Here is the story that was reported in the Union-Tribune.  The Commission's Order to Show Cause, referenced in this story is attached below.

SDG&E lied about power line project, PUC believes

Utility must explain why it shouldn't be sanctioned

By Bruce V. Bigelow

Staff Writer

August 2, 2008

The California Public Utilities Commission declared yesterday that San Diego Gas & Electric Co. officials appear to have deliberately misstated facts about the proposed Sunrise Powerlink in talks with PUC staffers.

In an unusual move, the commission launched a formal inquiry and ordered SDG&E to explain within 15 days – formally and under oath – why sanctions should not be imposed on the utility for its alleged misrepresentations.

If the inquiry finds that such misstatements occurred, SDG&E faces a variety of sanctions that include a fine ranging from $500 to $20,000 for each offense and banning the utility from certain PUC proceedings.

SDG&E spokeswoman Jennifer Briscoe said the order reflected a misunderstanding and expressed confidence that the matter can be resolved.

The alleged misrepresentations were described in an 11-page ruling signed yesterday by Dian Grueneich, the commissioner overseeing the Sunrise proceedings.

Grueneich's order was endorsed during the commission's regular business meeting Thursday by Michael Peevey, president of the five-member PUC.

“SDG&E representatives may have violated Rule 1.1 of the commission's rules of practice and procedures, which prohibits making false statements to the commission,” Peevey said Thursday. “This rule applies to every person who appears before the commission, without exception.”

SDG&E applied two years ago for regulatory approval to build the Sunrise Powerlink, a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line.

The utility says the line is needed to improve the reliability of San Diego's power grid and will enable the utility to meet renewable-energy mandates by connecting with solar-and geothermal-power projects planned in the Imperial Valley. But the utility's preferred route through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park triggered intense opposition from environmentalists and residents along the proposed right of way.

A massive, 7,500-page draft environmental study released in January concluded that the route preferred by SDG&E through Anza-Borrego was among the least preferable environmentally. Of the top seven alternatives, the study ranked five others higher, including a “southern route” for the transmission line along Interstate 8.

SDG&E officials argued that the alternate southern route proposed in the environmental study was not feasible because it required crossing tribal lands owned by the Campo and La Posta Indians.

In her order yesterday, Grueneich wrote that such concerns were addressed at an informal meeting May 20 involving at least 11 SDG&E representatives, who agreed to revise the southern route specifically to avoid the tribal lands.

But top SDG&E officials contended that any southern route would require crossing tribal land when they met with top advisers to the PUC commissioners less than a month later, according to Grueneich's order. The SDG&E officials also said the Campo band would refuse to allow any route through its land.

Such informal meetings, which are held apart from formal hearings, are routine in big cases. SDG&E officials participated in about one-third of the 60 informal sessions that have occurred during the Sunrise proceedings.

In disclosures required after such informal meetings are held, SDG&E failed to include “many of the critical details allegedly asserted during the meetings,” Grueneich added. “Further, it also appears that those notices do not include all of the documents that were provided to (PUC staff members) during those meetings,” as required.

The order reflects a small taste of the “buffet of misrepresentations that SDG&E has served up in this case,” said Michael Shames of San Diego's Utility Consumers' Action Network, who has opposed Sunrise in the proceedings.

“Almost the entirety of its briefs in this case were comprised of overt misstatements and distortions of fact,” Shames said. “Apparently, SDG&E slipped up and forgot that while arguments in its briefs are generally exempt from punishment for lying, misstatements of fact to commissioners are not.”

Davis “Dave” Smith, an SDG&E senior vice president and top in-house lawyer, rejected Shames' characterization by telephone last night. He said that multiple southern routes have been considered for the Sunrise Powerlink and that thousands of documents have been submitted in the case.

“We are truly at the moment mystified about this order,” Smith said.

He said that at the June meetings with the commissioners' advisers, SDG&E officials talked about the southern route described in the environmental study and a modified southern route that would skirt some of the tribal lands.

“Nothing we provided in those meetings were misleading,” Smith said. “The documents that we provided were not misleading.”