Your eyes on California Government

NOV. 16, 2011

By KATY GRIMES

California legislators believe that our roads and highways should be beautiful and free from towering, ugly billboards. But the same standard does not apply to residential neighborhoods within the state.

Monster towers are devastating Chino Hills, and threaten to devalue homes even more than the current real estate crisis has.

The residential city is beginning to look like an industrial park with the 200-foot electrical towers inside parks and only feet from homes and churches. Residents say that this would never happen in Malibu, Beverly Hills or San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Southern California Edison’s Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project will cost a total of $1.8 billion to construct renewable energy generators from Kern County to western San Bernardino County. The project is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as President Obama’s “stimulus money” for “shovel-ready” projects. But the stimulus money came with strings attached.

The key legislation is the California Renewable Portfolio Standard, passed by the Legislature and signed into law on April 12, 2011 by Gov. Jerry Brown. Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, authored SB 2, which mandates the increase of California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard to 33 percent of electricity generated in the state by 2020.

That means sellers of electricity must to procure 33 percent of their total energy supplies from certified renewable resources. The speed with which the towers have been going up is largely due to having to spend the federal money by a certain deadline.

Opponents of the renewable mandate say that this will increase California’s energy costs by $7 billion, sparking a dramatic increase in the cost to the state’s utility ratepayers.

In October 2010, Southern California Edison contractors began removing the old, idle, 200-kilovolt (kV) transmission lines and installing new, beefier, 500 kV transmission lines. By May, new towers were being erected. The old towers had been located on an easement, and had not been used in 40 years. SCE had assured developers that the old electrical towers were only still there as backup electricity, in an emergency.

But suddenly the old towers were removed, and new, much larger towers were rapidly being installed.

Close to Homes

Many residents have been complaining that the power towers are too close to homes and worry about living so closely to electro-magnetic frequencies and radiation. Other residents are concerned that, because the city is on an earthquake fault line, one big quake could topple towers onto homes and schools.

The residents and City officials of Chino Hills haven not been sitting by idly. They have proposed various alternate routes that would move the transmission lines away from residential communities and schools into a local state park area.

The city spent $2.4 million on experts, lawyers and specialty engineers to fight SCE to develop an alternate route through the Chino Hills State Park, a plan blessed by environmentalists.

The alternate route plan was initially rebuffed by the California Public Utility Commission. But late last week, Chino Hills received word that the CPUC had ordered SCE to halt work on the project, and come up with alternate route proposals by January 10. This came after the Chino Hills City Council voted to file a request with the California Supreme Court to accept review of the Court of Appeal’s ruling against Chino Hills.

Even while the legal battles have gone on, residents say that the tower construction is occurring at record speed. The federal stimulus money funding the SCE project is a large incentive, say the residents.

While this is a small victory in a very large battle, Chino Hills residents are wary.

There is a bill currently resting in the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee that could derail the Chino Hills proposed alternate route for the transmission lines.

SB 580, by state Sens. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, and Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, would prohibit state park land from being used for other uses “incompatible with park purposes.” That means no electrical towers could be built inside a state park.

SB 580 was defeated once and is currently on file due to reconsideration being granted by an Assembly committee, chaired by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, also a co-author of the bill.

This bill has a lot of history and a complex group of environmental advocates behind it, and is described as a “toxic” bill on many levels. According to energy experts and Capitol sources, alternative energy transmission has been a regular theme behind these types of bills.

Environmentalists Divided

Environmentalists are divided into two camps on this issue.  Forest and desert activists love the bill, and criticize locals near state parks for Not-In-My-Backyard objections. But the solar activists hate it because it denies access to their projects on state park lands.

Hope For The Hills, the group that was created to fight SCE and the towers, ramped up last May when residents came home from work one day to see the monster towers being erected near their homes.

During a recent visit to Chino Hills, I met Hope For The Hills President Bob Goodwin. During a tour of the city to see the towers, Goodwin said that Chino Hills was a city people wanted to live in. “Homes were still in demand, even under the current economic downturn. Prices in Chino Hills remained fairly stable. But now we have the monster poles adjacent to our schools, churches and in parks.”

Goodwin took me to Coral Ridge Park. We stood beside one of the towers, placed right in the middle of the park. Soccer teams were playing on one field. The tennis courts were full. Dwarfed by the tower, I could not photograph the entire structure because it was so tall. I could not even wrap my hand around the massive bolts at the base of the structure.

We drove through residential neighborhoods of all socio-economic levels. Towers were erected next to million-dollar-homes, $100,000 homes and everything in between. At the top of a ridge in the Pine Valley neighborhood, I took a picture of the miles-long tower cluster, dividing the city for miles.

Goodwin said that the number of homes for sale in Chino Hills has jumped 400 percent since May, when the towers began sprouting up.

Goodwin recently interview two homeowners whose homes were appraised before May, and again recently. The current appraisals were 17 percent lower in just 5 months.

What Is Next?

It was obvious that SCE circumvented many procedures to get the electrical towers project going so quickly. They have been shut down by OSHA for safety violations and the by Federal Aviation Administration for airspace infringement with the tall towers.

Passage of the California Renewable Portfolio Standard by the Legislature was just one way to capture federal stimulus money while looking like heroes to the environmentalist crowd. The big game is to grab as many federal dollars as possible, regardless of what strings come attached to them.

January 10 will be here soon, and Chino Hills residents are hopeful that SCE will use the state-park alternate plan for the transmission towers.

Resident Joanne Genis, the founder of Hope For The Hills, keeps a huge scrapbook of newspaper stories about their fight, photos at events and letters from children to CPUC President Michael Peevey, asking him to stop the project. This group is not just a neighborhood association of bored housewives. I met two dozen residents who have become serious activists. For months, and some for years, have been hard at work at their day jobs, and at night meet with Hope For The Hills.

Genis has been with the project for more than four years and has watched as SCE and the CPUC ignore residents’ studies, research and alternate plans. While she is pleased with the CPUC’s halt order on the project, she is cautiously optimistic for January 10. Genis has been frustrated and critical with the CPUC commissioners. She says they have been rude to residents at hearings. “They look like they are asleep when we testify,” she said. “They talk to each other, eat and ignore what’s being said. The only thing they haven’t done yet is take out their knitting during the meeting.”

Genis vowed to stick with the fight until the last tower is removed. “This is not green,” she said. “This is greed.”

Tags: AB 32, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, California budget, California Legislature, Democrats, government, Jerry Brown, Katy Grimes, regulations, tax increases, unions, waste