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The California Public Utilities Commission will decide this week on PG&E’s proposal to further increase rates. A UC Berkeley economist says that the question isn’t whether costs will continue to rise, but “to what extent.”
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An unsettled weather pattern is bringing rain to the valley today and tomorrow and light snow to the mountains tomorrow and Thursday. Also, Chico State trade workers will be picketing today as part of a one-day strike across 22 California State University campuses, and Cal Fire has announced that burn permits are no longer required to burn green waste in Butte County.
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In the last three years, the PG&E Fire Victims Trust has paid out more than $10 billion dollars. But it dispenses settlement money in small payments because it isn’t fully funded.
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Progress has been made on a bill that would keep disaster survivors from having to pay taxes on corporate settlement money.
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This year PG&E made a case to utility regulators to raise its rates by 22% over the next four years. The company says the increase is necessary to meet undergrounding goals but fire survivors say they just can’t afford it. Also, a group of nonprofits have formally requested California’s Secretary of State to oversee upcoming elections in Shasta County, and California is preparing for what may be another very wet year.
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North State residents could be able to see a remarkable partial solar eclipse on Saturday. The eclipse will appear as a “ring of fire,” as the moon’s orbit passes between the earth and the sun, blocking all but a narrow outer ring of the sun’s light. Also, Pacific Gas and Electric now has the go ahead to proceed with clean up of Butte Creek following a canal failure this summer, and the Shasta County Board of Supervisors has doubled down on their opposition to a new law barring hand-counting ballots in elections in counties with more than 1,000 registered voters.
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The Butte County Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to extend an ordinance by 18 months that allows Bear Fire or North Complex survivors to live in RVs and trailers on their properties. But there’s a caveat: dry camping, which is camping without a permanent source of running water, will only be legal in the area for another six months. Also, on Monday, the California Public Utilities Commission announced it could be hitting PG&E with another fine, this time, for causing the massive Dixie Fire, and new study shows wildfire smoke is correlated with higher suicide rates in rural America.
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PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoffs were a much more frequent occurrence when they started about five years ago. This year, the company has only turned off power twice.
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PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoffs were a much more frequent occurrence when they started about five years ago. This year, the company has only turned off power twice. NSPR looked into why there are fewer outages. Also, cannabis is now the top crop produced in Shasta County, and a new law to protect doctors in California from prosecution for sending abortion pills to patients in other states was signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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Three years ago today (Sept. 27), the Zogg Fire was ignited, burning down more than 200 homes and killing four people in rural Shasta County.