In May 2021, the SonomaIndependent.org, an award-winning public interest solutions and advocacy website owned by Progressive Source Communications, created the Bury Fire-Causing Power Lines Now! campaign.
The two month campaign started with a source-hyperlinked article for the Sonoma Independent and a powerful infographic (see below), which showed that four of the six worst fires in recent California history were caused by overhead powerlines in a relatively tiny area of the state. This information transformed the prevailing narrative that because there were hundreds of thousands of miles of overhead lines, the state’s utility giants could never be able to afford to bury all of them-so policy makers should instead focus on mitigating the massive fires after they happened.
Our grassroots effort to build public awareness around the need to bury powerlines was joined by the Davis Community Vision Alliance and a team of environmental activists from four University of California campuses across the states. Our Change.org petition here was signed by more than 1,700 Californians, and our commentaries and letters advocating for urgent action to bury power lines appeared in various news sites including The Press Democrat, The Davis Enterprise, The Pacific Sun, News 93.1 KFBK and Mercury News.
Our team applied direct public pressure through meetings with state legislators, a Commissioner of the Public Utility Regulatory Agency and utility giant PG&E.
On July 21st, the new CEO of PG&E announced that instead of insisting that it could not afford to bury more than an average of 50 miles of powerlines a year, the company would initiate a “Marshall Plan” to spend more than $15 billion to bury 1,000 miles of fire-causing overhead power lines a year for the next ten years.