When a landowner refuses: the inspector's record of the attempt
A landowner refusal is a documented constraint on a Priority 2 or routine unit and buys nothing on a Priority 1 hazard. PG&E's filed 2026-2028 plan gives P2 tags 20 business days unless constrained and P1 tags 24 hours unless an approved mitigation plan exists. The inspector records it, codes it, and escalates.
At 8:42 on Tuesday, March 10, 2026, a pre-inspector is standing at the top of a gravel driveway with two units on the same parcel. A gray pine inside the minimum clearance on a 12 kV tap. And a limb off that same pine resting on the primary conductor.
The owner says no to both in one sentence and goes back inside.
Those two units now go separate ways, and the split between them was fixed before the owner opened the door. The refusal buys time on one of them. The other one expires at 8:42 tomorrow morning.
The refusal is an outcome only one person can write down
The evidentiary target is set by General Order 95 Rule 35, Exception 2:
A "good faith" effort shall consist of current documentation of a minimum of an attempted personal contact and a written communication, including documentation of mailing or delivery.
Two artifacts, made in two different places. The written communication is produced in an office by somebody who was never on the parcel. The attempted personal contact exists only if whoever walked up the driveway wrote it down. What that exception excuses and what it leaves running is a question of law, answered months later from paper the inspector supplied.
PG&E's Utility Procedure TD-7102P-17, "Vegetation Management Priority Tag Procedure" puts that capacity inside the job title:
First responder: A PG&E VM employee or contractor in the field, who identifies or responds to a priority vegetation condition and can document the incident in the system of record.
The defining clause is the last one. Write access to the system of record is what makes somebody a first responder, ahead of anything they know about trees.
The four contact fields the inspection procedure already asks for carry the method, the name, the date and time, and the outcome. The last of those changes character when the answer is no. An outcome of "refused" is a claim about what a named person declined, and the time stamp beside it earns its place in the next section.
What a refusal buys depends on the clock it lands on
PG&E's 2026-2028 Base Wildfire Mitigation Plan, Volume 1, Section 9.3.3, sets three distribution timelines and attaches an escape clause to each:
Priority Level 1 (P1) tags must be mitigated within 24 hours of inspection unless an approved mitigation plan is in place. Priority Level 2 (P2) tags must be mitigated within 20 business days of inspection, unless constrained. Beginning in the 2024 inspection cycle, unless a constraint or external factor is documented, non-priority tree work shall be completed within one year of identification.
Read the three escape clauses side by side and the workflow falls out of them.
Work | Clock | What holds the clock open |
Priority 1 tag | 24 hours from inspection | An approved mitigation plan |
Priority 2 tag | 20 business days from inspection | A documented constraint |
Non-priority | One year from identification | A documented constraint or external factor |
A refusal is a constraint, so it holds the bottom two rows open. The top row takes a plan instead, and a plan is a different object with an author and two dates inside it.
That is the split on the driveway. The pine inside the minimum clearance is a Priority 2 condition, and the refusal is the entry that keeps its 20 business days running. The limb on the primary is a Priority 1, aligned by the procedure with the General Order 95 Rule 18A Level 1 definition, which says "Take action immediately." The owner's sentence at 8:42 left that one exactly where it was.
Four constraint codes, and choosing RF is a claim
Section 3.3 of TD-7102P-17 gives the tree contractor four codes for a constrained Priority 2 tag:
CL-Clearance Request: Line clearance constraints (i.e., line kill, line drop). RF-Refusal: When a customer/agency is refusing to allow the work to be performed. QT-Quarantine: An environmental issue (e.g., riparian review or nesting bird). AX-Access: Site cannot be accessed (e.g., snow, traffic or locked gate).
Each code names the party the delay belongs to, and the definitions section narrows the second one further: "Refusal: When a customer or property owner refuses to allow PG&E to mitigate the priority condition."
RF requires a person, and it requires that person to have spoken. A locked gate with an empty house behind it is AX. A driveway where three knocks go unanswered is AX. Coding a silent parcel as RF invents a refusal, and the difference between a refusal and a permission that could not be obtained is load-bearing in the exception it will eventually be claimed under.
Two working details sit under that list. The code lives on the work request, which is held by the tree contractor, so a refusal met at pre-inspection in March and a refusal met at the pole in July are two entries made by two companies into one field. And a document number travels further than a revision does:
Copy of TD-7102P-17 | Revision | Effective date |
The PDF on PG&E's public website | Revision 1 | February 26, 2021 |
The document named in Section 9.3.2 of the 2026-2028 Base WMP | Revision 3 | January 27, 2025 |
The codes quoted above are the ones a prime can read today. Whether they are still the live codes is a question for the utility, and the answer sits outside the docket.
On a Priority 1 the objection buys nothing
Section 4.4 of the same procedure is a flat instruction:
Efforts to MITIGATE the Priority 1 tag must not be DELAYED due interference by either of the following conditions: - Customer or agency objections. - Environmental processes, bird nests, permits (i.e., city/county), or similar conditions.
Customer objections sit in the same sentence as a missing city permit. Both are classed as interference, and interference is what the section forbids as a reason to wait.
What the procedure asks of the person standing there is presence. Section 2.1 directs the first responder to treat each Priority 1 situation as an emergency location, comparable to a wire down, and then:
REMAIN onsite unless an unavoidable reason to leave exists.
Two reasons are pre-approved. Staying onsite is unsafe, with a hostile customer named as the example. Or the site is remote enough that reaching cell service means moving. Every other reason needs approval from the vegetation program manager or the supervising vegetation program manager, and section 2.2 tells that manager what to build first:
When requested to APPROVE LEAVING the site unattended AND before ISSUING approval, the VPM must DEVELOP a mitigation plan which includes estimations of the following information: Date and time of site re-occupation. Date and time of completion.
Two estimated timestamps, written by a named manager, before anybody drives away. That is the artifact that substitutes for presence on a Priority 1.
The escalation runs inside the same hour. Section 4.1 sends the first responder to the vegetation program manager to discuss the situation and solutions. Section 4.2 requires that manager to "NOTIFY the SVPM and regional manager by email of the reason for the delay and the estimated time of completion."
Section 4.3 leaves the first responder two jobs in the meantime: stay onsite until the risk is mitigated, or work with the tree contractor to remove the hazard. Section 4.5 then closes the loop outward, requiring the manager to "promptly REPORT all actions PERFORMED outside the routine permit process to the appropriate agency."
So the limb on the primary at 8:42 Tuesday produces, by 8:42 Wednesday, a cut limb or an email naming a reason and a completion estimate. Which authorities let a utility take a tree down over the owner's objection is the legal question underneath that hour, and a different body of law answers it.
A hostile refusal opens a file the employer owns
A refusal that turns into a threat becomes a second record in a second system. California Labor Code section 6401.9, added by SB 553 and operative in its substantive parts on and after July 1, 2024, is short about the trigger:
The employer shall record information in a violent incident log for every workplace violence incident.
Workplace violence covers any act or threat of violence in a place of employment. The statute's "threat of violence" reaches any verbal statement or physical conduct "that conveys an intent, or that is reasonably perceived to convey an intent, to cause physical harm or to place someone in fear of physical harm, and that serves no legitimate purpose."
Type 2 violence is "workplace violence directed at employees by customers, clients, patients, students, inmates, or visitors." A property owner who threatens an inspector in a driveway sits inside that definition, and the log entry is owed by the inspector's employer.
Three consequences matter to a prime.
The employer is the contractor. The duty in 6401.9 runs to the employer of the person who experienced the incident. Subdivision (d)(1)(C) handles the chain: at a multiemployer worksite the employer who records the log "shall also provide a copy of that log to the controlling employer." The tablet entry belongs to the utility from the moment it is made. The violent incident log stays with the company that pays the inspector, and reaches the utility as a copy.
The two records have opposite naming rules. The vegetation record has to say who refused, because a refusal is a fact about a person. Subdivision (d)(1)(B) says the reverse about the log:
The employer shall omit any element of personal identifying information sufficient to allow identification of any person involved in a violent incident, such as the person's name, address, electronic mail address, telephone number, social security number, or other information that, alone or in combination with other publicly available information, reveals the person's identity.
One conversation, two files, and a field that is mandatory in one and prohibited in the other. Copying the tablet note into the log breaches the statute. Copying the log into the tablet files an anonymous refusal.
The log outlives the crew. Subdivision (f)(3) sets a minimum of five years, and subdivision (f)(6) requires the record to reach an employee or their representative, without cost, within 15 calendar days of a request. Subdivision (d)(2) fixes what goes in it:
The date, time and location of the incident
The workplace violence type or types involved
A detailed description of the incident
A classification of who committed the violence, of the circumstances at the time, and of where it occurred
The type of incident, from a list that includes threat of physical force
The consequences, including whether security or law enforcement was contacted
The name, job title and date of the person completing the log
One exemption is worth checking rather than assuming. Subdivision (b)(2)(F) exempts places of employment with fewer than 10 employees present at any given time that are "not accessible to the public," where the place complies with the injury and illness prevention program rule. A lone inspector on a private parcel fits the headcount, and the exemption is drafted around a fixed place rather than around a route of a dozen driveways a day. Which reading governs a mobile vegetation program is open on the face of the statute.
Two things narrow it. Subdivision (b)(3) lets the Division require an exempt employer to comply anyway, by an order to take special action. And subdivision (c)(1)(B) requires a plan "specific to the hazards and corrective measures for each work area and operation," which Cal/OSHA repeats in its general industry FAQ. The Division holds this call, and under subdivision (h) the standards board is to adopt a standard on the subject by December 31, 2026.
A refusal changes the unit's status, not its prescription
Here is where a refusal workflow most often goes wrong, and it goes wrong quietly.
The gray pine was prescribed for removal because of what it is and where it stands. All of that survived 8:42 intact. What moved is whether the work can be executed this cycle. Those are two fields, and a program that answers the second one by editing the first has deleted a finding.
The inspection procedure already treats a change of prescription as an event with its own paperwork, requiring a documented reason for any de-designation off removal or any de-listing to no work. A refusal is a sound reason to record a constraint. It belongs in the status field, and the prescription field describes a tree. An auditor a year later sees the difference in one place: whether the unit is open with a code on it, or closed with a reason that describes a conversation.
The same logic governs a partial yes. An owner who refuses removal and accepts a prune has answered a narrower question than the prescription asked, and the file holds both sentences. What separates a removal prescription from a pruning one is a decision with criteria behind it. A decision an owner made on a driveway is a different kind of thing, and it earns its own kind of record.
The inspection procedure spends one line, and it points elsewhere
For everything short of a priority condition, TD-7102P-01, Revision 4 hands the subject to another document. Section 6.1, step 3, reads in full:
IF the customer/property owner interferes with the work, THEN the VMI must FOLLOW the steps in the TD-7102P-04, "Vegetation Management Distribution Interference" procedure.
That is the whole of the refusal workflow inside the inspection procedure: a referral. Interference is defined broadly enough to cover an owner who offers to hire their own arborist, so the referral catches most of what happens at a door.
The destination is harder to reach than the referral. PG&E's response to Area for Continued Improvement PG&E-26B-17, filed with Energy Safety on December 30, 2025, put Revision 4 into a public docket along with five of its attachments. TD-7102P-04 stayed inside the company. A prime whose scope of work names TD-7102P-01 has flowed down a pointer to a document its subcontractors reach through the contract alone. That is a contracting question, and it is cheaper to ask before the first refusal.
Where a refusal lands once it leaves the field
The same event gets two names further up the same filing, and they attach to different objects.
Defined term | What it attaches to | The phrase in the glossary |
Constraints | A vegetation point and its work order | "customer interference" |
External Factors | A performance target | "landholder refusals" and "customer refusals or non-contacts" |
A constraint explains why one unit is late. An external factor explains why a program missed a number. The entry made at 8:42 is the evidence behind both, which Section 9.12.2 of the plan makes plain in its backlog language:
Outstanding tree work may have passed target timelines if the vegetation point is constrained by: environmental permitting, encroachment permitting, customer interference, biological, active wildfire, weather conditions, or other constraints.
Underneath, the Commission's rule reaches the same place with different vocabulary. General Order 95 Rule 18A allows correction times to be extended under reasonable circumstances, and "Third party refusal" heads its list of examples. An extension is a different instrument from an exception, and the two need different entries.
Energy Safety treats the refusal rate as something a program can move. Its Area for Continued Improvement PG&E-23B-16 required PG&E to "Provide a response detailing whether PG&E has considered how offering wood removal and disposal services to customers may reduce refusals related to VM."
PG&E answered that it "now offers wood management where feasible according to our standards on a case-by-case basis in response to customer requests on all distribution VM programs." Whether hauling the wood away moves the number is an open question. What the exchange settles is that a refusal reads as partly a consequence of program design, which makes the reason written on the driveway worth more than the code beside it.
What the record has to name
A refusal record is claimed against a unit rather than against a parcel, and one parcel with two units can produce two answers in one conversation. Ten entries make the attempt testable by somebody who was not there.
The parcel, and the span or pole identifier each affected unit sits on. The priority of each unit, recorded per unit, because the workflow diverges there and only there. The date and the time of the refusal, since a Priority 1 clock is measured in hours. Who refused, and what authority they claimed. What was refused, stated in the words of the prescription. The code applied, and the facts that make it RF rather than AX.
On a Priority 1, whether the site was left, who approved that, and the two estimated timestamps in the mitigation plan behind the approval. The escalation itself: who was notified, by what means, at what time, and what completion estimate went with it. Where a threat occurred, a cross-reference to the employer's violent incident log by date and time, since the name belongs in one of those files and is barred from the other. And the prescription, carried forward unchanged, with the unit still open.
The inspector walking back down that driveway at 8:47 has spent five minutes on the parcel and produced two records that will be read separately for years. One of them holds a tree that still needs removing. The other holds a limb on a conductor, and the owner's refusal changed exactly one thing about it: who has to be told by lunchtime.
Common questions
Further reading
Landowner refusal: the two artifacts Exception 2 requires, and its limits: What a documented refusal excuses under GO 95 Rule 35, and everything it leaves running.
What a pre-inspection produces: the work order before the crew: The unit, the prescription and the four contact fields this record is written into.
Representing the utility at the property line: authority, limits, the record: Where the inspector's authority comes from, and which calls the procedure sends up.
Frequently asked questions
What does a vegetation inspector do when a property owner refuses the work?
Record the refusal as the outcome of a contact attempt, with the date and the time, then act on the priority of the unit rather than on the refusal. PG&E's Utility Procedure TD-7102P-17 makes a refusal a documented constraint on a Priority 2 tag under the code RF-Refusal, and section 4.4 of the same procedure says efforts to mitigate a Priority 1 tag 'must not be DELAYED due interference by' customer or agency objections. The inspector's authority to be there and the words used at the door are separate questions.
Does a landowner refusal stop the clock on utility tree work?
On two of three clocks. Section 9.3.3 of PG&E's 2026-2028 Base Wildfire Mitigation Plan gives a Priority 2 tag 20 business days from inspection 'unless constrained,' and non-priority tree work one year from identification 'unless a constraint or external factor is documented.' A Priority 1 tag gets 24 hours from inspection 'unless an approved mitigation plan is in place,' and a refusal is not a mitigation plan.
Can a property owner refuse work on a Priority 1 tree hazard?
The owner can say no and the procedure does not treat that as a reason to wait. TD-7102P-17 section 4.4 lists customer or agency objections as interference that must not delay mitigation of a Priority 1 tag. Section 2.1 directs the first responder to treat the situation as an emergency location and to remain onsite unless an unavoidable reason to leave exists, naming a hostile customer as one such reason. Leaving for any other reason needs a vegetation program manager's approval and a mitigation plan.
Who records a landowner refusal, the inspector or the tree crew?
Both, at different moments, into the same field. TD-7102P-17 defines a first responder as VM personnel in the field 'who identifies or responds to a priority vegetation condition and can document the incident in the system of record,' and section 3.3 puts the constraint code on the tree contractor holding the work request. A refusal met at pre-inspection and a refusal met four months later at the pole are two entries, and the second one is not evidence about the first.
Does a threat from a property owner have to be recorded anywhere other than the utility's system?
Yes, in the employer's file. California Labor Code section 6401.9(d)(1)(A) requires an employer to 'record information in a violent incident log for every workplace violence incident,' and workplace violence includes a threat of violence. The log runs on the contractor's side, is retained a minimum of five years under subdivision (f)(3), and subdivision (d)(1)(B) requires personal identifying information of anyone involved to be omitted from it.
