The Greenville Rancheria of Maidu Indians and the Maidu Summit Consortium will receive a combined $2.5 million payment from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for damage to their ancestral lands and cultural assets caused by the 2021 Dixie Fire.
The payment is part of a $45 million agreement between the California Public Utilities Commission and PG&E penalizing the company for its involvement in California’s largest single fire.
The settlement agreement, reached Jan. 25 between the CPUC’s Safety and Enforcement Division and PG&E, includes $40 million in shareholder funding for an initiative to transition some of the utility’s hard-copy records to electronic records. PG&E will also pay $2.5 million in fines to the California General Fund.
The $2.5 million payment to tribes came as a surprise to leaders of both the Greenville Rancheria and the Maidu Summit Consortium, a nonprofit representing eight Mountain Maidu tribes and organizations.
“I heard about it on the news,” said Allen Lowry, vice chairman of the consortium. Its board has not discussed how it might use the funds to address the fire damage on the 2,934 acres of land it owns.
“It will be generations before we even get back to what we lost. I won’t see that in my lifetime.”
Allen Lowry, Maidu Summit Consortium vice chairman
The Dixie Fire burned through standing timber on the 2,325-acre Tasmam Koyom, also known as Humbug Valley. The Maidu consortium owns the valley eight miles southwest of Lake Almanor, and an additional 609 acres closer to Almanor. The Dixie Fire also destroyed Maidu forests and wetlands north of Lake Almanor in the Benner Creek area, Lowry said. The consortium hasn’t completed its assessment of the damage to watersheds and wildlife.
“It will be generations before we even get back to what we lost. I won’t see that in my lifetime,” he said.
Leaders of the Greenville Rancheria were also surprised by the $2.5 million penalty award but had no comment on the CPUC’s decision.
Little information about funding for Maidu tribes
How the CPUC determined the dollar amount, and how it will be divided between the two tribal organizations, remains unclear. Maitee Rossoukhi, a spokeswoman for the CPUC, referred The Plumas Sun to the draft resolution approving the settlement agreement. Specific language relevant to the Native American payment is limited to one statement on page six of the Administrative Consent Order: “Pursuant to the ACO, PG&E agrees to pay $2.5 million in penalties, and $2.5 million in remediation payments to affected Tribes.”
Rossoukhi offered no additional information.
Marvena Harris, who represents the United Maidu Nation on the Maidu Consortium, called the payment “a band aid.”
The settlement agreement, which was delayed twice before the Jan. 25 approval, has drawn criticism from advocates who say the penalty fails to hold PG&E accountable or match the magnitude of the disaster. Will Abrams, a 2017 Tubbs Fire victim who is now a community advocate, called it “a $40 million present for PG&E with a $5 million fine.”
He and other critics of the agreement cited the many victims of wildfires sparked by the utility who continue to wait on payments out of a settlement fund established to compensate them for homes, businesses and lives lost.
The Dixie Fire, which burned nearly one million acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes, ignited July 13, 2021, after a Douglas fir tree fell and struck energized conductors owned and operated by PG&E. The blaze became the first known wildfire to burn from one side of the Sierra Nevada to the other.
In its own report submitted to the agency soon after the Dixie Fire started, PG&E said a worker responded to an outage in the Feather River Canyon around 7 a.m. that day, but that he was not able to reach the site until after 4:30 p.m. Once there, he found two blown fuses and a tree leaning into a power line conductor. A fire was burning at the base of the tree, which soon grew out of control.
The $40 million initiative to transition some of the utility’s hard-copy records to electronic records will support public safety “by enabling more accurate recording of information and immediate awareness of the condition of PG&E’s assets, thereby improving the timeliness of inspections and preventive maintenance, and assisting the CPUC in conducting future audits and investigations,” the regulatory agency said.
PG&E denies fault or negligence
When the settlement agreement was announced Jan. 25, PG&E officials said the utility accepts that a tree falling onto their power line caused the fire, but it denies any fault or negligence.
“PG&E believes we acted as a prudent operator. There is no evidence that PG&E consciously and willfully disregarded a known risk with regard to the ignition of the Dixie Fire. We followed the CPUC requirements when inspecting, maintaining and operating our system,” the agency said in a prepared statement. “We share our regulators’ commitment to improve safety,” it added.
PG&E has been held accountable numerous times in the past for its connection to a California wildfire. In recent years, the electric company reached a $150-million settlement with the CPUC for its role in the Zogg Fire, which killed four people, and a $125-million settlement for its role in the 2019 Kincade Fire.
CPUC also found that PG&E violated a dozen utility safety regulations in the 2018 Camp Fire, saying the company failed to heed warning signs about the aging tower blamed for the fire, and its pre-fire inspection efforts were flawed and “ineffective.”
Cal Fire found PG&E broke various California statutes related to the Dixie Fire, and the CPUC’s own investigation leading to the settlement before commissioners determined the utility violated several of the agency’s code requirements. Separately, 10 public entities reached a $24 million deal in January 2023.