Power Outages AG

Power Outages AG

Maura Bennett
Maura Bennett
Those recent power outages created by PG&E to prevent catastrophic wildfires around the state had California ag professionals scrambling.

California Ag Today’s Patrick Cavanaugh has some of the details.

Cavanaugh: “Widespread power outages disrupted and halted normal activities of many California farms and ranches, interrupting harvest schedules and water deliveries. The biggest concerns for those with livestock was making sure their animals had enough drinking water that is supplied by electrical pumps. Some irrigation districts could not supply water to farmers and some farmers could not run their wells to irrigate their crops that needed more water.”

Some wineries could not receive growers’ grapes for processing because they did not have another power source. That meant having to delay harvest.

Power outages affected a handful of Sacramento Valley rice dryers and mills, delaying harvest for some farmers. Katherine Ziemer, executive director of the Humboldt County Farm Bureau told Ag Alert, that the power shutoff might be a good thing in the long run. She said it could help people in California understand personal preparation. "This time it was a PG&E power shut off, but next time it might be an earthquake.”

PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said the utility has a lot of work to do before the next planned shutoff. apologized to customers after admitting in a press conference that the utility was not prepared for its Public Safety Power Shut Off. The utility’s website crashed several times, maps were inconsistent and incorrect and he said the call centers were overloaded.

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