concerning as the undergrounding of the power lines is where the hidden problems like 1920's buried fuel tanks and other obstructions surface.

    On the PG&E side, the paperwork for procuring a contractor has been delayed, Okada said. 

    The count of trees to be removed is also a moving target.  It's still a lot of big, beautiful trees, but how many appears to have changed

    The tree removal aspect of the project has long been controversial in Burlingame, which is well-known for its forestry. Plans to take down 382 trees, plant 429 and retain more than 193 trees have slowly come together with input from groups like the Burlingame Historical Society.

    While we wait for the Big Dig to start perhaps Caltrans could throw us a bone and fix the potholes?  The City should formally request a Spring patch along the whole stretch.  I would also like to see the surviving trees be marked as such well before the project begins.  That's just good transparency.  A constant finding in talking to B'gamers is very few have any idea that hundreds of trees are on the chopping block.

    ECR delay

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