What happens to the wood, logs and wood chips after utility trimming
PG&E chips and hauls branches under 4 inches thick, or spreads them on site, and leaves larger wood where it falls because it belongs to the property owner. Hauling it away is a separate program, offered at the inspection, requiring a signed form, and reaching only wood near a structure or access road.
A crew takes down a gray pine beside a distribution span and is off the parcel by 4:40 in the afternoon. What is left is two piles and a stump. One pile is chips, broadcast in a band under where the crown stood. The other is nine rounds, each about twenty inches across, stacked clear of the driveway and 25 feet from the house. Nobody is coming back for the rounds.
Which pile any piece of that tree ended up in was settled by its diameter, and the number is four inches.
Four inches decides it, and the number is the utility's
PG&E's Trees and Powerlines page puts the whole rule in two bullets, under the heading "After tree safety work is complete":
Branches and limbs that are less than 4 inches thick will be chipped and hauled away, if safe to do so, or cut into smaller pieces and spread on site.
Larger wood will be left in a safe position on site since it belongs to and is the responsibility of the property owner.
Everything the crew touches gets sorted against that one measurement before it hits the ground.
The two sentences leave a hairline open, and the page widens it slightly by changing words. The first bullet is written about material "less than 4 inches thick." The FAQ further down the same page is written about wood "more than 4 inches in diameter." A limb that measures exactly four inches falls in neither sentence.
The internal standard closes it. PG&E Utility Standard TD-7116S, "Vegetation Management Wood Management Program," Revision 1, effective January 27, 2025, sets its qualifying threshold at material "greater than or equal to 4 inches in diameter," and defines Debris as material "less than 4 inches in diameter." Four inches on the nose is wood.
The wood is yours from the moment it is on the ground
The same page answers the ownership question directly, under "Why does large wood remain on site?":
Wood more than 4 inches in diameter will remain in a safe location on site, since it belongs to and is the responsibility of the property owner. For questions about wood remaining from trees PG&E cut down during our tree safety work, please call us at 1-800-270-9750. Property owners may also choose to contact local service organizations, green waste facilities, or local woodcutters or wood haulers regarding hauling and purchasing cut wood on private properties.
Read the last sentence as what it is. PG&E's published answer to "how do I get rid of this" is a list of four kinds of people to call, and none of them works for PG&E.
Ownership cuts both ways, which is the part worth holding onto. Nobody will bill you for the rounds, nobody needs your permission to leave them, and nobody will move them because you asked the crew on the day. You can burn them, split them, sell them or leave them to rot. Where selling the log crosses into a timber operation is a separate question with its own exemptions.
Nothing in the state stack says who hauls it
The felling duty is statutory. California Public Resources Code section 4293 reaches the tree in the opening scene:
Dead trees, old decadent or rotten trees, trees weakened by decay or disease and trees or portions thereof that are leaning toward the line which may contact the line from the side or may fall on the line shall be felled, cut, or trimmed so as to remove such hazard.
The duty is discharged the moment the hazard is gone, which on that parcel was the moment the stem hit the ground. The statute says nothing further about the stem.
CPUC General Order 95 Rule 35 is the same. Search its text for wood, debris, disposal, slash, haul or chip and none of the six words appears. What Rule 35 does require and how its duty differs from the one in section 4293 are their own subjects, and neither reaches the pile in the driveway.
So the four inch line is a utility commitment rather than a legal threshold. It can be changed on a web page, which is why it is worth reading the page for the utility that actually serves you.
The wood decision was made at the inspection
A pre-inspector walked that span months before the crew did. PG&E Utility Procedure TD-7102P-01, Attachment 6, "Tree Removal Inventory Program," Revision 1, effective January 25, 2024, tells that inspector what to write down for every point visited:
For every inspection, or desktop review, UPDATE the following in Field Maps: Date: Date of Inspection; PI Company: With VMI Company Name; PI LAN ID: LAN ID of the VMI (REPLACE ANY EXISTING VALUE); PI ISA Number: ISA number of the VMI (or TRAQ VMI, if applicable); Wood Management Needed: Update appropriately based on result
Four of those five fields identify the inspector and the date. The fifth decides what happens to your wood, and it is filled in before anybody has cut anything.
The conversation that populates it sits in PG&E Utility Procedure TD-7102P-26, "Wood Management," Revision 0, dated May 22, 2019. Step 1.1 has the inspector judge access first, then branch:
IF not accessible to equipment, THEN only two options are available: (1) Cut (wood cut to dimensions specified by the customer) (2) Leave wood as found.
IF accessible to equipment, DISCUSS the applicable work type options with the property owner.
That discussion is the whole of your input into where the wood goes. The pre-inspection visit may never leave the road, and an inspector who worked your span from a slow-moving vehicle had no conversation to have.
Five work types, and a form number in a gray box
TD-7102P-26 names the options the inspector is choosing among.
Work type | What the crew does |
Remove | Wood is removed from the property |
Relocate/Move | Wood is moved to a different location on the property |
Chip on site/Broadcast | Wood is chipped and broadcast on the property |
Cut | Wood is cut to dimensions specified by the customer |
Brush Removal | Only available for non-EVM work |
The procedure's own summary introduces that list as four work types and then prints five, which is worth knowing before quoting it at anybody. Three of them are named in step 1.1 as needing specialized equipment: Remove, Relocate/Move and Chip on site/Broadcast.
The procedure defines Reasonable Access as wood accessible to equipment "taking into account the capability of the equipment used and the site conditions (slope, obstacles, riparian area, etc.)." It then puts the final call on the wood management contractor who shows up, months after the inspector wrote the record.
Anything past leaving the wood where it fell needs your signature. The procedure defines the form:
Request for Wood Management Form (RWMF): The form that must be signed by the property owner authorizing the removal of wood from private property.
Step 2.3 then makes that signature into a record. The inspector enters the RWMF number in the parcel record, photographs the signed form "being sure to CAPTURE the entire form, including the form number in the gray box on the upper right," checks the photo for legibility, and attaches it to the parcel. If you remember signing something and the wood is still there a year later, that form number is the thing to ask for by name.
What qualifies for hauling under the standard in force now
TD-7116S is the current statement of the program, and it opens by saying what the program is for:
The WM program chips, relocates, or hauls away wood resulting from trees worked by PG&E VM activities. ... It supports landowners/land managers by helping to resolve potential challenges associated with defensible space requirements and wood generated by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) VM activities. WM may be offered upon request on qualifying programs.
"Upon request" and "on qualifying programs" are both doing work. Table 1 sets the criteria, and the structure is four conditions that must all hold plus one of four locations.
Must all be true | Must be true of at least one location |
Material is 4 inches or more in diameter | Within 100 feet of a human inhabitable structure, structure footprint or campsite |
Accessible and operable with standard wood management equipment, on slopes generally under 30 percent grade | Within 15 feet of the access road to such a structure, footprint or campsite |
Generated by PG&E vegetation management activities | Within 15 feet of an outbuilding or propane tank |
Landowner or land manager opts in via a signed Permission Form | Other agreements have been established to manage the material |
Wood in the back third of a large parcel fails the location test even when it fails nothing else. That is the common disappointment, and it is written into the table rather than decided on the day.
Two limits in section 2.4 catch people who expect a tidier outcome. The standard states that "Firewood length wood should NOT be offered," and that "Wood should NOT be relocated beyond 100 feet from original location or outside the parcel boundaries." A request past the unit rate scope is escalated to local vegetation management or Central Wood Management leadership.
That leaves the firewood question genuinely unsettled between two live documents. The 2019 procedure lists Cut to customer dimensions as a work type. The 2024 standard says firewood length should not be offered. Who decides is named in both: the wood management contractor determines means and methods, and TD-7116S states that "In all cases, PG&E has the final authority to determine whether or not work will be performed."
Which programs qualify at all is not public. TD-7116S points its own staff at "the WM Quick Reference Guide located on the Central Wood Management SharePoint page," and PG&E's public answer to whether wood removal covers every vegetation program is a phone number.
The chips are a separate decision, made on the day
The chip half of the four inch line carries a condition the wood half does not: material under four inches is chipped and hauled "if safe to do so, or cut into smaller pieces and spread on site." Both outcomes satisfy the page. A crew working a long rural span with nowhere to park a chip truck will broadcast, and the same crew on a suburban street will haul.
Chips broadcast on a slope are not gathered up afterward. If you want them, or want them in one place rather than spread under the drip line, the time to say so is at the inspection, when Chip on site/Broadcast is being chosen as the work type.
The unit of measure is worth knowing, because it explains why brush volume gets argued about. TD-7102P-26 defines brush and slash as material under four inches in diameter, and prices it by the cube: "One unit of brush/slash measures as 6.5 ft. x 6.5 ft. x 6.5 ft. (or 275 cu. ft.)." A single cube a little over six feet on each side is one unit of work.
The pile is now a defensible space problem
This is where the wood stops being a tidiness question. California Public Resources Code section 4291 obliges an owner in the state responsibility area to:
Maintain defensible space of 100 feet from each side and from the front and rear of the structure, but not beyond the property line
Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations section 1299.03 splits that 100 feet into two zones, with Zone 1 running 30 feet out from the structure and Zone 2 running from 30 feet to 100 feet. Each zone names wood piles specifically.
Relocate exposed firewood piles outside of Zone 1 unless they are completely covered in a fire resistant material.
All exposed wood piles must have a minimum of ten feet (10 ft.) of clearance, down to bare mineral soil, in all directions.
Nine rounds stacked 25 feet from a house are inside Zone 1, and the regulation's instruction for them is to move them or cover them. The crew that left them there discharged the utility's duty and created yours on the same afternoon.
The program geometry is drawn on the same map. TD-7116S names section 4291 and section 1299.03 as the regulatory requirements it is written against, and cites 1299.03(c)(1) for the outbuilding and propane tank clearance. The qualifying distances in Table 1, 100 feet from a habitable structure and 15 feet from an outbuilding or propane tank, are the defensible space map with a wood truck drawn on it.
Fire and storm are different questions
After a wildfire the four inch line holds and the offer changes. PG&E's Natural Disaster Recovery page repeats the threshold, then adds something the routine page does not:
We understand that remaining wood may be a challenge for customers to manage. In some instances, we may be able to relocate or haul away this wood. If requested and with the property owner's permission, we will assess the wood on the property to determine if support can be provided.
An assessment on request, with permission, is a weaker commitment than a program with a qualifying table, and it is a stronger one than the routine page makes.
After a storm the answer is narrower again. The Trees and Powerlines page says PG&E "may help clean up tree debris if it is needed to restore electric service." That help is scoped to restoring service, and it stops when the line is back. SMUD states the same edge without hedging: "Once vegetation has been cleared from the lines, the final site cleanup of storm-damaged trees is the responsibility of the property owner."
Four numbers, and they are not interchangeable
PG&E publishes a different contact for each of these, and reaching the wrong one costs a call.
Call | For | Published on |
1-800-270-9750 | Wood remaining from trees cut during routine tree safety work | |
1-800-687-5720, or wildfirewoodmanagement@pge.com | Wood from trees cut down after a wildfire | |
1-877-660-6789 | Wood management for other vegetation programs | |
1-877-295-4949, or wildfiresafety@pge.com | The safety work itself rather than the wood | Routine Safety Fact Sheet, December 9, 2021 |
Outside PG&E territory these numbers and thresholds do not apply, and the utility's own published page governs. Southern California Edison sets the cost edge the same way PG&E does: "All tree trimming is done as part of SCE's annual vegetation management work at no additional cost to the customer." The trimming is free. What sits on the ground afterward is a separate conversation with a separate answer at every utility.
What to ask, and when
The inspection is the moment with leverage in it, because that is when the wood field is still blank and the form is still unsigned.
Ask which work type is going in the record for this tree, by name, from the five in TD-7102P-26. "They said they would deal with it" is not one of them.
Ask whether the wood will be within 100 feet of the house or 15 feet of the driveway once it is down, because that is the test TD-7116S applies.
If you sign a wood form, photograph it yourself and keep the form number. The inspector is photographing the gray box for the same reason.
Say where you want the chips before the chipper arrives. Broadcast is a choice made at the inspection and it is not reversible afterward.
Walk the stack against Zone 1 within the week. Rounds left 25 feet from a structure are a defensible space finding whoever cut them.
The crew that left the driveway at 4:40 did what its prescription said, and the prescription ended at the ground. Everything above four inches is now an asset and a liability on your parcel at once, and which one it turns out to be depends on how fast you move it.
Further reading
What to expect during a utility line-clearance visit: Three trips by three different people, and which one you can still ask about the wood.
Understanding the utility's pre-inspection and arborist assessment: The visit where the wood field gets set, months before a saw reaches the span.
Post-fire hazard trees on private property: Where felling the tree and selling the log become two different permits.
Frequently asked questions
Will the utility haul the logs away?
Not as a matter of course. PG&E's Trees and Powerlines page states that "Larger wood will be left in a safe position on site since it belongs to and is the responsibility of the property owner." Hauling is a separate program. PG&E Utility Standard TD-7116S, Revision 1, effective January 27, 2025, says the Wood Management program "may be offered upon request on qualifying programs," and its Table 1 reaches only wood that is at least 4 inches in diameter, sits on a slope generally under 30 percent grade, and lies within 100 feet of a human inhabitable structure or 15 feet of an access road, outbuilding or propane tank. The landowner has to sign a permission form, and the standard states that "In all cases, PG&E has the final authority to determine whether or not work will be performed."
Can I ask for the wood cut to firewood length?
Ask, and expect the answer to depend on which document is being read. PG&E Utility Procedure TD-7102P-26, Revision 0, dated May 22, 2019, lists "Cut (wood is cut to dimensions specified by the customer)" as one of its five wood management work types. TD-7116S, the 2024 standard, states under work practices that "Firewood length wood should NOT be offered," and routes landowner requests beyond unit rate scope to local vegetation management or Central Wood Management leadership. The person who settles it is not the crew. It is the wood management contractor for means and methods, and PG&E for whether the work happens at all.
Can I keep the wood chips?
Often, because leaving them is already one of the published outcomes. PG&E's Trees and Powerlines page says branches under 4 inches thick "will be chipped and hauled away, if safe to do so, or cut into smaller pieces and spread on site." TD-7102P-26 carries the same choice as a named work type, "Chip on site/Broadcast (wood is chipped and broadcast on the property)." Chips broadcast across a slope are not collected again afterward, so a preference for a pile in one place is worth saying at the inspection rather than on the day.
The rounds are stacked twenty feet from my house. Is that a problem?
It is, and it is now yours. 14 CCR 1299.03 defines Zone 1 as extending 30 feet out from each building or structure, and requires an owner to "Relocate exposed firewood piles outside of Zone 1 unless they are completely covered in a fire resistant material." In Zone 2, which runs from 30 feet to 100 feet, "All exposed wood piles must have a minimum of ten feet (10 ft.) of clearance, down to bare mineral soil, in all directions." PG&E's own wood management standard names that regulation and Public Resources Code section 4291 as the requirements it is written against, which is why its qualifying distances track the defensible space zones.
Does the crew take the stump?
PG&E's Trees and Powerlines page does not mention stumps at all. Its wood language begins at material 4 inches in diameter and ends at wood left in a safe position on site. Stump height is a contract specification rather than a published customer commitment, which means the answer comes from whoever holds the work specification for that circuit. The wood line, 1-800-270-9750, is the number PG&E gives for questions about wood from trees it cut down.
