The Vegetation Clearance Blog

What a utility vegetation notice is inside the procedure that produced it, read against two revisions of PG&E's distribution inspection procedure and its second patrol procedure: the obligation is a documented contact attempt, the door hanger was dropped from the list of named methods, and the only notice that asks for your signature is a form that ends up in a circuit folder.

The person who marked your tree spent four minutes on it and is described afterward as an arborist. What that credential is, what the issuing body says it does not cover, which version of it your inspection actually required, and how to check the number.

The shape is the result of one rule about where a pruning cut is allowed to land. Why the crew cut fourteen feet back when the required clearance is four, why one limb came off whole and its neighbor was only shortened, and what you are and are not allowed to do about the result.

Four inches decides whether a piece of your tree leaves the property or stays on it, and the number is the utility's rather than the state's. What the inspector wrote in the wood field months before the crew arrived, what a signature on the wood form commits PG&E to, and why a stack of rounds near the house becomes a defensible space problem.

A line-clearance visit is three trips by three different people over about a year, and the right to make them sits in an electric tariff rather than in a knock on the door. What the inspector does, what the crew can and cannot change on the day, and what the sequence asks of the gate, the dog and the driveway.

What a painted dot, an X, a ribbon and a tag on a trunk actually record, read against PG&E's own marking procedure and its customer fact sheet: the color is a program year, the shape is the prescription, and the paint on the ground near your driveway is a different program under a different statute.