Two years have passed since Pacific Gas & Electric Co. announced an ambitious plan to move thousands of miles of its powerlines underground to help reduce the risk of its equipment starting catastrophic wildfires. KCRA 3 has been checking in with the utility giant periodically to see if it has been meeting its goals. Joe Wilson is the PG&E Regional vice president. He oversees the work being done in the unincorporated community of Gold Hill in El Dorado County, where crews are working to put five miles of powerlines underground. Gold Hill is one of several undergrounding projects. Wilson said this current project began August 2022 and is expected to be done in March."The crew that is working on it right now is one of our general construction gas crews," Wilson said. "They have a lot of experience in putting pipes underground and setting boxes and vaults."When KCRA 3 spoke with Wilson, he said they were setting vaults and some lids. Afterward, electric crews will come back and pull cables through after the civil work is completed. Wilson expects that to happen in the next couple of weeks.The work is part of PG&E's Wildfire Mitigation Plan, where it aims to move 10,000 miles of its powerlines underground in California's highest-risk fire areas. In 2021, PG&E met its goal of undergrounding 70 miles of powerlines. It was able to underground 71 miles.In 2022 the utility giant surpassed its goal of moving 175 miles of its powerlines underground."We were able to accomplish 180 miles underground," Wilson told KCRA.According to Wilson, this year's PG&E goal is to underground 350 miles of its powerlines, which is 50 miles short of the original goal it set for 2023.When asked why the original quota was cut back, Wilson said they received feedback from some of their stakeholders, telling them they were being "overly aggressive." "So in the interest of our customers, we went ahead and took that back to 350 miles. It's still a tremendous amount of work," Wilson said. "And again, it is twice as much as what we did last year."PG&E plans to ramp up its undergrounding work by expanding its contractor workforce. A spokesperson for the company said in an email that it selected five contractors in spring 2021 for the undergrounding work."We are currently in a competitive process to augment our existing contractors to meet our 2023 mileage goal. We expect to add four to eight additional vendors when that process is complete in the second quarter of 2023," the email from the spokesperson read. Joe Donald and his wife live down the street from where crews were working.Although Donald welcomes the added safety measures and is "glad to see that the work is being done and the fire danger is being cut back," he has some questions and concerns.One of Donald's questions is about where PG&E is doing the work."From what I've seen, a lot of the fires are started in remote areas. And so, undergrounding in our neighborhoods is OK, but maybe that's not the 100% answer for sure." According to Wilson, deciding where undergrounding is prioritized is done through a machine learning program by Technosylva. He explained that is helps identify areas that "will have the most risk-benefit by putting the lines underground.""So, leveraging those partners, as well as working with some of our key stakeholders, whether it's cities or counties to identify areas where there have been frequent shut-offs due to Public Safety Power Shutoffs, or where there's hospitals, fire stations, critical infrastructure — those are all the things that go into our scoping decisions," Wilson said.He also wants to know how much money is coming out of his pocket to pay for the undergrounding project.According to PG&E, it is costing the utility $3.75 million to underground each mile of its powerlines, and it expects that number to decrease to about $3.3 million per mile this year.How that translates to your bill is still not clear, but the utility has previously stated that the price will start to go down as more lines are moved underground.Donald is unsure of the price drop."You don't know what material costs are going to be tomorrow as far as wire and stuff. We always see labor going up and stuff like that. I do think if you get into a process where you start doing a process, you get better at it. And, so, that might be beneficial. But, I don't see it as a cost-benefit more maybe as a time benefit that might save them a little bit of money. There's a lot of unknowns two years from now."As for how much the undergrounding project is going to impact ratepayers, PG&E will have "the actual number for the bill impact probably this fall"."Current work to underground portions of the system will be funded through the 2023-2026 General Rate Case (GRC) proceeding," a spokesperson told KCRA, via email. "The customer bill impact will be dependent on the CPUC's final decision for the GRC, expected in fall 2023. Approximately 2,100 miles of our 10,000-mile Undergrounding Program are included in our 2023 GRC proposal, which proposes a series of crucial safety, resiliency, and clean-energy investments to continue to further reduce wildfire risk and deliver safe, reliable and clean-energy service."