The first week of March 2001, FSRA submitted written comments on the Draft EIR for PG&E' s proposed divestiture. The deadline for comments was March 9. FSRA has been working on this issue for about a year, out of concern for two areas of rock art that could be sold to the public if the divestiture takes place.
The Draft EIR offers 16 different approaches to the situation. In assessing these, FSRA kept the perspective of wanting to protect cultural resources as well as the rights of Native Americans to visit cultural sites that were significant to them.
We opposed the three alternatives that would keep the land in the hands of PG&E. It is our direct experience that PG&E takes no steps to protect these sites. Furthermore, if PG&E retained the properties with archaeological (and other) resources, there is no guarantee that they would not sell the land to the public in the future. This is a real possibility, given their financial needs.
We also opposed the 7 alternatives that would allow PG&E's lands with sensitive resources (archaeological and otherwise) to be sold to the general public.
The remaining 6 alternatives, which we supported, essentially allowed for the transfer of land with sensitive resources to state or federal agencies or conservation groups, so they could be protected. One of these alternatives allowed the state to take over the lands on an interim basis for a few years, with various agencies overseeing resource management. The other 5 alternatives created more permanent situations.
In late January, long after the EIR process was underway, the California legislature passed a law providing that "no facility for the generation of electricity owned by a public utility may be disposed of prior to Jan. 1, 2006." Apparently the law did not refer to the lands PG&E owns in the vicinity of their power projects, which includes the areas with cultural resources, but a PG&E official did tell Alan Stahler of KVMR that they would hold off on selling those lands if they couldn't sell the projects. PG&E could, of course, change their mind.
To further complicate the matter, a couple of environmental groups have been working on a proposal whereby PG&E would sell about 88,000 acres of its land to the state as a way of alleviating some of the company's debt.
Where things will go in regards to the EIR, or what is next, is anyone guess.