As the Dixie Fire rages across Butte County, PG&E is making headlines with its plans to bury 10,000 miles of power lines underground, supposedly in the name of safety. This announcement comes mere days after the utility reported its faulty equipment may have sparked the wildfire.

As a coalition of fire survivors, low-income families, disabled people and communities of color, we’ve felt the brunt of PG&E’s safety failures. We know the utility’s “solutions” are only meant to serve its Wall Street investors — not to keep us safe. A real transformation of California’s energy system is necessary, and we know that a failing PG&E can’t be part of it.

Not only do PG&E’s announced plans fail to address the fire-danger risk adequately, they also constitute a brazen rate hike dressed up as a “safety measure.” Undergrounding power lines is estimated to be 10-15 times more expensive than keeping them above ground, and PG&E will use that expense as an excuse to stick ratepayers with the utility’s bill. The company already has asked the California Public Utilities Commission for an 18% rate hike this year, and now it is pushing forward this enormously expensive distraction with no plan to pay for it. Over 4 million households are already in electric utility debt, unable to pay their bills due to the pandemic. Californians cannot afford to pick up the tab for PG&E’s negligence.

There are also serious concerns about whether this half-hearted undergrounding plan will ever be carried out or whether it’s a convenient tactic to distract from PG&E’s egregious crimes. A 2019 audit by the California Public Utilities Commission showed that PG&E diverted $123 million away from programs to bury power lines over a 10-year period, from 2007 to 2016. If PG&E didn’t follow through with its previous undergrounding plan, why would we trust the company to do so now?

We don’t have time to hope the investor-owned utility will actually start digging trenches when it’s already so busy digging our graves. We need a justice-focused energy system that relies on local, democratically and community-owned clean energy. In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened PG&E with a state takeover, but PG&E continues to spark fires devastating our state.

We know that our communities need a truly safe, reliable and affordable energy system to serve our environmental, economic and social justice needs. We need a public process to hold PG&E accountable for its many crimes. What we don’t need is a for-profit corporation accountable only to its shareholders putting our health and safety at risk.

The energy system we all need requires investing in community energy resilience and replacing long-distance transmission lines with decentralized clean and efficient energy. Instead of burying 10,000 miles of distribution lines, let’s power communities across the state with resilient, self-governed, renewable energy systems that empower Californians instead of burning us down. The CPUC and the governor can start that process today by moving our energy out of the hands of Wall Street and into the hands of the community. It’s time to bury PG&E before it buries any more of us.

Mari Rose Taruc of Oakland is the coordinator of the Reclaim Our Power: Utility Justice Campaign, an initiative of the Local Clean Energy Alliance. Shaina Nanavati of San Jose is a research organizer for Reclaim Our Power.