Find them???? Who the hell put them where they are in the first place???
The CPUC is in on the whitewash.
PG&E built out the natural gas systems in the 1950’s and 60’s with extreme speed, to keep up with and get ahead of the economic and population growth of the time, as well as the industrial fuels conversion from coal and bunker oil to nat gas.
That is besides the old municipal gas systems it had taken over from the 1910’s in some cases.
There were lots of corners cut in those days. And the company was not good about retaining records in those days either. The sins of past generations.
What they mean by “find them” is hooking up a Pipehorn, Vivax, or RDX locator to put a signal on the pipe or tracer wire so it can be marked out.
That’s providing if on steel pipe the bonding cables are intact wherever there is a Dresser fitting, or on the anodes. On plastic, you have to deal with tracer wire that may have been damaged, or the lead removed by some bonehead property owner who thinks it’s just a useless wire sticking up out of the ground.
There is also old pipe in the ground that was installed back in the days before accurate records keeping were required. That means hand drawn maps drawn by people who are no longer alive and maps that no longer match current road alignments.
So yeah they have to sometimes “find them”.