According to Dawn Ortiz-Legg, the problem is “California’s body politic is missing connective tissue” (Nov. 13). The proposed plan by PG&E and the California Coastal Commission staff was permanent forever access to open space from Point Sal to San Simeon. Her opinion concludes, “that is only half the story.”
And on that point I can agree, that is only half the story.
The other half that she fails to recognize is PG&E’s rap sheet, which proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Pacific Gas and Electric Company is a criminal enterprise.
Case in point. Let’s start with Hinkley, California (1956-present), and PG&E’s love affair with withholding the truth and establishing its modus operandi for future encounters and dealings with the public. The company was found guilty of contaminating water supplies with chromium 6. To date, the court-ordered cleanup is still ongoing and estimated to be completed in 40 years. Unacceptable. Are we on course to be the next Hinkley?
In 2022, PG&E finished serving its 5-year probation period in response to a court order to rehabilitate PG&E’s habitual criminal enterprise, stemming from the 2010 natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno that killed eight people.
“Utility companies are legally required to follow safety guidelines. PG&E knowingly … defies these guidelines to save money. People die,” writes Scott Brown in Liberation (“PG&E’s rap sheet,” Aug. 12, 2024). When PG&E is convicted, nobody goes to jail. Judges, legislators, regulators, and family members all beg PG&E to obey the law. “People continue dying. PG&E keeps making money. Nothing changes.”
“Despite hundreds of lawsuits, 91 felony convictions, and two bankruptcy filings, PG&E continues to prioritize profits over people,” according to Liberation. If this homicidal felon is allowed to remain at large, we will never know peace and harmony. PG&E is deeply in debt and taxpayers will end up paying for bailouts and unregulated increased rate hikes will be the new normal.
“Rehabilitation of a criminal offender remains the paramount goal of probation. During these five years of criminal probation, we have tried hard to rehabilitate PG&E. As the supervising district judge, however, I must acknowledge failure,” United States District Judge William Alsup wrote at the close of the probation case.
While on probation, PG&E caused at least 31 wildfires that burned nearly 1.5 million acres, burned 23,956 structures, and killed 113 Californians. PG&E pled guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter for the 2018 Camp Fire, according to Alsup’s final report.
“So, in these five years, PG&E has gone on a crime spree and will emerge from probation as a continuing menace to California,” Alsup wrote.
Teaming up with PG&E, a convicted felon and career criminal, to perpetuate this atrocity makes you and all the signers, accessories to the wrongdoing and criminal activity that PG&E is involved in. We can’t put corporations in jail. People on the other hand … .
Mothers for Peace and scientific experts and environmental consultants have proven we do not need PG&E’s nuclear power for our energy needs. They show alternative sources and implementation of energy that does not keep us in constant fear for our lives and livelihood. Partnering up with nature serves and benefits every living thing.
What are you and your cohorts doing, Dawn? The connective tissue you are talking about is cancerous and needs to be removed for us to survive and thrive. PG&E’s rap sheet is the other side of the story. Check it out. ∆
Jean’ne Blackwell writes to New Times from San Luis Obispo. Respond with an opinion piece for publication by emailing it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 7, 2025.
The SLO Public Health department provides free iodine tablets in case of a meltdown or other radioactive release from Diablo Canyon. I would also encourage the public to get their family’s supply. While at it, watch the movie “The China Syndrome.”
At this point, California no longer has the industrial base it had that requires the amount of energy produced by Diablo Canyon. We have a larger population than was present when Diablo was built, but the only thing the energy produced by Diablo is going to now is for the public to charge their cellphones so they can get lost in social media, YouTube, Tik Tok, and Instagram to find respite from the nightmare of their lives characterized by unemployment, underemployment, high inflation, wealth concentration, downward mobility, debt, hunger, propaganda, and denial by those with the means and power to change our lives for the better but who refuse to do so. To do so would require humility. It would require an admission that Boomers aren’t the geniuses and special people they think they are, but rather, the inheritors of a unique set of circumstances and that literally any generation born at the time they were, would have done as well as they generally have (as a generation). After all, it was their generation who gave us Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Sam Berkowitz, Kenneth Lay, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and of course Dennis Hastert.
The alternative intermittent asynchronous electric generation sources require storage for which regulators have chosen cheap flammable Lithium based batteries. Batteries at best are 93% efficient which impose increased loads on overburdened transmission lines during peak solar generation so a third party utility can gamble on buying low and selling high which is the California workaround for entering a marathon as a three-legged racer rather than a responsive dispatchable unit. The Moss Landing BESS fires have placed the nearby residents and food supply in a “constant fear for our lives and livelihood”. The civil lawsuits against Vistra have claimed negligence. Since Vistra is slow walking their internal fire report no criminal charges or Congressional hearing has occurred yet. The author’s has zero electric system experience and her energy premises wreak of sophistry. I’ve yet to see a local Sierra Club, Surfrider, Mother’s4, Chumash or Ecologistics come out against lithium batteries which defies common sense. Conversely REACT Alliance has their act together on OSW.
Scott:
That’s Vistra’s, as well as most corporations, plan. File as many continuances and postponements as possible until their adversary runs out of money.