Six years after first announcing plans to walk away from the Potter Valley Project, Pacific Gas and Electric Company has finally revealed the staggering price tag for dismantling the century-old hydroelectric facility: $532 million. That’s the estimated cost PG&E submitted to state regulators on May 15, a half-billion-dollar teardown that will be funded by PG&E customers, many of whom also risk losing the year-round water supply the system delivers to 600,000 people across Northern California.
Tony Gigliotti, PG&E’s senior licensing project manager, told SFGATE the half-billion-dollar figure is still a “very high-level estimate,” but it’s meant to reflect the full scope of the task ahead. “We did the best we could with the information we have today,” he said. “We don’t have engineering completed at this point, but that estimate is meant to be all-inclusive.”
“It includes the cost of engineering, permitting, the physical construction — or deconstruction — and then also the restoration and environmental measures that we’ll have to put in place,” Gigliotti explained. “We’ll continue to refine it as we move along in the process.”…