Should a high voltage power line pass through California’s largest state park? Critics are furious

BORREGO SPRINGS, Calif. A planned high-voltage power line in the San Diego County desert has sparked outrage over its proposed route through the heart of California’s largest state park.

At nearly 650,000 acres, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is known for its uniqueness: miles of rock faces and sandy washes dotted with Ocotillo, wildfsuperblooms are low again fixed fixed sky. But what is proposed Golden Pacific Powerlink from San Diego Gas & Electric could soon change that, opponents say.

The 500-kilovolt transmission line will run about 140 miles from a key substation in southeastern Imperial County, near the Mexican border, to a new one on the border of Orange and San Diego counties near the Pacific Ocean — carving a steel-towered path through Anza-Borrego to get there.

The estimated $2.3-billion powerlink is among the largest and most expensive projects in California’s transmission system, and will connect one of the state’s largest coastal centers to one of its richest renewable energy areas. Imperial Valley is an important hub for regional solar, geothermal and battery storage projects.

Both San Diego’s utility and the state’s grid operator, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), say the project is important to meeting carbon reduction goals and reducing bottlenecks on Southern California’s power lines during peak demand.

A view of the area on Highway 78 in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“This will provide a critical way to unlock additional generation that we know will be needed, which will be part of the demand that is predicted to increase in the future,” said Erica Martin, director of project development for SDG&E. Construction will begin in 2029 and go online in 2032.

The conflict reflects a broader challenge in California: how to move clean energy to the Golden State while simultaneously preserving the desert, wildlife habitats and public spaces that define it.

There are no official figures on how many other state parks have high-voltage transmission lines running through them, though it’s clear that Anza-Borrego wouldn’t be the first. In 2010, Southern California Edison removed 40 high voltage towers from Chino Hills State Park after years of public opposition.

This is not the first time this idea has been challenged. In 2008, the controversial Sunrise Powerlink faced stiff opposition from environmental groups on its planned route through Anza-Borrego, and eventually had to run under it. The route was similar to the one proposed today, but was rejected by the California Public Utilities Commission as “which is environmentally unacceptable and impossible” because it will result in more than 50 significant and unavoidable impacts on the park.

SDG&E maintains that this route is preferable for a number of reasons, including that it will allow them to “co-locate” the powerlink with the only other electrical infrastructure in the area: a 69-kilovolt line that dates back to the 1930s, before the park was established, and is supported on 50-foot-tall wooden poles.

Opponents say the two are not the same. While flexible wooden poles typically meet in place, Golden Pacific Powerlink will require a 200-foot right-of-way for its X-shaped Y-shaped steel towers to be 200 feet tall, which may require flashing safety lights at the top.

“There aren’t very many of these places left where you can go and have pure wilderness,” said Bri Fordem, executive director of the nonprofit Anza-Borrego Foundation and one of Powerlink’s most vocal critics.

Anza-Borrego Foundation director Bri Fordem inspects the San Felipe Wash, where San Diego Gas & Electric plans to run high-voltage power lines.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The plan would disrupt the habitats and migration routes of many of the park’s 1,500 plant and animal species, including the endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep that have been surrounded by the US border wall, Fordem said on a recent tour of the site. It would also require the unusual act of “de-designating” some of the park’s protected areas.

The sun rises over Ocotillo Wells in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Research has found that high voltage transmission lines can affect wildlife and the environment. A 2018 paper published in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review found at least 28 different impacts on biodiversity, including collisions between birds and wires, habitat fragmentation and loss, and avoidance behavior of birds, mammals and amphibians. Most of the impacts are seen in the early stages of the project, during the construction of the transmission line, but some continue during operation, the researchers found.

Fordem said he is not only concerned about the power line but also everything else that may come with it, such as access roads, switchyards and other industrial signs within the park. Horizon West, the company contracted to build the new offshore station, already has it proposed “two strings” lineor installing a second set of 500-kilovolt lines to increase the corridor’s power-carrying capacity — a move that could help meet peak demand.

The project will also affect recreation, tourism and cultural sensitive areas, Fordem said, as part of the line will be visible at the Tamarisk Grove Campground inside the park, and the other part will go along the Angelina Spring Cultural Preserve, a historical archaeological site tied to the Kumeyaay and other local tribes.

Martin, of San Diego Gas & Electric, said the utility is weighing all of these factors as it moves forward, and is gathering public feedback before submitting its formal application to the state later this year. More than 900 people registered for public meetings about the project that the organization did earlier this month. The project will also be reviewed by the state and the environmental organization.

Utilities like SDG&E make money by building projects like transmission lines, which earn a manageable return on investment.

The cost of powerlink will be passed on to taxpayers, but it’s too early to say how much people’s bills will increase, Martin said. However, he said the length of the line is “the biggest cost of the project,” and cutting through the park will be much shorter than going around.

An example of high voltage lines, connecting to Southern California Edison’s Vincent Substation, in 2021 in Palmdale.

(Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

“Regardless of the feasibility of the new translocation, moving it into the heart of California’s largest state park makes no sense,” said Brendan Cummings, director of conservation for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “If it is finally built, it should never be built through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.”

While the utility initially touted the project as helping to “integrate clean energy,” that language has largely disappeared from its public materials. Asked about that, Martin pointed back to CAISO, identifying the project and 44 others in it 2022-2023 transfer program as necessary to help maintain system reliability and “open access to renewable generation resources to meet the government’s energy needs.”

“All the electrons that flow through the transmission system in California can flow through this line,” Martin said.

Powerlink has received support from members of the San Diego Taxpayers Assn., the Orange County Business Council and the local electricians union, IBEW 47. Chris Cate, president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the project is still going through the group’s review process but has received support so far.

“In our opinion, it’s partly because the state has identified this as a project that should be comprehensive to help California meet its climate and energy goals,” Cate said. “Furthermore, this project will help strengthen our power grid capacity in the region and state and prevent the types of blackouts we have seen over the years that have had a negative impact on businesses and residents.”

Some experts agreed that new transmission projects are important.

“Southern California has the highest population with high electricity demand, which is projected to continue to grow,” said Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez, director of the Renewable Energy and Advanced Mathematics lab at UC San Diego.

However, he said there are other cost-effective ways to meet growing demand, such as utility balancing and distributed solar power and long-term energy storage.

Hidalgo-Gonzalez said he hasn’t studied SDG&E’s preferred approach through Anza-Borrego enough to comment on it. “However, legally, and as an energy systems engineer, I believe it is important to prioritize culture, nature and the environment.”

Some have questioned why the San Diego utility believes the plan will work now when Sunrise Powerlink was found to be environmentally unfeasible in 2008.

“We already did this with Sunrise, and now they want to do it again,” said Charlie Van Tassel, a Poway resident who owns a home in Borrego Springs. Van Tassel was in the park photographing long-eared owls perched in the trees above Tamarisk Grove on a weekday morning.

Danny McCamish, chief environmental scientist for the Colorado Desert District of California State Parks, said many of the problems identified then have not changed, including impacts on sight lines, sounds, animal migration patterns and hunting and nesting areas.

View of the “Texas Dip” on Borrego Springs Road.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“Increasing infrastructure comes with more disruption,” McCamish said at one of the park’s overlooks along the Pacific Crest Trail. “We want a complete ecosystem without disruption, and when we start breaking up and putting in roads, and building barriers, and putting in new pylons and roads around those pylons, that’s when we introduce the ‘island’ effect.”

McCamish pointed to a nearby stand of swaying cottonwood trees.

“We don’t build things taller than traditional plants,” he said. “And this will break that.”