Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
I decided to write this letter because of PG&E’s dominance of the electric and gas service. I call them Pacific Graft & Extortion. Being a utilities system worker (high voltage electrician), my job required travel around the world with the Air Force and later Defense Logistics Agency DLA Tracy Depot. I feel qualified to make the following comments.

PG&E is fighting to keep the Manteca area territory. They are replacing high voltage components on the underground lines. I talked to a PG&E employee and was told the work was overdue. I can understand that after a failure in the vault on my street several years ago. When I looked into the vault during that outage it looked like no cleaning work had been done for years. The problem with high voltage is it will travel through carbon and dirt. When have you ever seen crews washing the insulations of overhead lines in Manteca? My job with the Air Force was to inspect and repair utility electrical systems to avoid failures.

Years ago we lived on Marin Street in Manteca. PG&E had a voltage regulator fail causing transformers to blow in the Powers Tract. The transformer behind our house started a grass fire because it lacked primary (high voltage fusing). When the new transformer was installed I forced the line crew to install fuses. The next event occurred in my neighbor’s power line ran across my yard. PG&E refused to move it and I told them if it remained it would be cut down. Amazing, the wire got moved.

Now that we are in automated metering beware that you may be over charged for electric.

If you are paying more then on the old meter beware please note. I received a letter from a school buddy in Bakersfield on his problems with PG&E:  

This is from Leonard in East Bakersfield:

“Since PG&E switched out my smart meter with a newer smart meter, after saying there wasn’t anything wrong with the smart meter, my bill for power has been cut in half!! Also they called me about my complaint after I turned it into my congressman, and asked me about it. When I mentioned that people who lose power have noticed the smart meter kept running, I said it probably is running because your backup batteries in it to keep the usage memory is feeding back through it. The guy I talked to said they don’t have a battery in them!”  

Question: How does information store in meter ? My smart meter was off for eight hours during a planned outage and  information was retained.

What I hope is that the readers see PG&E is not doing us any favors by hanging around.  I am not the only one that would like to see South San Joaquin Irrigation District take over our utility system. I have no connection with SSJID. I’m just a consumer that wants to pay my utility bill to an honest company and not PG&E.