The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has temporarily halted its use of drones while it reviews a federal government agency’s concern that the flying devices made by a Chinese company could transmit sensitive U.S. infrastructure information to that country, a spokesman said Friday.

The commission, which manages the city’s water, sewer and electric power services, will review whether it should continue using craft made by popular drone maker DJI of Shenzhen, said spokesman Tyler Gamble.

The agency has used a drone only four times, for construction and environmental survey work, since the city adopted a drone-use policy in May. Each time, it hired a contractor who used a DJI drone, Gamble said.

“We are pausing our drone use while we review some of these concerns,” Gamble said. “We take these issues very seriously.”

In August, the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau issued a memo saying that officials had “moderate confidence” that DJI’s drones and software are “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

Although the commission did not have any missions scheduled, Gamble said a New York Times story on the memo published this week caused the agency to pause the drone program until a city technology committee could review the controversy and decide whether to ask contractors to use drones from another manufacturer.

In an interview, Michael Perry, DJI’s managing director for North America, said he couldn’t comment on the commission’s action. But he said the ICE report, based on an unnamed source, was full of “flawed logic” and “leaps of imagination.” He also said drone operators can turn off any communication between the drones and DJI servers to prevent sharing sensitive data.

“The allegations made in that report are completely unfounded,” he said.

DJI is by far the most popular manufacturer used by U.S. public safety agencies, according to the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College. About 80 percent of those agencies use at least one DJI model, said center co-director Dan Gettinger.

Several agencies in the Bay Area rely on DJI, including the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, which has purchased 10 and has teamed with DJI to test public safety uses of drones. The district is also working with Intel’s drone team.

Chief Harold Schapelhouman said Thursday that he’s already studied the issues raised by the ICE memo and said he might have an issue if he ran a military or law enforcement agency. But he concluded that using drones for fire and rescue operations wouldn’t expose any information that couldn’t be found on other sources.

“Are you going to tell me a satellite or an aircraft couldn’t do the same thing?” he said. “You could go to Google Earth and do the same thing. I would not be flying a product like that if I felt we were putting ourselves or the public at risk.”

The Moraga-Orinda Fire District, which has one DJI drone, takes a similar view. It is monitoring the situation, said Dennis Rein, emergency preparedness coordinator, but will continue to fly the device because “we here as first responders are not at risk of exposing any data that one can’t easily Google.”

Benny Evangelista is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChronicleBenny