Transmission Planning Must be Improved
Posted May 4, 2009 in Moving Beyond Oil, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
On February 7, 2009, the New York Times carried a story on the obstacles facing new transmission lines. According to the story, the Interior Department took a year to approve one line "crossing a wild river and required a $5 million contribution to a national park." That one year delay raised the costs of the line in question by an additional $12 million.
I am not familiar with the line described in this story but I assume that the river in question was a congressionally designated Wild and Scenic River. If so, I am not surprised that the permit process took a year to complete and the transmission company shouldn't have been either. Proposing something as intrusive as a transmission line in such an area is virtually guaranteed to take a long time to approve.
Case in point: the Sunrise Powerlink. The route of this transmission line, ostensibly to bring renewable power from Imperial County to San Diego, originally ran right through Anza-Borrego State Park, California's largest state park, and through part of the state-designated wilderness area in that park, also the state's largest wilderness area. At first the proponent, a utility company, insisted that there were no alternatives to that original route. Then they said that, while there were some alternatives, all of them too involved going through Anza-Borrego. After approximately two years the permitting agencies, which included the Department of the Interior, approved an alternative route that they -- not the utility -- had identified. This route did not go near the park and had fewer environmental impacts.
The Sunrise Powerlink is a perfect example of why transmission planning needs to be done differently than it has been done in the past. Working hard from the beginning to identify a route that has minimal conflicts maximizes the chance that the permitting process will proceed with minimal delay and controversy. In contrast, selection of a route like the original Sunrise Powerlink guarantees both controversy and delay.
Development of our Google Earth layer is one of the things NRDC is doing to help avoid future Sunrise Powerlinks. We believe that new transmission will be necessary to access the renewable energy we need to help save the planet, but like everything else, the new lines must be done right.
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Comments
Donna Tisdale — May 6 2009 02:52 PM
The approved alternate route for San Diego Gas & Eelctric's unjustified and greenwashed Sunrise Powerlink, that NRDC inexplicably supports, actually has more significant and unmitigable impacts than the rejected route that was proposed to run through Anza Borrego Desert Park--including Class I threats of wildfire and impacts to fire fighting in areas that were devastated in the 2003 and 2007 San Diego firestorms. Other highly flammable drought stessed sensitive and protected lands and communities that have not burned in 50-90 years are also placed at risk by the transmission line and related projects.
The approval of the southern route was totally political in nature and ignored the rejection by the assigned Adminstrative Law Judges and the evidence that supported better, less expensive and destructive alternative projects, documented in the 11,000 page project record.
The approved route for Sunrise Powerlink was never properly surveyed or studied. It runs through designated and occupied critial habitat for Big Horn Sheep, the Jacumba Wilderness Area, designated critical habitat for the Quino Checkerspot Butterfly, several thousand acres of land acquired for inclusion into the Anza Borrego State Park (but quietly being held back by the Governor and State Parks in order to avoid impacting the project), the McCain Valley Conservation and Resource Management Area, the Cleveland National Forest, Japatul Valley, Star Valley, Chocolate Canyon, El Monte Valley, and numerous rural and low-income communities. The La Posta and Sierra Juarez cross-border wildlife corridors identified in the Las Californias Binational Conservation Initiative are also impacted.
The project also bulldozes its way through historical and cultural resources that were not surveyed and,according to an appeal by the Viejas Band, without proper consultation with impacted tribal nations. The environmental and biological surveys were never properly completed for the approved route either.
Belated attempts,in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, are now being made by SDG&E and the Bureau of Land Management to cover their asses. Appeals have been filed with more to follow.
There are better cheaper ways to generate renewable energy at and close to the point of use.
Donna Tisdale
Citizen Activist
Boulevard, CA