Display More40% of California's forestland is owned by families, Native American tribes, or companies. Industrial timber companies own 5 million acres (14%). 9 million acres are owned by individuals with nearly 90% of these owners having less than 50 acres of forest land. California forests face a number of threats.
The rest I think is owned by the Federal Gov.
Hi Airhead! Nice to meet you. You live there I assume. Do you really think that forest management would make that big a difference? There is soooo much forest I'm not sure California or the Feds would ever come up with enough money to do the job.
Before the settlers came to California, forest fires burned continuously for years.
As for the PG&E, public utilities never get held responsible for what they do. They pay for damages and send the bill right back to the people that use the electricity.
What you said is "Had PG&E been held responsible to fire victims for their losses the lines would have been safer".....safer is not safe. Fires are started by a lot of things.
I'm in Texas and we don't have the same problems. About once a year a house explodes because the gas lines that are old shift in the soil. The gas companies are way behind in replacing old lines. Our ground water is polluted with radon and chemicals used in the fracking industry. The EPA has turned a blind eye for years.
You said "they've made enough political contributions to our corrupt California politicians (including Gavin Newsome) they are judgement proof" I agree, it always turns out that way. Regulation is the only way forward that makes any sense to me.
I found this:
State regulators point out that overall, only about 10 percent or less of the state’s wildfires are triggered by power line issues. But they acknowledge the state’s 176,000-mile system of overhead electrified lines has played a role in igniting some of the biggest and most destructive fires in recent years.
So why not bury the problem?
One California utility company plans to do that. San Diego Gas & Electric officials said next year they will begin converting 20 miles of overhead wires to underground in a high fire-risk area around Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and the town of Campo, where the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Border Patrol has a station.
The San Diego utility also is exploring a dozen other areas for potential future undergrounding of wires, with fire safety as the main reason, a spokesman said.
Officials at PG&E, which serves much of Northern California, said they are working on a test project that would put power lines underground along the Bohemian Highway in Sonoma County where thousands live among densely wooded hillsides.
Utilities often now put power underground in newer urban developments, but that is typically for esthetics and traffic movement, not explicitly for fire safety.
Hi Wayne, nice to meet you also. I'm one of the people who owns family forests and yes, due to the influence of the Sierra Club we can't harvest timber off of our land. Want me to send you the requirements for a timber harvesting plan? We cannot commercially harvest timber off our land- we have mature trees (Doug Fur) that we can't touch. They will sit there and die and be fuel for our next wildfire.
This goes beyond small landowners like us all the way to the commercial timber companies like Georgia Pacific, Harwood, LP= all who have been driven out of California.
OK- now tell me how much it'll cost to bury 176,000 of miles of power lines underground. Being pragmatic here, who is going to pay for burying 176,000 miles of cable? I'll bet it's us, the rate payers. LOL, you cite the burial of 20 miles of cable as a solution- do the math. Look at that Wayne- and look at the problem we face out here... 176,000 miles of at risk cables, and they're going to bury twenty miles of it.
