(Bloomberg) -- PG&E Corp. agreed to pay $55 million to avoid criminal prosecutions for two big wildfires including the second-biggest in California history.
Under a settlement with district attorneys representing six counties in the area, no criminal charges will be filed from last year’s near-record large Dixie Fire, and a criminal complaint stemming from the 2019 Kincade Fire will be dismissed, the company said Monday in a statement.
The utility is still fighting charges in Shasta County, including involuntary manslaughter, over yet another wildfire in 2020 that killed four people.
PG&E shares were down 5.5% at 2:21 p.m. in New York.
“This looks like positive news for the company,” said Paul Patterson, a utility analyst for Glenrock Associates. “Anytime the company can mitigate the risk of criminal proceedings associated with wildfires should be a positive development.”
Preventing wildfires and resolving civil and criminal liability from the blazes has weighed heavily on PG&E for years. Fires sparked by power lines and transformers that have destroyed more than a million acres and killed scores of people sent the company into bankruptcy in 2019.
PG&E recently completed a five-year period of criminal probation under a federal judge in San Francisco who frequently lambasted the company’s performance on fire safety.
PG&E pleaded guilty in 2020 to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the deadliest fire in state history in 2018.
The company has previously said it has accepted regulators’ conclusions that the Kincade Fire was caused by its equipment, but PG&E failed to persuade a state judge to dismiss most of the 33 counts it faced over the blaze.
PG&E has recorded liabilities of at least $800 million for the Kincade Fire and at least $1.15 billion for the Dixie Fire, according to a regulatory filing.
PG&E said in the statement that it has entered into long-term agreements with Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta, Sonoma and Tehama counties to strengthen wildfire safety and response programs.
“We are committed to doing our part, and we look forward to a long partnership with these communities to make it right and make it safe,” PG&E Chief Executive Officer Patti Poppe said in the statement.
PG&E didn’t admit wrongdoing in Monday’s settlement but its financial commitments include more than $35 million to local non-profit groups, volunteer fire departments and local schools. The company will also pay a $7.5 million civil penalty to Sonoma County and $1 million civil penalties to each of the five counties related to the Dixie Fire.
District attorneys involved with the investigation of the Dixie Fire said they decided to pursue a civil prosecution rather than a criminal one to maximize the return to fire victims. The maximum criminal fines possible for the Dixie blaze, where no one died, was $329.417, the county prosecutors said in a statement.
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