Power-line debate on the horizon

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer
Visual impact of Sunrise is a hot topic | Saturday, January 26, 2008 10:34 PM PST ∞

Picture driving out to Julian along Highway 78 through the bucolic Santa Ysabel Valley with ranches and rolling grasslands stretching into oak- and pine-covered mountains.

Now imagine coming around a bend and seeing high-voltage wires, draped from metal poles more than 100 feet tall, marching across the road.

That is a snapshot of the potential visual impact of the Sunrise Powerlink, a $1.3 billion, 150-mile transmission line a local utility wants to string between Carmel Valley and El Centro.

That effect, and many others, figure to be among the hottest topics at a series of public hearings set for this week across the region.

"The visual impact (in the Santa Ysabel area) will be huge," said Katy Moretti, a Julian resident whose family owns a large ranch in the valley in the path of the wires. "They are just going to destroy the valley."

The wires would also spoil weekend sight-seeing for people driving up the hill from North County cities, she said.

"The drive is not going to be as pretty," she said. "You're going to have a torn-up side of a mountain."

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. officials say they would work to soften their project's visual and other impacts. In some areas, the utility plans to put their wires underground.

A utility spokeswoman also noted that if the transmission line isn't built, the region would still have to rely on local power generation, which has impacts of its own.

Securing the future

Jennifer Briscoe, a spokeswoman for the utility, said the region's demand for electricity is growing continually.

"Something has to be done to secure our region's energy future. We're facing a real energy shortfall in 2010," Briscoe said. "And if it is not Sunrise Powerlink, then something else is going to have to step in and fill that void."

And that something else, whether it be a new power plant on the coast or a different power line, would affect people's lives, she said.

"If it is not a visual impact, it is an air quality impact," said Briscoe. "Each of the alternatives has a construction phase. There is going to be an impact no matter what the solution is."

Several hearings are planned this week in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties to discuss the Sunrise line's potential impacts.

State and federal regulatory agencies examined the impact in detail in a 7,000-page environmental impact report early this month.

The agencies -- the California Public Utilities Commission and U.S. Bureau of Land Management -- are expected to decide by late summer whether to give San Diego Gas & Electric permission to build.

A new character

The utility intends to string 91 miles of 500-kilovolt wires between El Centro and the Warner Springs area, crossing Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in the process.

The project also calls for 59 miles of 230-kilovolt wires between Warner Springs and Carmel Valley, passing through Santa Ysabel, Ramona and Rancho Penasquitos.

The wires would hang from towers reaching as high as 160 feet. About 10 miles would be underground.

Project opponents -- people who live in the line's path and environmentalists -- have been saying all along that the wires would transform the backcountry's scenic, pastoral setting.

Opponents also have said the wires could ruin property values in Rancho Penasquitos.

The environmental report underscores opponents' fears in the backcountry, concluding that the line would "introduce substantial industrial character into a predominantly rural-appearing landscape."

The report terms that impact "significant and unavoidable."

At the same time, the report suggests the visual impact in Rancho Penasquitos would be "less than significant" because the project would add a 230-kilovolt line to an urban skyline already marred by similar wires and poles.

The 7,000-page volume also says there would be opportunities for old and new wires to be strung along the same poles.

The underground option

In the backcountry, however, the report suggests it would be difficult, if not impossible, to soften the visual impact for the simple reason that it's hard to hide something that rises more than 100 feet above the ground in areas with few and mostly low-lying structures.

About the only way to preserve treasured views would be to hide wires in the ground, the report said.

San Diego Gas & Electric proposed doing just that in parts of Ramona and Rancho Penasquitos.

The utility did not propose doing that in the Santa Ysabel Valley, but the team studying impacts came up with an alternative of laying about six miles of the line in the ground there to ease concerns about views.

"We're wiling to consider underground alternatives as long as they reduce the environmental impacts," said Briscoe, the utility spokeswoman. But she said digging presents problems, too, because there are many sensitive cultural sites that could be disturbed.

Briscoe said it wasn't favoritism that drove the utility not to propose underground cables there, and to plan to lay wires below the surface in Ramona and Rancho Penasquitos.

Rather, Briscoe said, both areas were selected because of their relatively dense populations. And she said the utility's right of way through Ramona was so narrow that building an overhead line would have required condemning homes.

10 times the cost

For much of the project's 150-mile distance, the utility is trying to follow easements it already possesses, in places where smaller poles and wires already exist.

San Diego Gas & Electric has easements through Rancho Penasquitos, too, but the one the utility chose to follow there currently has no wires, Briscoe said.

And she said utility officials felt that they should not introduce a 230-kilovolt line.

Briscoe said the utility tries to limit use of underground transmission lines because their cost -- $20 million a mile -- is 10 times that of overhead lines.

Even if the underground option were used in the Santa Ysabel Valley, that would be little consolation for Moretti, the woman whose family owns a large ranch on the east side of Highway 79 in the Santa Ysabel Valley. That's because the wires still would be above ground there.

According to the report, the presence of the Elsinore fault would require pulling the line out of the ground a few miles north of the town of Santa Ysabel.

For the Moretti family, that means no matter what, the impact would be severe for the ranch where her 84-year-old father has lived for 76 years, Katy Moretti said.

Moretti said that when utility officials approached the family about the project two years ago, utility officials said they needed a 100-foot easement.

"Now it is 300 feet, the length of a football field," she said. "And they're putting in miles of access roads where there has never been a road before, where a vehicle has never been driven."

That would be a shame, said Denis Trafecanty, who has lived on 50 acres in the valley since 2001.

"A lot of (the valley) doesn't seem like it belongs in California because it is so different, with its meadows and all," Trafecanty said. "It's just such a lovely place."

Where people ride horses

In Ramona, at the end of an underground section, a prominent new tower would rise up out of the ground along San Vicente Road, just west of Chuck Wagon Road near Wildcat Canyon Road.

The tower is depicted in a simulated photograph in the report as a single straight metal pole with a half dozen lines strung from candlelike arms on each side.

Donna Murdoch, president of the 251-home Rancho San Vicente Homeowners Association in Ramona, said that would be a shame, too.

"That's a pretty rustic area, with nice oak trees," Murdoch said. "It's a beautiful area to drive through -- and a beautiful area to live in, too."

And while wires would go underground where she lives, Murdoch isn't thrilled at the thought of a construction staging area going in her neighborhood.

For as long as two years, the report stated, the utility would operate a materials and equipment storage yard at the north end of Gunn Stage Road, at the entrance to the county's Mount Gower Open Space Preserve.

"That's an open-space place where people like to ride their horses," Murdoch said. "There's a horse staging (area) up there. It gets a lot of use."

Joining other wires

The open spaces in the Rancho Penasquitos area would be affected, too, but not as much as the more rural areas to the east, according to the report.

That, the report says, is because the suburban San Diego community is already home to power lines, including a 230-kilovolt line that is similar to the one proposed for the area as part of Sunrise Powerlink.

The report suggested that the impact at the new, upscale Preserve development on Del Mar Mesa was a good case in point.

While poles would be clearly visible from the area's scenic ridge tops, they would be similar to existing poles. And in places wires would be paired up with already existing wires.

"The new structures would be taller but less structurally complex than the H-frame structures they would replace," the report concluded.

The report can be viewed at www.cpuc.ca.gov/Environment/info/aspen/sunrise/sunrise.htm.

The public has until April 11 to make written comments about the report. Those may be sent by e-mail to sunrise@aspeneg.com, or by regular mail to: CPUC/BLM, c/o Aspen Environmental Group, 235 Montgomery St., Suite 935, San Francisco, CA 94104.

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.

This week's Sunrise Powerlink workshops:

-- El Centro: Monday, Jan. 28, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m., CalWorks, Meeting rooms B

and C, 2995 S. Fourth St., El Centro 92243.

-- Alpine: Monday, Jan. 28, from 7 to 9 p.m., Alpine Community Center, Sage Room,

1830 Alpine Blvd., Alpine 91901.

-- Temecula: Tuesday, Jan. 29, from 1 to 3 p.m., Community Recreation Center,

Multipurpose Room, 30875 Rancho Vista Road, Temecula 92592.

-- Rancho Penasquitos: Tuesday, Jan. 29, from 7 to 9 p.m., Hilltop Recreation

Center, 9711 Oviedo Way, San Diego 92129.

-- Ramona: Wednesday, Jan. 30, from 2 to 4 p.m., Ramona Community Center, 434

Aqua Lane, Ramona 92065

-- Warner Springs: Wednesday, Jan. 30, from 7 to 9 p.m., Warner School cafeteria,

30951 Highway 79, Warner Springs 92086.

-- Pine Valley: Thursday, Jan. 31, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m.,

Mountain Empire High School gymnasium, 3305 Buckman Springs Road, Pine Valley

91962.

-- Borrego Springs: Friday, Feb. 1, from 1 to 4 p.m., Borrego Springs High School community room, 2281 Diegueno Road, Borrego Springs, 92004.

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