PG&E is aggressively cutting trees across California. This woodsy town is fighting back

Fresh out of bankruptcy court and under intense pressure to avoid sparking more wildfires, PG&E Corp. has been feverishly trimming and chopping down trees across its vast service territory. This year alone, it told state regulators it would prune or remove at least 1 million trees “to keep them away from power lines.”

But in a woodsy middle-class neighborhood in the Sierra foothills, the state’s largest utility and its chainsaws have been silenced — by a group of irate property owners and a Superior Court judge.

Last month a judge ordered Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and its tree contractor to halt work on a project designed to take down 263 trees along a residential stretch near downtown Nevada City. Ruling on a lawsuit filed by a group called Save Nevada County Trees, Judge Thomas Anderson stopped PG&E from removing any trees.

His decision is effective at least through Nov. 6. However, PG&E has asked him to reverse his ruling at a hearing set for Friday. The utility called the judge’s decision “erroneous” and said every tree it’s targeted for removal represents a potential hazard.

The fight in Nevada City comes as California is growing desperate for solutions during the worst wildfire season in the state’s modern history. State officials believe part of the answer lies in more aggressively trimming and removing trees from heavily forested areas. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed an agreement with the federal government, which owns 57% of California’s forests, in which both sides pledged to double the volume of forest treatments in the coming years.

And PG&E, as part of the official wildfire mitigation plan it’s required to file annually with the Public Utilities Commission, said it would spend nearly $500 million this year on “enhanced vegetation management.”

Henry McCann, who studies wildfire issues for the Public Policy Institute of California, said there’s a fairly broad consensus that tree removal is an effective way of reducing risks. “This is a moment of overlapping agreement,” he said. “It can be a very powerful tool.”

At the same time, Nevada City provides a case study in what can happen when government policy collides with everyday concerns. “In urban and suburban communities, trees are very personal for people,” McCann said.

Susie Kocher, a UC Cooperative Extension forester who works with community groups, said it isn’t surprising that PG&E ran into friction as it ramps up its tree-removal efforts.

“Utilities are getting more aggressive,” she said. “I don’t think it’s unusual that people get upset.”

For their part, property owners in Nevada City say they share PG&E’s desire to reduce wildfire risks. But they’re worried about losing shade, they’re worried about their property values going down, and they’re worried the character of their neighborhood suffering.

Above all, they say the utility — after being driven into bankruptcy by the billions of dollars in claims generated by the 2017 and 2018 wildfires — is going overboard in its desire to eliminate potentially hazardous trees.

“They’re clear-cutting,” said Tom Dykstra, a Nevada City retiree who has six trees targeted for removal. “It seems like it’s an over-reach to cut them all down.”

No stranger to Sierra wildfire risk

The area around Nevada City, perched at the western edge of the Tahoe National Forest, has seen its share of wildfires. In just the latest example, the Jones Fire burned down 21 buildings, injured seven people and prompted evacuations northwest of the city in August.

On the other hand, it might be as appropriate a place as any in California to mount a fight over trees.

Nevada City (pop. 3,142) is something of an eclectic outlier in the foothills, a city with a comparatively liberal citizenry and a picturesque downtown sprinkled with galleries, tea shops and the like. Zagat once described it as “a funky, artsy town that feels like Europe collided with California’s Gold Country with a little bit of New Orleans party spirit under the surface.”

Barely a half-mile north of City Hall lies a quiet neighborhood bracketed by two streets, Broad and Orchard, and sheltered by a graceful canopy of cedars, Ponderosa pines and other trees. Over the summer, orange-vested employees of one of PG&E’s tree contractors, Mountain Enterprises Inc., descended on the neighborhood and began informing homeowners about the utility’s plans for thinning out the area.

Before long dozens of trees were tagged for removal, their trunks marked with yellow X’s and numbers — and the neighborhood began fighting back. A succession of protesters took turns sitting in an 80-foot-tall blue Atlas cedar. An area bartender named Matthew Osypowski founded Save Nevada County Trees, organized a petition drive and launched a lawsuit against PG&E, the contractor and the city itself.

“We don’t think it’s appropriate for a utility to claim absolute power over the life and death of these trees,” said Osypowski, who doesn’t live in the neighborhood.

Among other things, the lawsuit said PG&E’s plan flouted city ordinances designed to “protect the existing essential character of Nevada City ... and preserving the existing tree cover to the greatest extent possible.”

The city was named as a defendant for allegedly failing to enforce those ordinances. In an interview, City Attorney Crystal Hodgson said the city’s ordinances are pre-empted by state law, which says the California Public Utilities Commission holds sway over the tree-removal program.

“We don’t have authority,” she said.

Environmentalists who oppose PG&E’s tree projects are embracing last month’s court ruling. Susan Robinson of Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch, a preservation group in Calaveras County, said the case shows that PG&E should focus instead on insulating its wires and replacing dangerously outdated infrastructure.

”They have equipment that ‘s 80 years old and rotten; that’s what’s going to cause the fires,” Robinson said.

Some elected officials disagree. Assemblyman Brian Dahle, a Republican who represents the area, said in an op-ed piece in The Union newspaper in Nevada County hat the court decision is a “potentially deadly mistake” and called it emblematic of the stumbling blocks facing the state as it tries to reduce risks: “All too often in communities throughout Northern California, radical special interest groups try to block or stop this important wildfire safety work.”

The charge rankled residents like Kathy Dotson, who lives on Orchard Street.

“I’m a mom, I’m a homeowner, I’m a property owner, I’m by no means a radical,” Dotson said. “This is my street; these are my trees.”

On a day when the sky was hazy and the air smelled of smoke from wildfires burning elsewhere, Dotson and her neighbors acknowledged that some of their trees have grown too close to power lines and probably need to come down.

But they argue that PG&E could take steps to minimize the tree removal. In particular, they want the city to order PG&E to plant its power lines underground, a move that would dramatically reduce wildfire risk while sparing many of the trees. Following the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, PG&E began replacing its overhead wires with underground lines in the town of Paradise.

However, underground projects must be financed by residents themselves, through a surcharge on their utility bills. Nevada City residents haven’t put in enough money to pay for the more than $1 million needed for the project, said City Attorney Catrina Olson.

In any event, Dotson and others said their wishes have simply been ignored. Another neighbor who’s opposing the project, Melody Lawrence, said a recent visit from a PG&E representative to Orchard Street left her shaken.

“She said, ‘I’ll come with the sheriff and take your trees anyway,’” Lawrence recalled. “I feel bullied, like I don’t have a choice.”

PG&E’s struggles with trees

PG&E feels like it doesn’t have many choices, either.

For much of the past two years, it’s been struggling to keep up with ambitious timetables for removing trees and tree limbs near power lines. Last year a court-appointed monitor told a federal judge that PG&E overlooked hundreds of trees that were perilously close to the utility’s lines. Earlier this year, that judge, William Alsup, ordered the company to revamp its system for trimming trees and inspecting power lines.

Now PG&E says its efforts to keep Nevada City safe are being hamstrung.

“PG&E knows how much the customers and communities we serve value trees, and we do, too,” utility spokeswoman Brandi Merlo said in an emailed statement. “But PG&E’s primary focus must remain on safety.”

Every tree earmarked for removal “is unsafe and poses a substantial risk,” she said. “PG&E cannot take calculated risks in these circumstances to remove these trees. It must instead choose the no-risk option of removal.”

She added that the judge’s decision flouted state policy, which says the state Public Utilities Commission has sole authority to regulate PG&E’s tree program. PUC officials declined to comment for this story.

Nonetheless, Merlo said PG&E wants to work with the community “to come to an agreement on the vegetation management work.” PG&E officials met with neighbors on a Zoom call recently and agreed to study the possibility of moving the power lines underground, according to Osypowski, the founder of the tree preservation group.

Yet trust issues remain. Dotson, one of the Orchard Street homeowners, said PG&E has failed to convince her and her neighbors that it knows what’s best for Nevada City.

“PG&E all of a sudden is experts on trees and experts on fires,” she said. “They’re coming, they’re slashing and they’re saying goodbye.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "PG&E is aggressively cutting trees across California. This woodsy town is fighting back."