Al Donner, Sacramento FWO
A new chapter in the continuing evolution of Habitat Conservation Plans (HCP) was completed on April 11, 2008, when Department of Interior representatives and senior management of the Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) Company met in Fresno, Calif., to fete a new HCP.

The unique and creative PG&E San Joaquin Valley Operations and Maintenance HCP is designed to offset numerous small-scale environmental impacts of PG&E's widely dispersed operations throughout the San Joaquin Valley. The plan is unique in that it addresses small-scale impacts of specific activities over a very large geographical area. The HCP coves about 300,000 acres of the total 12 million acres in nine counties, a region 250 miles long and nearly 100 miles wide.

Because the utility's operations typically are long, narrow corridors for pipelines and powerlines, this "spaghetti web" HCP is different than most regional HCPs, which usually cover all the land in a region. Developed in collaboration with the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, the PG&E HCP will addresss the utility's impacts on the long, narrow corridors that criss-cross the region.

PG&E’s HCP commits to measures that will minimize, avoid and compensate for the effects of the utility’s operations and maintenance activities in utility corridors on 65 native plants, animals, and their habitats.

HCPs are commitments to protect and help rare species. They are developed by local or non-governmental interests, in cooperation with the Service. HCPs simplify permitting under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and they provide better protection by planning for landscapes than project-by-project consultations. HCPs usually also protect numerous imperiled species that are not yet covered under ESA.

The PG&E Operations and Maintenance HCP for the San Joaquin Valley establishes offsets for the environmental impacts of PG&E’s routine minor construction, operations, and maintenance on its gas and electrical distribution facilities within the nine counties. The plan estimates that about 43 acres a year will be impacted. In the HCP, PG&E commits to compensate with three acres of habitat for every one acre of habitat that is lost.

“PG&E’s regional mitigation plan is a creative and responsible corporate approach to protecting imperiled species,” according to Susan Moore, Field Supervisor in the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior Jim Mosher joined Moore, other Fish and Wildlife Service staff, and PG&E officials in Fresno to celebrate the landmark achievement.

The HCP covers possible impacts to 23 animals and 42 plants, including 31 species listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Some of the species in the HCP are: the California red-legged frog, the vernal pool tadpole shrimp, the Buena Vista Lake shrew, the riparian brush rabbit, the Tipton kangaroo rat, the San Joaquin kit fox, Keck’s checkerbloom, the Kern mallow, and the California jewelflower.

For the utility it simplifies and shortens its consultation process, making the firm more efficient and providing a mechanism to make workers more aware of the environmental impacts of their work. A side benefit is the increased sensitivity to imperiled species that field crews gain as they are trained in, and then work under the terms of the HCP.

The new utility covers PG&E operaions in all or part of San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno, Kings, Kern, Mariposa, Madera, and Tulare counties.

Many people in the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office worked on the pioneering HCP as it was developed, including biologists Lori Rinek, Eric Tattersal and Nina Bicknese.

While this may be the first major utility O&M HCP, it is not lilkely to be the last. Already PG&E is using it as a template to develop five similar HCPs to cover all of the areas it serves. And other utilities are beginning to see the wisdom of this new concept in HCPs. NiSource, Inc. has begun work on a proposed HCP to cover its natural gas transmission pipelines in 17 states east of the Mississippi. It is expected that other utilities will consider this new approach to doing their work while offsetting their impacts on protected species and habitat.