Coast Live Oak #14 being removed.
For the 2013 year, PG&E replaced the negotiating team (with whom we had worked since 2010), with two new personnel. This meant starting from scratch. We entered this year’s discussions with the new team who chose not to follow the previously schedule or plan of discussions used in the past.
On Feb. 14, the new PG&E lead negotiator met with us in both parks with a list of 10 trees to be removed the first part of March. We agreed with the removal of two of the trees, and campaigned to save the remaining eight. PG&E offered to give three trees a reprieve, but insisted on removing the other five. MFPA President Linda Wilson and Vice President Mike Kalashian then met with District 10 Councilman Johnny Khamis who was very willing to provide help.
After discussions with a PG&E source, who had worked with Nancy Pyle in 2010, and both Councilman Khamis and the Senior Program Manager in charge of Transmission Vegetation Management South at PG&E, MFPA was able to achieve the following results:
- PG&E removed a Chinese Pistache tree from TJ Martin Park and a Coast Live Oak from Jeffrey Fontana Park in March. Both were located under the center of the 230 kv lines.
- In August, PG&E will trim 2 Blue Oaks in Jeffrey Fontana Park that had been slated for removal in 2013, and agreed to trim them annually as needed.
- Regretfully, in last year’s discussions, we had agreed to the removal of 2 Golden Rain trees in Fontana in 2014. PG&E donated 18 new trees in 2012 to mitigate this loss.
- Three multi-trunked crepe myrtles PG&E had slated for removal were placed on a year to year watch and monitor list. MFPA growth charts for the last four years have shown that these trees have not grown any higher and are not likely to do so in the future.
- This December PG&E will follow the original time line and procedure of discussions used in the past for their 2014 review of the park trees.
MARTIN-FONTANA PARKS ASSOCIATION 
Posted by norma campbell on April 17, 2013 at 2:01 pm
Good for the discussion but PG&E has way to much power and say over perfectly trees the people in Sonoma have been battling them on a clear cut issue they need to be controlled and the only way to do that is what you did, politically. You will have to continue the fight and include our State Assembly and Senatorial persons. But you cannot wait until the last moment, contact our State people now. Norma Campbell 30 years experience Injured & Orphaned Wildlife Campbell, California
“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing”
“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.” – President Lyndon B. Johnson, on the signing of the Wilderness Act of 1964
LikeLike