Our view: North County residents have chance Thursday to comment on national energy corridor proposal

As much as California likes to think of itself as a separate nation-state, every once in a while the people back in Washington, D.C., find a way to remind us otherwise. This week's reminder comes Thursday, when the U.S. Department of Energy will entertain comments, at a hearing in San Diego, about whether North County should be designated as the end of a power-line corridor in which the feds retain the right to overrule any state or local decision on energy transmission.

It just so happens that San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has dreamed up just such a project, its 150-mile, 1,000-megawatt Sunrise Powerlink, to deliver energy from Imperial County to Carmel Valley via the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and a swath of North County. Imagine that.

In 2005, just as SDG&E was revealing its Powerlink plans, Congress was passing legislation that allows the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to establish " national interest electric transmission corridors." With that authority comes the power to override local and state opposition to new transmission lines. Coincidentally, there has been just such resistance to SDG&E's Powerlink proposal: some NIMBY, some Not-In-Our-Desert-State-Park.

Late last month, the federal Energy Department announced that it wants to organize 11 counties in Southern California, western Arizona and southern Nevada into what would be one of two national corridors. San Diego is on that list.

Certainly, it's reassuring to hear that the federal government considers keeping our lights on "in the national interest." It's certainly in our interest. But what's not as reassuring is the fact that even as state regulators are wrestling with the costs and benefits of SDG&E's proposal, the feds are angling to make their decision moot.

While California has not exactly distinguished itself as the brightest bulb when it comes to energy policy - deregulation and rolling blackouts, anyone? - we're even less comfortable with Washington flicking our switches. It's our electricity we're talking about, after all, and it's our land they're talking about seizing through eminent domain, if necessary, to make this energy corridor sizzle.

What's more, we hope federal and state regulators consider another aspect of the "grid reliability" question that's driving the national energy corridor effort. Another transmission line may be necessary for San Diego - along with many observers, we're still weighing the pros and cons - but it may not be the only way to ensure greater reliability of our energy grid. It certainly is among the most profitable options for SDG&E.

Other alternatives - improvements in energy conservation and efficiency, distributed generation like solar panels on a sea of suburban rooftops - promise their own contributions to reliability, either by reducing demand or by decreasing the distance our electricity must travel. We trust that these factors will be considered before the feds decide SDG&E must build a big power line through our desert wilderness.

The public's best local chance to weigh in on the national energy corridor proposal comes from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego Hotel, 1 Market Place, San Diego. Anyone who wishes to speak at the meeting must register at http://www.energetics.com/NIETCpublicmeetings/registration.shtml. If you can't make it, you can watch a webcast, for which you must register here: http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/ener001/22309/

DOE meeting announcement

http://www.energetics.com/NIETCpublicmeetings/may17.shtml

National Corridors story

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/27/news/inland/3_01_574_26_07.txt