U.S. Judge Rips PG&E Resistance to Stricter Safety Measures
- Company says judge overstepped and must defer to regulators
- Judge has grown impatient with bankrupt utility’s explanations
A federal judge laced into PG&E Corp. for its resistance to his demands that the California utility adopt stricter wildfire safety measures.
“If ever there was a corporation that deserved to go to prison it is PG&E for the people it killed in California,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said during a virtual hearing Thursday. “PG&E is a recalcitrant criminal and I’m going to do everything within my power to protect the people of California from further crimes and further destruction by PG&E.”
The San Francisco judge oversees the bankrupt company’s criminal probation stemming from a conviction for safety violations after a fatal gas-pipeline explosion in 2010. At the start of the hearing, he gave PG&E a chance to persuade him to modify or withdraw his recent order directing the company to hire an in-house team to spot-check the work of contractors who trim vegetation at risk of causing wildfires, and to take other rigorous safety measures.