Southern California Desert Management Plan Worries Activists

A sweeping renewable energy management plan for Southern California's desert regions is stirring fears about potential new solar farms and transmission lines in San Diego and Imperial counties.

California power lines, Feb. 21, 2011 (Robert Couse-Baker)

By Erik Anderson
KPBS.org

A sweeping renewable energy management plan for Southern California's desert regions is stirring fears about potential new solar farms and transmission lines in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Federal and state officials have been crafting a desert management plan for five years.

The recently unveiled proposal would help manage development and habitat protection on 22 million acres of federal, state and privately owned land in the eastern part of the state.

The idea is to streamline the development process for renewable energy projects on about two million acres.

East County resident Donna Tisdale has fought against backcountry development for years. She's trying to get the word out that this plan could have major negative impacts.

"I had to contact a lot of farmers in the Imperial Valley to try and get them up to speed on what was going on," Tisdale said. "People in East County were kind of shocked to hear that there's at least one more 500 KV line, like Sunrise Powerlink, proposed."

Sunrise Powerlink is a 117-mile transmission line that connects San Diego with the Imperial Valley. It was put into service June 17, 2012.

The plan's architects consist of what they call "an unprecedented collaborative effort between the California Energy Commission, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also known as the Renewable Energy Action Team."

The state and federal coalition is currently seeking public comment.

The desert energy and conservation protection plan is scheduled to be finalized next year.

Groups seek $2.7 million for fighting power line

Critic calls intervenor claims 'great way to make a living'

By DAVE DOWNEY
North County Times

Opponents of San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s power line have petitioned the state to compensate them for $2.7 million in costs they say they incurred over three years battling the Sunrise Powerlink ---- costs that would be passed on to utility ratepayers.

The groups were "intervenors" in the Sunrise case under a program that allows opponents to take on a formal role in arguing merits of utility projects before the California Public Utilities Commission, the regulatory body that licenses electric, gas and telephone projects.

The state lets intervenors recoup their costs.

But critics say the reimbursement requests are excessive. And because of the prospect of making big money, they suggest the program encourages groups to routinely oppose utility projects, whether ill-conceived or not.

The intervenors counter that their bills are reasonable. They say their involvement helped hold down costs of the $2 billion transmission line, and prevented it from being built in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and North County.

See highlights of the Sunrise Powerlink intervenor compensation requests

The most prominent intervenor, the San Diego consumer group Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN), asked for $1.2 million to cover fees for attorneys, experts, document preparation and travel from late 2005 through early 2009.

The commission also received requests for:

-- $797,673 from the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.

-- $473,379 from the community group Rancho Penasquitos Concerned Citizens.

-- $257,617 from the Mussey Grade Road Alliance, represented by the husband and wife team of Joseph Mitchell and Diane Conklin of Ramona.

If granted, the consumer group's award would be the largest compensation given to an intervenor since at least 1996, according to commission records. And the environmental groups' compensation would be third-highest since then.

The current record of $866,884 was awarded to The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco consumer group.

At the same time, the San Diego-based utility spent more than $125 million to promote its power line, and those costs will be passed on to ratepayers, said Jennifer Briscoe, a company spokeswoman.

The total includes costs associated with the 11,000-page environmental impact report prepared for the project, the company's legal bills, applications for various permits, and hosting dozens of public meetings and open houses around the region. Briscoe said the company hasn't finished tallying those expenses.

Good intentions

The intervenors billed ratepayers $300 to $480 per hour for attorneys and $75 to $270 an hour for "expert" witnesses.

And they are seeking more than $16,000 to cover the time they spent preparing their compensation claims.

The deadline for submitting claims was last week. SDG&E and the commission staff have until March 25 to file responses to the claims, and commissioners are expected to decide how much the groups will get sometime after that.

The Sunrise Powerlink is a 120-mile, high-voltage line that was given the green light by the state commission in December.

Construction is scheduled to start in 2010. The wires are to be strung from metallic towers up to 150 feet tall through southern San Diego County and southwestern Imperial County. The project was one of the most contentious and heavily studied in California history.

Designed for these types of projects, the state's intervenor program sought to empower small, poorly funded grass-roots organizations to credibly challenge corporate giants in the commission's complicated courtlike proceedings, said Susan Carothers, a commission spokeswoman.

"By hearing from different perspectives, the California PUC is better able to make informed decisions," Carothers said.

But critics say intervenors often take advantage of the program ---- and clearly did so in the Sunrise case.

"I can see how the original intent might have been a positive one," said Lani Lutar, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But it seems to have gone out of control with unintended side effects. It has become an incentive to have these just-say-no nonprofit groups. Groups like UCAN now make it their mission to oppose every utility project that comes forward."

Scott Barnett, a San Diego-area tax watchdog who operates TaxpayersAdvocate.org, said the Sunrise reimbursement requests are unreasonably high.

"It seems like quite a racket to me," he said. "I need to get into the intervenor business, I think. It's a great way to make a living."

Both taxpayer groups favored the line.

Michael Shames, executive director for the Utility Consumers' Action Network, insisted his group does not routinely oppose projects for the sake of boosting coffers with intervenor-compensation dollars.

And he disagreed the program gives the wrong incentive.

"Intervenors don't earn even one dollar unless our opposition is sound, credible and effective," Shames said by e-mail. "The economic incentive is for us to be effective, not for us to just oppose."

The commission's Web site tells intervenors this: "You may request compensation for the time and expenses you incurred to participate in the proceeding as long as your participation made a 'substantial contribution' to the outcome of the proceeding."

Shames said his personal hourly rate of $330 and his group's $1.2 million claim is justified.

"Why is that appropriate? Because SDG&E made us do a tremendous amount of work ---- they filed the equivalent of three different applications with continuous modifications throughout," he said. "We spent the better part of three years in extensive litigation and totally disproved and discredited SDG&E's representations about the economic benefits of the line and the need to route it through Anza-Borrego."

Years of fighting

The battle aside, Barnett and Lutar, the taxpayer advocates, charged the four intervenors duplicated much of the work of the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, the arm of the commission responsible for representing ratepayer interests.

"It seems like we're paying twice for the, quote, independent perspective," said Andrew Poat, vice president of public policy for the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. and a backer of Sunrise Powerlink.

Scott Logan, a regulatory analyst for the division who handled the Sunrise case, said there was little duplication.

"We look at it as both a complement and supplement to DRA's work," Logan said.

Because the commission frowns on repetition, the intervenors ---- in their claims ---- stressed the unique accomplishments they say they made.

The consumer group said it held down project costs, the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity said they shaped the environmental report and kept the line out of Anza-Borrego, and the Ramona group said it secured extra measures to prevent wires from starting wildfires.

Harvey Payne, an attorney for Rancho Penasquitos Concerned Citizens, said his group persuaded SDG&E to scrap the last 15 miles of the power line, sparing neighborhoods in Rancho Penasquitos and Carmel Valley.

And Payne maintains his group's request for almost a half-million dollars is justified.

"This was three years of constantly fighting SDG&E," he said. "This was approximately 1,000 hours of time over three years for me. This was my expert's time over three years. But, most importantly, we are saving the ratepayers at least $72 million."

Payne hired a retired transmission engineer for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., William Stephenson, to provide expertise.

When it came to intervenor costs, the environmental groups submitted the highest hourly rate: $480. That was to cover work by San Diego attorney Steven Siegel, whom they hired for their Sunrise opposition campaign.

Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, said the $480-per-hour rate is "perfectly reasonable."

The commission's allowable range for attorney compensation is $150 to $535 per hour.

"He is a very experienced senior attorney, so we billed him out at a higher rate," Suckling said. "We feel like our success in the case came from having a senior attorney. Steve did a great job for us."

The environmental groups also are seeking $70 to $150 an hour for experts who provided information about endangered animals, such as the desert bighorn sheep that roams Anza-Borrego, and native plants.

Likewise, Conklin, of the Ramona group, defended her group's $257,617 bill.

"We were totally consumed by this," Conklin said. "We worked incredible hours. We didn't bill for all those hours. It sounds like a lot ---- a quarter of a million dollars ---- but we tried to be as reasonable as possible."

Battle over desert power line escalates

An environmental group asks the state Supreme Court to review PUC approval of the project.

By Marla Dickerson
Los Angeles Times

An environmental group has asked the California Supreme Court to review a controversial power transmission project that was approved last month by the state Public Utilities Commission.

The petition filed late Wednesday by the Center for Biological Diversity alleges that the commission violated California law by failing to ensure that the proposed Sunrise Powerlink would be used principally to carry renewable energy and by rejecting alternative routes that would have avoided fragile wilderness areas. The group wants the court to void the decision and order the PUC to reconsider the proposal.

"Sunrise . . . would sacrifice sensitive public lands and vital habitat without any guarantee the line will be used to deliver clean energy," said Ileene Anderson, Los Angeles spokeswoman for the group.

The center also plans to ask the PUC for a rehearing on the $1.9-billion project, which it contends is unnecessary and too costly, Anderson said.

Wednesday's filing, which was expected, is just the latest development in a lengthy dispute over Sunrise. Proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric, the $1.9-billion ratepayer-financed transmission line is slated to run 123 miles from Imperial County to San Diego, crossing remote areas of the San Diego backcountry and the Cleveland National Forest.

SDG&E said the line was necessary for it to meet state mandates to boost its use of renewable power by ensuring there is enough transmission capacity available to get energy from remote wind, solar and geothermal projects to urban areas where it's needed.

Opponents say it's a costly boondoggle that will destroy unique desert habitat while allowing SDG&E to transport fossil fuel-generated electricity through the lines. They contend that funds would be better spent developing urban solar projects that use existing transmission infrastructure.

PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said she couldn't comment on a pending appeal of a decision. The court can take as long as it wants to decide whether it will hear the petition.

Desert power line gets OK

The ratepayer-funded electrical transmission project aims to boost the use of clean sources.

By Marc Lifsher
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Sacramento -- Regulators gave a San Diego utility the go-ahead Thursday to build a $1.9-billion transmission line that it says is needed to move nonpolluting geothermal, wind and solar power from inland deserts to energy-hungry coastal cities.

The California Public Utilities Commission, meeting in San Francisco, voted 4-1 to approve a proposed decision by President Michael Peevey to allow San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to use ratepayer funds to string 123 miles of new high-voltage lines. Massive steel towers would carry the electricity from Imperial County through environmentally sensitive areas of the San Diego County backcountry and the Cleveland National Forest.

The commission's lone dissenter, Dian Grueneich, couldn't persuade her colleagues to support an alternative decision. It would have authorized the line, known as the Sunrise Powerlink, but only if SDG&E, a unit of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, complied with strict requirements that it be filled with electrons from "green" sources.

Once operational, the line will play "a critical role in California's efforts to achieve energy independence" and help the state meet its goal to generate a third of its power from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2020, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.

Developers, who want to invest millions of dollars in power plants to generate alternative energy, say they won't be able to secure financing without a commitment from the state that the line will be available to carry their electricity to market.


The Sunrise plan, which has been before the commission for three years, has solid backing from state, local and ethnic chambers of commerce, many San Diego County governments and labor unions. But it has garnered equally strong opposition from environmental groups, consumer advocates and rural communities that lie along the line's path, roughly paralleling the U.S.-Mexico border.

Opponents, who denounce Sunrise as too costly and unneeded, vow to file lawsuits challenging the Public Utility Commission's decision.

"The commissioners issued a $2-billion, politically driven decision today that disregarded the facts," said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers Action Network. "It will be up to the appellate courts to force the PUC to face the facts that make the Sunrise project a whopping Christmas present for Sempra but a lump of coal for all of the state's ratepayers."

Other Sunrise foes said the commission's decision could have been worse for the environment if SDG&E's initial power line route had been approved. The utility originally wanted to run the line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a vast preserve that spans portions of Riverside, San Diego and Imperial counties, considered a jewel of the California system.

In the face of criticism from the Sierra Club and the California Parks Foundation, SDG&E recently dropped the Anza-Borrego route and embraced a more costly path farther south.

In October, the utility came out on the losing end of an administrative law judge's proposed decision that the line wasn't needed to satisfy San Diego County's short-term power requirements.

Commissioner Grueneich, a veteran environmental activist, offered SDG&E a compromise: The company could build on the southern route if it could provide the PUC with a firm, legal commitment that the line's 1,000 megawatts of capacity would be filled completely with energy from renewable, nonpolluting sources.

Grueneich said she feared that the company would use Sunrise to carry electricity produced by coal or natural-gas-fired power plants in other states or nearby Baja California, Mexico.

Both SDG&E and Peevey, who authored his own, ultimately successful proposed decision, countered that Grueneich's conditions could prove too burdensome to the utility and its alternative energy suppliers.

The commission, Peevey said, would monitor SDG&E to make sure it lives up to a nonbinding promise to send no coal-based electricity through the Sunrise line. The company also said it would meet the state's 33% alternative energy goal by the 2020 deadline.

"I fully expect the company to follow through on its commitments," Peevey said.

But SDG&E's word wasn't good enough for Grueneich.

"We have an obligation to ensure that San Diego Gas & Electric's ratepayers and not just its shareholders see a return on their investment," she said.

"I am not willing to risk $2 billion in ratepayer money to the invisible hand of the market."