On Wednesday, April 10, Powercor distributed a media release declaring “Powercor flying above Goulburn Valley to keep communities safe”.
Just over a week later, on Thursday, April 18, the company was pleading guilty in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court to just over 100 charges of effectively putting communities in danger.
Powercor’s website says it supplies electricity across 64 per cent of Victoria, spanning from the western suburbs of Melbourne through central and western Victoria to the South Australian and NSW borders.
Part of its responsibility is ensuring mandatory minimum clearance distances between vegetation and power lines in order to prevent fire.
In court, the company pleaded guilty to several failures to meet those legal requirements, including its failure to complete inspections of 4866 line spans between poles in the Greater Shepparton and Horsham Rural City municipal regions in 2021.
The court was shown a selection of photos showing vegetation close to powerlines, including in the Stanhope, Invergordon, Shepparton and Toolamba West areas.
The prosecution said if the 4866 spans that had not been properly inspected by Powercor were placed end-to-end, it would be 982 km long, or the distance from Melbourne to Sydney.
In one case, Powercor’s failure to clear trees from powerlines led to a fire at Glenmore, south-west of Bacchus Marsh, on February 17, 2023 that threatened four homes, razed farming infrastructure and burnt 185 hectares of land, including crops and pasture.
The court heard three victim impact statements from people closely impacted by that fire.
Those statements variously spoke of that day being one of the most confronting, of how their trust in stakeholders meant to help reduce fire risk had been lost, that their fear and anxiety levels had increased, told of the financial impact it had had on them, that they had lost the ability to perform basic tasks and how they no longer get any enjoyment from summer.
The prosecution, brought by Energy Safe Victoria, said the Glenmore fire was the realisation of the risk Powercor was supposed to prevent.
“It extended over a long period of time; it extended over a large geographic area,” the prosecution said.
“The location of much of the offending was in high bushfire risk areas. The offending led to a bushfire in the Glenmore case.”
The prosecution also raised a number of prior offences Powercor had been prosecuted for, listing a total of $714,000 in fines since 2019 for offences, some of which involved some of the same spans of line included in the latest offending.
The prosecution said deterrence should be factored into the sentence given four of the state’s five electricity infrastructure providers were in rural or semi-rural areas.
“It (Powercor) needs to know, through the size of the fine, that going before the court again is not a place it needs to be,” the prosecution said.
“The fine needs to address the fact that it’s going to be of more significant effect if you do comply rather than if you don’t comply. A more significant financial impost is what I mean.”
The defence said Powercor had pleaded guilty to the offences at the earliest possible stage and that the COVID-19 pandemic had led to many contract staff from interstate, and some based in Victoria, to either be unable to carry out the required clearance work or choosing to walk away from the roles altogether.
Defence counsel said the company was responsible for 69,000km of overhead power lines and 602,000 poles.
The number of spans it monitors in total is 500,000 with 280,000 of those in high-bushfire-risk areas.
“In pleading guilty to these offences, Powercor fully acknowledges its responsibilities and that it failed to meet them,” the defence said.
“The plea of guilty was made at the very early stages.
“This certainly was not a wilful disregard to the dangers.”
The defence pointed out that the company had conducted a review of its operations and following the purchase of three helicopters and introduction of laser technology was now able to review its entire network annually, something that previously took three years.
They said the company had also taken measures to ensure cutting crews were available to remove vegetation deemed too close to lines.
“There are more cutting crews available now than there ever has been in the past,” the defence said.
The prosecution told Magistrate Amina Bhai the maximum fines she could impose in total for all the offences was more than $3 million.
When she asked the defence what amount Powercor thought was reasonable, the defence said the company was in a position to be able to pay a fine, but would not put Powercor’s “financial position before the court”.
The case was adjourned for sentencing at a later date.
