Supervisors hear more about $1.6B Golden Pacific Powerlink

By Karen Pearlman

(San Diego County) — The San Diego County Board of Supervisors heard passionate arguments from both sides at its Tuesday, Aug. 18 board meeting regarding San Diego Gas & Electric’s proposed $1.624 billion Golden Pacific Powerlink.

The initial map of the planned gridline for the Powerlink shared by SDG&E months ago runs right through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Follow-up maps that were released more recently by SDG&E avoid the park but place it through the Palomar Mountain region.

Tuesday’s agenda item was offered as a “receiving a presentation on the effects of the Golden Pacific Powerlink Project on the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park” as shared by the Anza-Borrego Foundation and the Chaparral Lands Conservancy.

But what it did was weigh fierce environmental outcry against a heavy push from leaders of business groups, local union leaders and electrical workers who say the line is vital for the region’s clean energy future.

While the ultimate fate of the project lies with the California Public Utilities Commission, Tuesday’s meeting at the County Administration Building in downtown San Diego served as a massive public forum on whether rural East County should shoulder the heavy infrastructure burden required to meet the state’s climate goals.

The meeting was packed as residents from as far away as Borrego Springs and Fallbrook to Palomar Mountain and Jacumba lined up to voice their opposition.

After hearing an hour of speakers on the item — more than 60 who were allotted one minute of time to share thoughts — County Board Supervisor Jim Desmond, who has been vocal on the Powerlink forefront, summed up his thoughts thusly:

“SDG&E and CPUC (should) re-route it — not through the heart of a state park,” Desmond said. “It’s like, ‘What are you thinking?’… I mean previous power lines went around the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. They figured out how to get around it before. This one just blatantly cuts right through the middle of it.”

The meeting began at 9 a.m. and early on included a proclamation lauding the Anza Borrego Foundation for its work championing the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. It wasn’t until after a 2 p.m. lunch break that reconvened the meeting close to 3 p.m. allowed for the presentation and discussion.

The Golden Pacific Powerlink is a planned transmission line that would feature structures 15 to 20 stories tall, cutting through California’s largest state park and traversing more than 100 miles across San Diego and Riverside counties.

The line is designed to carry electricity from SDG&E’s Imperial Valley Substation to a new substation near the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The environmental case

The Anza-Borrego Foundation, the park’s official nonprofit partner, and the Chaparral Lands Conservancy delivered their joint presentation at the request of Desmond and Supervisor Joel Anderson.

The groups outlined how a 500-kilovolt line through the 600,000-acre park would fragment wildlife corridors, threaten endangered species, raise the risk of catastrophic wildfires, and permanently alter the scenic, dark-sky views that draw visitors from around the world.

During the presentation, Bill McDonald, president of the Anza-Borrego Foundation said rhetorically, “If one of the nation’s most protected landscapes can become the path of industrial least resistance then we have to ask, what does protected actually mean?”

McDonald reminded the supervisors that the county has been in a similar position before, noting that 20 years ago the CPUC rejected the Sunrise Powerlink’s original plan to go through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, finding more than 50 “unmitigatable environmental impacts” and finding the park routes “unacceptable and unfeasible.”

“Today the park is more vulnerable, not less, and this proposed Powerlink is more destructive,” he said.

McDonald said an alternative Golden Pacific Powerlink grid map he had seen put the grid through the Montezuma Grade, which he said would be unacceptable.

“It trades impacts to one protected landscape for impacts to another, and directs major infrastructure through Borrego Springs community itself,” he said. “Borrego Springs’ health and economy is inseparable from the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Moving the corridor toward the community does not solve the problem, it magnifies it.”

McDonald (screenshot, left) reminded the supervisors that California State Parks are held in trust for the people of California, “and the people elected to represent us have a responsibility to defend that trust when the protection placed on those lands is challenged.”

The push for clean energy capacity

While opposition to the Powerlink dominated the comments at the meeting as well as the nearly 500 comments shared electronically with the county as of 9 p.m. Aug. 18 ( https://sdcounty.granicusideas.com/meetings/2319-board-of-supervisors/agenda_items/6a7a375d7d7965593600b07a-25-receiving-a-presentation-on-the-effects-of-the ) the project has garnered strategic backing from prominent business and energy groups.

In a letter to the Board, Cleantech San Diego President and CEO Jason Anderson argued that sustaining the region’s leadership in clean energy adoption depends on a modernized grid capable of moving renewable energy to where it is most needed.

Representing the 19-year-old business organization and the statewide GRID Coalition, Anderson emphasized that California’s energy demand is expected to double by 2045, requiring at least 160 gigawatts of capacity.

“The Golden Pacific Powerlink would expand access to the abundant renewable energy resources concentrated in Imperial Valley,” Anderson wrote. “Access to this clean energy would enhance reliability, strengthen the region’s clean energy economy, and improve the efficiency of our existing transmission system.”

Speaker James Wynne (screenshot at right) is a journeyman lineman and a business representative for Local 47 IBEW, representing more than 14,000 line workers and electrical professionals throughout Southern California, which h said is made up of “men and women who build, operate, maintain and repair the electrical infrastructure that Southern California relies on every day.”

Wynne said that the collective union group understands “firsthand what it takes to maintain a safe, reliable and resilient electrical grid.”

“California’s demand for electricity continues to grow, and our transmission infrastructure needs to grow with it,” Wynne said. “The Golden Pacific Powerlink represents the kind of major transmission investment needed to prepare our electrical system for the future. The project is about more than poles, wires and transmission capacity, it’s also an investment in highly trained electrical utility workforce.”

Supervisors push back

The proposed route runs almost entirely through Desmond’s district, spanning the desert and North County backcountry, while Joel Anderson’s district includes East County communities that have faced a wave of large-scale energy projects in recent years.

Desmond has been a vocal opponent of the project, recently publishing an op-ed calling it “a Sacramento project” and arguing that the communities absorbing the impacts have no vote in the decision.

At the meeting, Desmond reiterated several times that he doesn’t approve of the current alignment.

“I believe the line should not be running thru the region’s premier state park,” he said. “These power structures holding the lines, they’re going to be I heard 19-, 20- feet tall, that’s a 19- or 20-story building… They’re going to be a quarter mile apart… This is just going to be a blight on the deserts and particularly a state park.”

“Yes, we do need the energy. I would like to see California, instead of putting grids and powerlines everywhere, that we use power locally. Let’s use smaller power, local, modular, atomic energy, instead of relying on this grid which is very vulnerable.”

Deja vu in the desert

For many longtime backcountry residents, Tuesday’s fight felt remarkably familiar.

In 2006, SDG&E proposed the Sunrise Powerlink, which originally included a route running roughly 25 miles through Anza-Borrego’s wilderness.

Following a multi-year environmental review, the CPUC rejected that route in December 2008, ruling it “environmentally unacceptable and infeasible.” Regulators cited 52 significant, unmitigable environmental impacts and forced the utility to reroute the line along Interstate 8.

Opponents argue the Golden Pacific’s preliminary route revives much of that exact rejected corridor, including sensitive areas near Grapevine Canyon, Tamarisk Grove and the Angelina Spring Cultural Preserve.

SDG&E maintains that grid resiliency requires the new line to be placed in a geographically distinct corridor from the existing Sunrise Powerlink, ensuring the broader grid stays operational if one corridor must shut down for safety reasons.

The utility also claims the project is needed to meet California Independent System Operator projections. San Diego County ratepayers are projected to cover about 9 percent of the costs for the multi-billion-dollar project.

Desmond said he was bothered most about how nearly the entire line will run through San Diego County, yet “we’re only getting 9 percent of the benefit.”

“So 90 percent of that power is going someplace else and we’re bearing the brunt of it here in San Diego County… and not much of the benefit. That’s the way we’re looking at it.”

Anxiety over alternate routes

While SDG&E’s published tentative route skirts Palomar Mountain via Highway 79, the utility’s two alternate routes for CPUC study show one cutting directly through Palomar Mountain, and another following Highway 76.

The Save Palomar Mountain Task Force has warned that both alternatives carry severe life-safety and wildfire risks.

Stephanie Baxter (screenshot, left) of the “Save Fallbrook” group spoke at the meeting and noted that her group is working “alongside the other coalitions in this room in opposition to the Powerlink project.”

“We recognize this is a state-level project but it will affect communities that you represent,” she told the supervisors. “We’re asking the board to use its voice and its authority on behalf of constituents to formally engage with the CPUC oppose the Powerlink as currently proposed, demand a fresh evaluation of whether this massive new transmission corridor is necessary when safer less invasive alternatives are available.”

Baxter said, “We’ve been burned before” and noted the 2007 Rice Fire that burned nearly 9,500 acres in Fallbrook, which she said “SDG&E was responsible for.”

She said one of SDG&E’s alternative routes “appears to cut through the Rice Fire burn scar. We don’t want alternative routes. We want alternatives to the project.”

The broader East County burden

The Golden Pacific Powerlink debate is the latest chapter in a broader narrative for rural San Diego County. Communities like Jacumba, Boulevard and Campo — which just days ago had fire fighters battling the Church2 Fire– have spent years opposing massive solar, battery storage and wind turbine projects.

Residents at the meeting and through online comments voiced frustration that their lower-income, unincorporated communities are being transformed into industrial energy hubs to supply power to the rest of the state, while they are left to deal with the visual blight, environmental impacts and ongoing wildfire-related power shutoffs.

Ultimately, the CPUC will determine the final route and run the formal environmental review. SDG&E expects to file a formal application in late 2026, with state and federal permitting projected to run through 2029.

Have your say: Upcoming open houses

SDG&E will hold a series of in-person open houses to gather community feedback ahead of the CPUC review process. Project staff and subject-matter experts will be available to answer questions.

Aug. 25, 4 to 7 p.m. at the Fallbrook Community Center; Aug. 26, 4 to 7 p.m. at Temecula Embassy Suites;  Oct. 13, 4 to 7 p.m. at the El Centro Community Center; and Oct. 14, 4 to 7 p.m. at the Borrego Springs Resort.

An online open house will also launch Aug. 25 at goldenpacificpowerlink.com. Residents can submit comments directly to SDG&E at GoldenPacific@sdge.com, or utilize letter templates provided by the Anza-Borrego Foundation.

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