Southern California designated
national electric corridor

SDG&E has option of asking federal commission
to approve Sunrise power line

By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer, North County Times

The corridor, drawn wide to include the urban areas where more electricity is needed as well as outlying areas where power is produced, stretches from the Mexican border to well north of Los Angeles, and east to Phoenix. Under the declaration, when utilities propose transmission lines and state regulatory agencies either reject them or put off action for long periods, they can ask the federal government to step in and review those projects instead.

The San Diego County power company could become the first utility in the nation to ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to intervene in what traditionally has been a state process for evaluating plans.

The utility could ask the commission to step in almost immediately because the California Public Utilities Commission has been reviewing its Sunrise Powerlink transmission line for more than a year, the minimum time required before the federal agency may intervene.

"We're in a position to take advantage of this action more so than are utilities in other areas of the country," said Mike Niggli, chief operating office for San Diego Gas & Electric, by telephone Tuesday. "At this point in time we are keeping our options open. We're not ruling anything out."

Sunrise Powerlink is a 150-mile superhighway of electricity SDG&E wants to string across in the backcountry of San Diego and Imperial counties. Stretching from El Centro to Carmel Valley, the project's 500- and 230-kilovolt wires would cross Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Ranchita, Santa Ysabel, Ramona and Rancho Penasquitos.

An environmental report for the project was supposed to be delivered in August, but the California Public Utilities Commission put off completion until January to study impacts of a potential future expansion. A final ruling isn't likely to come before the end of next summer.

The timing of the designation comes as the Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to wrap up hearings addressing whether Sunrise is needed to meet San Diego County's future electricity needs.

Niggli said the designation couldn't have come at a better time. He said it underscores the need for more transmission lines like Sunrise that are designed to move power from developing renewable energy centers in the desert to the vast urban areas along the coast.

Sunrise opponents had been bracing for the decision for months.

"We anticipated that this would occur and that SDG&E would try this legal end-around," said Michael Shames, executive director for the San Diego consumer watchdog group Utility Consumers' Action Network, by e-mail.

Decision is no guarantee for power line

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Energy designated two national electric corridors. Both are in heavily populated regions where, federal officials said, utilities routinely encounter difficulty delivering power on days of high demand.

The energy department's new Southwest Area Corridor covers seven California counties ---- San Diego, Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles, Kern, San Bernardino and Imperial ---- and three counties in western Arizona. The agency designated an East Coast corridor that runs from New York to Washington.

Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability for the Department of Energy, stressed that the designation was not an endorsement for any particular power-line project. And while the designation calls attention to the need to move electricity around more freely, cures for roadblocks could include local power plants and conservation, besides new lines, he said.

Kolevar maintained that moving a power line from the umbrella of a state to the federal government would not result in a slam dunk.

"Filing an application with FERC ... does not equal approval," he said.

If approval were granted, Kolevar said, the commission could impart eminent domain authority to condemn private lands needed for a project. But he said the commission could not exercise that authority in wilderness areas, nature preserves, state parks, national forests or national parks. The ability to ask the federal agency to take over would not extend to power plants or other utility projects.

"No project may be routed through state or federally owned land without the approval of state or federal land agencies," Kolevar said.

Supporters: Region depends on Powerlink

A San Diego County business coalition that supports the power line proposal praised the designation.

"Today's decision by the federal government is yet another piece of conclusive evidence that the Sunrise Powerlink must be approved and constructed as soon as possible," said Julie Meier Wright, co-chairwoman of the Community Alliance for the Sunrise Powerlink. "The economic competitiveness of our region depends on reliable and affordable power."

Diane Conklin, a Ramona activist who doesn't want to see a segment of the Sunrise line built near her rural hilltop home, said the Southwest corridor is almost comical in how wide it is, stretching from the border to the southern tip of Nevada.

"It's not a corridor. It's an entire area of the country," Conklin said.

Federal officials defended the corridor's size, saying it needed to be large enough to include not only the area of the electric bottleneck but all locales in California and Arizona where power sources are being developed for the Southern California market.

While the Southwest corridor includes Riverside County, it is not likely to affect a project being watched closely there. That's because the proposed Lake Elsinore Advanced Pumped Storage project, which includes a proposed new reservoir, hydroelectric plant and new transmission lines, already is being reviewed by the federal energy commission.

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