I do not support the Golden Pacific Powerlink, and I will do everything in my power to stop it.
Earlier this year, the state announced plans for a 500 kilovolt transmission line that would run from the Imperial Valley across our region and north toward Orange County. The current alignment cuts through much of North County on towers as tall as 200 feet, nearly twenty stories high, marching through land that generations of San Diegans have worked to protect.
I want to be direct about where I stand. I do not approve of this alignment, and I do not approve of the process that produced it.
Since the announcement, I have heard from constituents across District 5 who are alarmed, and rightly so. Their concerns center on wildfire risk in a region that knows exactly what a spark near dry brush and high winds can do, on environmental damage to land that cannot be rebuilt once it’s disturbed, and on the private property rights of people who never asked to have a transmission corridor drawn through their lives. Those concerns don’t stop at a district boundary. A wildfire ignited by infrastructure in North County does not check which supervisorial district it’s burning through, and a rate increase on the bill hits every household in San Diego County the same way.
Organizations from across the region have already said as much directly to the Board of Supervisors. The Anza-Borrego Foundation, the Protect Our Communities Foundation, the Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce, and the Chaparral Lands Conservancy all made the drive down from North and East County to describe, in their own words, what this project would do to the communities and landscapes they represent. I am grateful they came, and I want to thank Supervisor Anderson for standing with me on this. Their concerns are legitimate, and the state needs to address them, not wave them aside.
Here is what troubles me most about this project, more than almost anything else. The line runs through our region, but the electricity it carries is headed north, to serve other counties. San Diego County ratepayers, all of us, from the coast to the desert, would be on the hook for roughly 9 percent of a project that costs more than $1.6 billion.
We would live with every consequence — the towers, the cleared land, the fire risk — and receive no direct benefit in return. Compare that to the Sunrise Powerlink, which at least delivered power to San Diego County. This project asks every one of us to accept the cost of infrastructure built to benefit someone else.
It gets worse. Even though this alignment crosses unincorporated county land, the county has no say in the matter. Not a vote. Not a permit. Nothing. I have spent my time in office fighting for local control, for the basic idea that the people who live somewhere should have a voice in what gets built there.
On this project, that voice does not exist at the local level for any part of San Diego County. The decision rests entirely with the state.
That is precisely why this cannot be treated as someone else’s fight. If the county has no formal authority here, then public pressure, organized and sustained, is the tool we have left, and it only works if it comes from residents countywide, not just the communities closest to the proposed route.
Every San Diego County ratepayer is being asked to fund this project.
Every San Diego County resident should have a say in whether it moves forward as planned.
This fight is far from over, and I intend to keep pushing until the alignment changes. San Diego County deserves better than to pay for a project that runs through our land and delivers its benefit elsewhere.
Sign a petition opposing the Golden Pacific Powerlink’s proposed alignment.
Jim Desmond represents District 5 on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, including Escondido, Oceanside, Vista, and San Marcos, Fallbrook, Bonsall, Borrego Springs, Rainbow, Valley Center, as well as Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton
