State says power line would 'forever change' Anza-Borrego

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer | Tuesday, September 12, 2006 10:12 PM PDT ∞

On the eve of a key public meeting in Ramona on a proposed power transmission line, state officials raised "serious concerns" about the environmental toll the project would exact on Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which they called "the jewel of California's state park system."

And state park officials are calling on a regulatory body to direct San Diego Gas & Electric Co., the company proposing to build the power line, to look for another alternative route that would run south of California's largest state park, which covers much of eastern San Diego County.

The proposed $1.3 billion power transmission line, known as the Sunrise Powerlink, "would forever change the character of this pristine park," wrote Ruth Coleman, director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, in a 15-page statement filed with a state regulatory body on Sept. 5.

That body, the California Public Utilities Commission, has scheduled a so-called prehearing conference on the project for 4 p.m. today in the Charles Nunn Performing Arts Center at Olive Peirce Middle School, 1521 Hanson Lane, Ramona. The conference agenda calls for discussing the nuts and bolts of the project, the review process and the timeline for making a decision before taking public comment later on. The meeting is expected to last several hours.

The statement from park officials is one of several that opponents and supporters filed in advance for the prehearing conference.

While stopping short of opposing the project, Coleman wrote that the 23 miles of wires SDG&E wants to run through the "heart of Anza-Borrego" would force the state to change its land-use blueprint for the park and erase 73 acres of protected wilderness, she said.

That is because the existing electrical easement through the park ranges from 24 to 100 feet wide, and SDG&E is seeking permission to enlarge that corridor to 150 feet.

Coleman wrote that she could not recall an earlier decision to shrink state wilderness.

"To do so for this project would set a dangerous precedent that would mean that state park lands and state wilderness are merely held in trust by the state of California until such time as they may be needed by private developers or utility companies," she wrote. Anza-Borrego has more than 400,000 acres of protected lands, representing 80 percent of California's state wilderness system, she said.

Stephanie Donovan, a spokeswoman for the San Diego-based utility, said SDG&E wants to design the project in such a way that it has the least possible impact on the land.

"We are still hopeful that we can come up with a compromise solution that can mitigate the line through the park," Donovan said.

Coleman countered there is no way to hide from public view the enormous towers that would be 130 to 140 feet high ---- three times higher and many times more massive than the wooden power poles in the park now.

As for the notion of building the line around the park, Donovan said, that is easier said than done. All but about two of the more than 50 miles of the desert portion of San Diego County, between Mexico and the Riverside County line, are within the park, she said.

"If there were a better way, believe me, we would have found it," Donovan said. "There are not a lot of options for going east to west that don't go through the park."

SDG&E, which serves $1.3 million customers in San Diego County and southern Orange County, says the Sunrise Powerlink is needed to shore up a projected electricity shortfall next decade and to open a way for the utility to tap into developing nonfossil-fuel sources, such as solar power, in Imperial County. Early next decade, large utilities such as SDG&E will be required to obtain at least a fifth of their electricity from such renewable sources.

"You can't develop them (renewable sources) unless you have a way to get them to market," Donovan said.

The utility is proposing to string 500-kilovolt wires from metallic towers as tall as 160 feet through the backcountry of Imperial County and eastern San Diego County, and through communities such as Ramona. In some urban neighborhoods, sections would be buried underground.

Project opponents do not dispute the need for new electricity to assuage the region's growing thirst for power, but they say there are cheaper, less destructive ways to deliver it, such as building power plants in metropolitan San Diego. Opponents say the presence of the huge towers would drag down property values, harm wildlife, scar the land and mar scenic views in largely unspoiled places such as the park.

Coleman suggested it would be easier to run the line through the Cleveland National Forest than through Anza-Borrego.

It wouldn't be that easy to go through the forest, Donovan said.

"It would literally require an act of Congress," she said.

-- Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 740-5442 or ddowney@nctimes.com.

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