PG&E expects criminal charges for deadly San Bruno blast

[Jesus Malverde]

Source: SFGate

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. expects to face criminal charges from the federal government over the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed eight people and leveled a neighborhood, the company reported Thursday.

The U.S. attorney's office investigating the blast will probably charge the utility with violating the federal Pipeline Safety Act in areas related to record-keeping and pipeline maintenance, PG&E said. The utility's parent company, PG&E Corp., made the prediction in a filing Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company maintains that its employees did not intentionally violate federal law and that criminal charges are unwarranted. The company has committed to spending $2.7 billion of its shareholders' money on upgrading its vast natural gas network in response to the accident, which destroyed 38 homes and damaged 70 more.

"San Bruno was a tragic accident that caused a great deal of pain for many people," said Tony Earley, CEO of PG&E Corp., in a prepared statement. "We're accountable for that and make no excuses. Most of all, we are deeply sorry. We have worked hard to do the right thing for victims, their families and the community, and we will continue to do so."


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/PG-amp-E-expects-criminal-charges-for-deadly-San-5355143.php

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PG&E is a bad actor that needs to be put out of business.

[Cal Carpenter]

1. Took long enough.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. I would love to see some of these murdering crooks in jail,

I'm not holding my breath. The San Mateo DA could have stepped up to the plate but has been deferential to the corporation.

[Downwinder]

3. About time. They should have faced criminal charges

on Hinkley.

[weissmam]

4. hey if the SCOTUS finds in favor of hobby lobby then

they can haul away the CEO in handcuffs as he is no longer protected by his corporation

[fasttense]

9. I've heard that on several posts but I don't understand it.

If corporations are found to have religion then the CEOs can be held accountable for deaths and fraud committed by their corporation. But why?

[NNadir]

5. It killed more people than Fukushima.

Near here we had a woman killed in her home by a similar event a few weeks back, with 50 homes leveled.

It's pretty amazing that since natural gas has killed more people than Fukushima's radiation, no one ever talks about banning dangerous natural gas.

What's even more amazing is that air pollution is killing seven million people each year, but people burn gas, oil and coal to complain about Fukushima.

Let's be clear, though. Without access to dangerous natural gas, the so called "renewable energy" industry wouldn't function for a New York second.

So that makes gas clean and great.

[Jesus Malverde]

6. Good points...nt

[Wilms]

7. I think it's that little half-life problem people have with nuclear?

Just guessing, of course.

[hunter]

10. "Half-life" of many gas fracking and coal toxins is ***FOREVER***

A toxin is a toxin is a toxin.

There's nothing special about radioactive toxins.

What's the difference if your cancer is attributed to gas fracking waste in your drinking water, or diesel engine soot in your air, or very very much less likely, radioactive cesium that escaped from Fukushima?

What the accident at Fukushima didn't do is incinerate eight living people. Filthy gas kills people frequently (I refuse to call it natural gas as that is really fucked up marketing term used to greenwash for all sorts of nasty things.)

[Wilms]

11. Thanks, Hunter.

I'm not advocating gas, or fracking. NNadir seems to set up false choices.

And I'm going to figure Fukushima is involved with a lot more than eight deaths.

[hunter]

13. It's not a false choice.

The way it works now solar and wind have a codependent relationship with gas.

Solar and wind will not replace fossil fuels or nuclear. The only way to quit fossil fuels or nuclear is to quit fossil fuels and nuclear. An economy powered by solar and wind looks nothing like the economy we enjoy now.

I've said it before here. Anyone can quit, today. Walk out to your main breaker and flip the switch. Turn off the gas. (Or quit paying your bills...)

Then what? Own the problem. Don't wait around for big business or big government to do it. They won't.

My own personal environmental strategy is to boycott near everything, which is pretty easy because I don't have much in the way of "discretionary income."

Whatever death Fukushima causes will be lost in the statistics and will not be comparable to either the tsunami itself, the non-radioactive toxins spilled by the tsunami, and the permanent damage done to the environment by replacement fossil fuels.

I happen to believe we need to move beyond modern fossil-fuel dependent industrial society. Nuclear power won't be the reason this civilization collapses, whether it's expanded or abandoned.

It's the fossil fuels and the high speed transportation culture of cars and airlines and "economic productivity" that's killing us.

[Wilms]

14. Really good points.

And a really important one you made was, "An economy powered by solar and wind looks nothing like the economy we enjoy now". Is it fair to say we probably can't have the kind of economy we have now without it being sustained by nuclear and fossil, each, ultimately, unsustainable activities. And that very economy creates all other kinds of non-radioactive toxins, as you point out, whether that process is powered by fossil or nuclear. I think it enables wealth concentration, as well.

It's the economy that would need to change. With current technology, what kind of economy might we have? Let's add tidal and geo-thermal to solar and wind, plus all the good conservation methods we already know.

[NNadir]

15. The problem that people have with nuclear has nothing to do with anything...

Last edited Sat Mar 29, 2014, 11:23 AM - Edit history (1)

...but fear and ignorance.

As the great climate scientist Jim Hansen has pointed out in the most widely read paper in one of the world's premier environmental journals, Environmental Science and Technology, nuclear energy, including the effects of Chernobyl, Fukushima etc, etc, that so many anti-nukes burn coal, oil and gas to prattle on about, saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power

Hansen has shown that there are 1.8 million people who survived because nuclear power plants were constructed.

A recent publication in Lancet shows, which lead famously to an official update by the World Health Organization on deaths from air pollution, shows that about 7 million people die each year from air pollution.

Many of these lives might have been saved were it not for scientifically and morally illiterate nit picking about nuclear energy from people who absolutely and positively nothing about the subject.

I note, that the laws of radioactive decay, as expressed in the well known (among scientists) Bateman equation shows that there is a maximal amount of radioactive fission products (approached asymptotically) that can accumulate at a given power level, where the power level is at a planetary or reactor scale.

This law does not apply to dangerous fossil fuel waste, since dangerous fossil fuel waste does not decay ever. Every living thing on this planet for the rest of history will be affected by the accumulation of dangerous fossil fuel waste in our water, our air and on our land.

Any problem that "people" have with nuclear energy is connected solely with ignorance.

[Wilms]

16. I might not know as much as you about nuclear physics.

But I don't think the referral to ignorance amounts to any more than an insult.

Now, there is a rebuttal to the assumptions of your linked article. A link to it is provided on that page.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es404245a#

I have a few comments down thread, but I accept they might not meet your favor.

[mackerel]

8. So sad to wait so long

[FiveGoodMen]

12. "We're accountable for that" says the CEO

"Just don't make us DO anything about it ... and don't hold us ... ... ... accountable"

[Starry Messenger]

17. It needs to be taken out of private hands.

I don't know if state control is the answer at this point, I don't think we want to buy an aging system that needs a lot of work to overhaul.

But surely the public could do better than blowing up a neighborhood.