PG&E is testing an expensive and admittedly imperfect strategy for curbing future wildfires by putting power lines underground along a half-mile stretch of a rural road near Monte Rio in western Sonoma County.
The underground pilot project, a first in the fire-scarred North Bay, got started in October on a narrow, tree-lined stretch of Bohemian Highway, deep within one of the county’s highest-risk wildfire areas. The job is scheduled for completion next month, when PG&E crews are scheduled to pull wire through plastic conduit already in place about 3 feet below the roadway.
The test project, following a similar pilot completed last month in the East Bay, is intended to “better understand the costs” and assess how putting power lines underground might fit into PG&E’s 10-year effort to “harden” 7,000 miles of power lines in high-risk areas across the utility giant’s 70,000-square-mile territory, said Paul Doherty, a company spokesman.