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Trust me—you really don’t know what you’re missing.
This letter was sent to Dr. Bill Wattenburg, and is posted here without attribution to protect the author’s privacy:
Dr. Wattenburg,
Thank you for all you do to help us understand the reasons for our present problems with our power system.
Despite your efforts and those of others the general public still is not fully aware of the consequences of our problems. I have told friends to look at the second page of their residential PG&E electric bills and the CTC charge, which is a negative number, and add that to the amount they are currently being billed. The total will be what they would be paying if it not for the rate freeze on residential and small business accounts.
I am involved in a non-profit skilled nursing facility and recently examined the current PG&E bill with an amount due of about $2,500—adding in the CTC charge brings the bill to about $12,000. Our director now realizes we have a problem.
On another matter, I am a retired PG&E employee with experience in construction and engineering involving transmission, distribution, and substations, with a long time involvement in Electric Operations. I am somewhat saddened by what PG&E has become. When much younger I worked for some time in the Fresno area in the 1960’s with old timers who faithfully served their company as best they could. Many were pioneers in developing methods and tool for working lines that pretty much formed a solid foundation for practices in use today. I worked with an old time general foreman who told me of the days on the west side living in a tent in a muddy field during the winter time constructing lines. All these old timers were proud of what they did and the contributions they made. In our work sometimes in emergencies linemen would work three or four days without proper rest in order to restore service. Electric Department supervisors were dedicated to building and maintaining an electric system that was reliable. They were dedicated to providing service continuity and the restoration of service as quickly in times of outages.
I had one supervisor who worked in our department who retired after 50 years of service who never had a day off sick. He made great contributions to the operation and design of substations. These old timers served faithfully and I am sure they grieve as I do over what our company has become.
In all my work in planning it seems we were always able to forecast reasonably well to anticipate the need for new and upgraded facilities. We could never fully anticipate the political and environmental problems in obtaining rights for substation sites and transmission corridors. Three toed salamanders, brown harvest mice, red-legged frogs, bald eagles, and ignorance rein supreme.
My hat is off to you and your efforts to shed light on our problems. Keep up the good work.
This page was last modified on Monday, 11-Oct-2004 18:55:57 PDT.
