November 6, 2019 — The Board of Supervisors held its meeting in the Parish Hall of Saint Anthony’s Church in the Village of Mendocino yesterday, for a set of hearings on topics that most concerned coastal constituents.
But a letter to William Johnson, President and CEO of PG&E, was relevant to people all over the county. The letter begins by informing Johnson that the county has spent a quarter of a million dollars planning for and responding to power outages, with the expectation of spending a million and a half more in modifications and upgrades to its facilities.
The three-page document lists complaints ranging from information that was inaccurate in every particular to the undue burden on vulnerable populations and the loss of food and income for people living on tight budgets. Dialysis patients were forced to travel to the one open clinic in Fort Bragg or rely on hospitals for their treatment. Water and sewer services were compromised in many water districts where generators were not available. And many residents, especially on the coast and in Anderson Valley, didn’t have internet, which made it even harder to find out what was going on.
We’ll hear from a few people about initial assessments of the effects on businesses and patients who rely on oxygen, plus a few ideas about our relationship with energy and the private utility.