HIGH VOLTAGE TRANSMISSION LINE MAY CARVE OUT I-10 BYPASS ROUTE THROUGH SACRED WILD LANDS
- Petition in Need of Your Support
- A Gift from Cascabel
- Now is the Time to Submit Your Comments
- April 29th Tucson Meeting Summary
- What You Can Do / Sample Comments
- BLM Extends Scoping Period to June 10, 2010
- Public Meeting Summaries
- More Informed Insights
- Who is Peter Else?
A plan for a bypass to ease traffic to and from Tucson was scrapped spring 2008 (aka the San Pedro plan). However, alternative plans are in the works, which may violate sacred wilderness areas in Aravaipa and Aravaca. A high voltage transmission line has been proposed for the same route as the I-10 bypass route. This project has been named the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project and will involve two parallel lines of towers ranging up to 175 feet in height.
Two main concerns:
- Project leaders may not have considered existing infrastructure corridors with less environmental impact--may be going for path of least political resistance, and
- this line could ease the way for a future highway, if provisions aren't specifically made to preclude that possibility.
On July 12, 2011 the Winkelman and Redington Natural Resource Conservation Districts formally petitioned the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to provide an objective statement of purpose for the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project, a proposed 460-mile-long high-voltage electrical corridor that would affect undeveloped lands in New Mexico and southern Arizona. This petition took the form of a Request for Correction under Federal Information Quality Guidelines requiring agencies to present the public with information in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner.
The petitioners are requesting four specific disclosures, as well as corrections to five statements of purpose, all related to the BLM’s claim in scoping documents that the proposed SunZia project is primarily focused on renewable energy transmission. In order to fulfill the intent of the public scoping process, the petitioners are requesting that a revised statement of purpose be disseminated to the same distribution list used for the initial comment periods, and that another 45-day comment period be opened prior to the release of the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).
A copy of the Petition is downloadable here, and the arguments are presented on pages 3 through 7.
If you or your group wish to express your support for requiring the BLM to provide an objective statement of purpose and for granting the public its right to identify key issues to be addressed in the DEIS based upon an accurate description of the proposed project, please write to the BLM, and perhaps to your federal representatives. If you wish, a copy of your comments may also be sent to the source address of this email (Friends of the Aravaipa Region- FAR). As always, FAR encourages everyone to express their opinions with civility and respect.
It appears that this project will move forward, and a preferred route will be designated soon. This route may well become a major new infrastructure corridor in the Southwest. Please take the time to insist upon an accurate description of a project that could have profound effects in Arizona and New Mexico for many years to come.
The email addresses for the BLM's SunZia Project Manager (Adrian Garcia), Associate Director for the New Mexico BLM office (Jesse Juen), and Director for the Arizona BLM office (Jim Kenna) are as follows, in order:
agarcia@blm.gov, jjuen@blm.gov, jkenna@blm.gov
Your federal House and Senate representatives in Arizona and New Mexico can be Googled to obtain the relevant email addresses.
Friends of the Aravaipa Region: Promoting a FAR Sighted Vision for the Big Back Yard. Friends of the Aravaipa Region (FAR) distributes information and opinion to conservation activists in the Southwest and to several media representatives in southern Arizona.
Recently, a wonderful gift floated down the San Pedro River and into the Aravaipa region from the community of Cascabel. It is an extensive description of the various environmental impacts that could occur if the SunZia Transmission project runs its 16-story-high transmission towers and extra high voltage lines through the proposed route that traverses the Aravaipa region. This document, as well as a similar one related to the Middle San Pedro region, can be accessed here.
This 145-page document might be described by principal author, David Omick, as "What I did on my summer vacation." David, a resident of Cascabel and member of the Cascabel Working Group, spent hundreds of hours at the computer documenting what is at stake in the Aravaipa region, when he could have been outdoors or doing any number of activities he enjoys. However, he was driven by the knowledge that this very brief SunZia proposal review period could significantly affect the fate of a unique region that took hundreds of thousands of years to develop into its current beautiful and life-sustaining state.
The other authors of this document are also based in the Cascabel Working Group:
- Daniel Baker was the principal author of a similar document focused on describing the potential environmental impacts to the Middle San Pedro region, which David Omick credits as the template for the Aravaipa document. In my opinion, both Daniel and David are inspired content writers, motivated by their dedication to conservation in the San Pedro River Valley and a deep connection to the land. Please read their documents, and see what you think-- no matter how long you have been around the San Pedro region, you will probably learn something.
- Robert Evans, a retired electrical engineer and active bird enthusiast, contributed a 15-page description of the birds of the Lower San Pedro region.
- Monica Stephens is an expert in Geographic Information Science. She and her intern, Dietrich Walker, are responsible for many of the colorful and highly descriptive maps in the document.
- There were many other people from Cascabel Working Group who also contributed to publishing this document, including Norman “Mick” Meader, who will be featured as an important information source in the next email newsletter from the Friends of the Aravaipa Region.
In case you have not done so already, now is the time to submit your comments for the current public comment period, which was opened following the introduction of the new proposed routes through Tucson. If you believe as I do, now is the time to let the BLM know that it is not acceptable to sacrifice our wilderness areas in order to meet the energy needs of the large urban growth centers, that it is not acceptable to introduce a new major infrastructure corridor that will bisect and eventually fragment the wildlife connections that extend from the San Carlos Reservation south through the Aravaipa and Santa Teresa Wilderness Areas, and then further south into the wilderness land of the Galiuro Mountains. There exists a 100-mile-long stretch of land, extending from the San Carlos Apache Reservation all the way south through Gila, Pinal, and Graham Counties to northern cochise County, containing a network of wildlife trails that has never been interrupted by a motorized vehicle road, one of the last remainting wildlife migration corridors of this type and magnitude in the Southwest. This project would open the gates to human development by setting a major precedent for disturbing the wild and open country of the Galiuros. It would open pristine areas to motorized "off-highway" traffic, and eventually degrade the ecosystem to the point that highways, freeways, and associated development will no longer seem like such an impact. We've seen this trend time after time in history, enough to recognize that underregulated growth, like cancer, will continually expand its network of supply lines to feed major growth centers, eventually destroying the host.
From the reporters' comments listed at the end of the summary of the SunZia Scoping Meeting (Tucson, April 29, 2010) below, it is apparent that momentum has shifted. We see the cruel irony that key members of the purportedly "green" SunZia project favor selection of the route that has the least prior ecological damage and impact from development. It is disturbing that politics and head counts of opposition from various areas play such a huge role in determining "environmental impact". If polling data from neighborhoods becomes the standard for determining site selection, what happens to the areas that don't have species who write letters and complain at schmooze-fests?
There is an alternative. If this project is really proposing to support the major energy markets, then it should work with the major energy market in the region it passes through. Routing through Tucson and more coordination with Tucson Power Electric Company will allow more local access to power in these lines and make much more efficient use of existing infrastructure corridors. It will avoid permanent damage to wilderness areas in the Galiuro Mountains and the riparian ecology of the San Pedro River. Our region should not be used as source of cheap public land in order to maximize corporate profits and control of energy resources for the project sponsors. If the project sponsors cannot afford to pay the true cost of developing this corridor in an environmentally responsible manner, then they should look to another region for passage to their ultimate destination. With thousands of watts of sunshine falling on every rooftop each day, southern Arizona can meet its renewable energy standards without destroying the land that inspires us to live here and protect for future generations.
Deadline for comments to the Bureau of Land Management is June 10, 2010.
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MORE BACKGROUND INFO
The BLM is the lead federal agency for a proposal by SunZia Transmission LLC to construct, operate, and maintain a high-voltage 500 kilovolt (kV) power transmission line (or two parallel lines) across southern New Mexico and Arizona. SunZia's proposed transmission line would be about 460 miles in length and originate at a new substation site in either Socorro or Lincoln County, New Mexico; it would terminate in Pinal County, Arizona. The proposed line - or parallel lines - would be located on federal, state, and private lands. The purpose of the project would be to transport electricity, generated primarily from renewable resources, to western power markets and centers.
The BLM, as the lead federal agency, will oversee the preparation of the EIS that will identify environmental impacts and evaluate alternatives for the project. The final agency decision for the proposed route, which would involve decisions on federal Right-of-Way designations, will only affect public lands administered by the BLM.
Cooperating agencies invited to participate include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the New Mexico State Land Office and the Arizona State Land Department and other state agencies and local governments. Consultation will also occur with tribal governments.
Please submit comments to the BLM regarding this proposal. We provide instructions and guidelines on who to write and what to say below.
Because of the nature of public response during the initial round of
scoping meetings for the SunZia power line proposal, additional
alternative proposed routes are now being considered:
1) In response to comments that the proposed power lines should be routed
along existing major infrastructure corridors in southern Arizona, new
proposed routes were added passing though and near the Interstate 10
corridor in Tucson.
2) In response to comments from U.S. military facilities in New Mexico
complaining about the proximity of the proposed lines to White Sands
Missile Range, new routes are being considered for the northeastern
section of the proposed project (north of Socorro, NM).
Obviously, the new Tucson routes are of great interest to those of us who
are interested in protecting the natural areas of the Aravaipa region and
the San Pedro River Valley. A public meeting was held Thursday, April 29,
in Tucson to present the new Tucson area routes. We now have until June
10, 2010 to provide comments to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). It
is very important that anyone who values our local wilderness areas
encourages the BLM to eliminate the proposed routes that run through the
Aravaipa/San Pedro area, and instead to only consider existing major
infrastructure corridors for new high voltage lines.
This information provided by Friends of the Aravaipa Region (FAR), who support a FAR-sighted vision for the ecosystems of the Lower San Pedro River, the Galiuro Mountains, and the Aravaipa and Santa Teresa Wilderness Areas.
We will try to keep the information in the Peyote Way newsletter as up to date and comprehensive as possible. More resources:
- Cascabel Working Group website
This is an informative website with supplementary background info and excellent suggestions for how to help. The Cascabel Working Group (CWG) is composed of residents and land owners of the Middle San Pedro Valley (roughly from the Tres Alamos Wash Bridge to the San Manuel city limits) who originally joined together to oppose routing an interstate highway through the San Pedro Valley. Currently, the CWG is concerned with a proposal by SunZia to run high voltage transmission lines through the valley. - Join the Cascabel Working Group LISTSERV on Yahoo. Receive updates by email and/or discuss topics with others in the CWG.
- SunZia Southwest Transmission Project website
- View comment submitted by the Cascabel Working Group (.doc file)
- To be added to the mailing list or if you have questions, phone:
BLM Project Manager, Adrian Garcia at (505) 954-2199.
No meetings currently planned. The last two open-house public scoping meetings along the expanded study area were held in the following New Mexico and Arizona communities:
- Socorro, NM / April 27, 2010 / Socorro County Fairgrounds, 1 Fairgrounds Road
- Tucson, AZ / April 29, 2010 / Holiday Inn, 4550 South Palo Verde Road
An excellent summary of the Tucson meeting by Peter Else is provided below.
Your comments can be submitted in several ways.
- You can do this online at http://www.blm.gov/nm/SunZia where you will find the official comment form.
- You can send an email message to Adrian Garcia, BLM Project Manager, at
NMSunZiaProject@blm.gov - You can snail-mail your comments to:
SunZia Southwest Transmission Project
c/o EPG, Inc.
4141 N. 32nd Street, Suite 102
Phoenix, AZ 85018
Make sure these comments arrive at SunZia before June 10, 2010.
A sample letter in the form presented at a recent public meeting is given below. Please
feel free to cut and paste this form to meet your needs:
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SunZia Southwest Transmission Project
COMMENT FORM
U.S. Department of Interior
Bureau of Land Management
New Mexico State Office
SunZia Southwest Transmission Project Environmental Impact Statement
Name:___________________________________________
Address:_________________________________________
City:______________________ State:___________________ Zip:____________
Organization (if applicable);______________________________________________
Add to mailing list? ___Yes ___No
Withhold personal information?
(i.e. do not show your name and address in the public presentation of
comments) ___Yes ___No
COMMENTS:
I understand that the Bureau of Land Management is currently assessing the
environmental impacts of the various alternative routes proposed by the
SunZia Southwest Transmission Project. I am pleased to see that the
SunZia Project is now considering routes that follow the major
infrastructure corridor along Interstate 10. Routes within the developed
or highly disturbed areas near this corridor are the only appropriate
routes for new high voltage lines in the project's Arizona study area.
Building a new major infrastructure corridor in the environmentally
sensitive areas of the Aravaipa and San Pedro regions would cause
permanent damage to our dwindling wilderness areas in southern Arizona.
I encourage the BLM to perform their environmental assessments in an
objective manner, without the influence of corporate interest in
minimizing construction costs. Land lease costs on our public lands are
ridiculously low, and could never compensate for the permanent loss of
wildlife habitat and wildlife migration corridors. If this project does
not have the resources to build its power lines along existing developed
corridors, then this project should not proceed. If this turns out to be
the case, it would be in Arizona's best long-term interest to develop its
own renewable energy resources, while developing the existing distribution
network in a responsible manner.
End of Sample Letter
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ANOTHER SAMPLE LETTER
Aravaipa Property Owners Association, the Cascabel Working Group, and many individuals on this distribution list have contacted me regarding their comment letters to the BLM. I've taken many of their ideas and developed my own letter, as presented here. Please feel free to take whatever you want from this letter as you develop your own, if you have not done so already. ************************************************************
June 7, 2010
Adrian Garcia, Project Manager for the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project
BLM New Mexico State Office
P.O. Box 27115
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87502-0115
Dear Mr. Garcia,
These comments are submitted in response to the addition of alternative routes for the SunZia Transmission Project in the Tucson area. As you know, there was much public pressure during the initial comment periods to seek a route that minimized impact to the ecological and wilderness values of southern Arizona by following the development path already established along Arizona's so-called Sun Corridor. Since attending the scoping meeting a month ago in Tucson, I have been considering the Tucson area route alternatives, and I have come to the conclusion that the SunZia project did not make a good faith effort to research, collaborate with stakeholders, and propose viable options for routes in this region.
First, it is apparent that SunZia did not collaborate effectively with southern Arizona's major electric utility, Tucson Electric Power Company (TEP). There are significant opportunities for coordination between SunZia and TEP that would achieve major goals for both organizations, such as specific TEP infrastructure improvement projects in Tucson and SunZia's stated goal to minimize ecological damage along their path from energy source to destination. Missing these opportunies will constitute negligence of our region's needs. By co-locating lines desired by both organizations and by following a route that minimizes impacts in the city, there are possible routes that were not even proposed by SunZia. One such route has been proposed by the Cascabel Working Group.
Second, several of the Tucson area routes proposed by SunZia contained obvious fatal flaws, such as running lines over a historic neighborhood or adjacent to a National Park. These flaws, coupled with negative statement made about these routes by SunZia reps during the very meeting that introduced these routes to the public, indicates to me that this was a rushed and disingenuous process.
And finally, on the topic of process, I urge BLM to take a much more proactive role in requiring the project proponents to collaborate effectively with the public. This is especially important in a process like this one, where the proponents are mainly representing the financial interests of out-of-state entities. So far, this process has been a consistent trend of unilaterally announcing possible routes through our region, some that would have enormous implications to ecosystems that have been in existence for thousands of years, and then setting comment deadlines that are measured in weeks. This process is shaping up to be much more favorable to a private corporation's desire for exclusive transmission rights than it is to the interests of a region that just happens to be on their transmission route.
The main beneficiaries of power from this project would be the urban growth centers of the Southwest, such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. These centers must ultimately bear the true cost of developing this infrastructure, and if unable to do so, must limit their growth and/or consumption of energy. I am still researching the SunZia proposal, and I have not yet come to a conclusion about how much of their power will actually come from renewable sources. In any case, a route for a project that mainly benefits urban growth centers must follow established corridors that connect these centers. It is not appropriate to bisect the cluster of Wilderness Areas in the Galiuro Mountain region or damage the massive conservations efforts in the San Pedro riparian zone for the sake of corporate or mega-metropolitan interests.
If SunZia wishes to pass through southern Arizona, they need to effectively collaborate with the urban center in our region. If they cannot find a route that does not fragment and significantly damage the dwindling ecological reserves of our region, then they need to look toward another development corridor for their project. Thus, SunZia needs to go back to the drawing board in Tucson, and this time, collaborate effectively with the stakeholders in the process of developing possible routes.
Thank you for considering my comments. I intend to stay involved in this process.
Sincerely,
Peter Else
P.O. Box 576
Mammoth, Arizona 85618
This information and viewpoint is distributed by Friends of the Aravaipa Region (FAR), who support a FAR-sighted vision for the ecosystems of the San Pedro River, the Galiuro Mountains, and the Aravaipa and Santa Teresa Wilderness Areas.
You can also write to the Arizona Corporation Commission and to local representatives (particularly Federal Representatives and County Supervisors). Get more tips on who to write and what to say at the Cascabel Working Group website.
It was difficult to report on the recent Sun Zia scoping meeting in Tucson (April 29, 2010), mainly because of the "open house" format that SunZia and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have adopted to conduct their public meetings related to introducing possible power line routes through the Southwest. This open house format allows the presenters to avoid group dynamics and focused public response during the meeting, thus avoiding those embarrassing moments when tough questions are asked under the close scrutiny of the community. This format, instead, creates sort of a "schmooze-fest" atmosphere, where members of the public walk around, look at posters and talk to individual representatives of SunZia, its hired consulting company called Environmental Planning Group (EPG), and the BLM.
The only exceptions to this format have occurred when a community group has organized a meeting with these project representatives, such as the January meeting organized by the Cascabel Working Group. That meeting appears to have been very successful in impressing SunZia reps they face very strong political opposition for any of the routes that run closely parallel to the San Pedro River. I attended that meeting, and I can tell you that a focused public meeting with presentations from various perspectives leaves much more of a lingering impact than any of the schmoozy scoping meetings. SunZia's open house format results in everyone walking away with a different set of information inputs and very little sense of community response. I don't know whose idea it was to conduct the scoping meetings in this way, but it is a stroke of public relations genius if your goal is to tamp down coordinated public reaction.
At the scoping meetings, I observed that project reps have a tendency to tell individual members of the public what they think the listener might want to hear. Some of the reps were so wishy-washy that one might assume none of the routes had even a remote chance of being selected. Some reps were very diplomatic and stuck to prepared comments. Others, however, had a tendency to let it all hang out when they thought they had a simpatico ear, and these are the ones I want to focus on today.
The first thing I noticed at the recent Tucson meeting is that SunZia's marketing strategy, especially regarding the necessity of the project, had shifted since the initial scoping meetings. Gone were the poster references to the renewable energy requirements for California and Nevada, leaving only references to the renewable energy standards of Arizona and New Mexico. Apparently the bigger regional approach did not poll well in the feedback, particularly since many locals expressed that our state's wilderness areas should not be sacrificed to provide an energy funnel to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, whose renewable energy requirements come due sooner and in greater percentages than those in our state. Remember also that this project is not just about renewable energy transmission. The whole reason why the proposed lines dip into southern Arizona en route to the Casa Grande substation is that SunZia wants to sell power from the Bowie natural gas power station to the major energy markets in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. SunZia and Bowie are promoted, managed, and financed by the same group. Most of the energy on these proposed new lines would be from non-renewable sources for a long time to come.
Despite this recent marketing shift toward emphasizing local benefit, it is important to note that Tucson Electric Power Company has minimal buy-in to the project, specifically because the SunZia project has purposefully avoided the Tucson area in order to dramatically reduce land acquistion and construction costs. Current public land use policy in the United States actually encourages corporate speculators and government entities to site proposed infrastructure projects for urban growth beneficiaries in our rapidly dwindling undesignated wilderness areas. Also note that SunZia's new focus on local benefit is contradicted by the allocation of only 14% of total energy transmission rights from their lines to Arizona electric utilities (as requested in their petition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission).
Since I had been to several SunZia meetings already, many of the reps already knew who I was and where my interests lay. So, I really could not get the straight scoop on how the Aravaipa route fared in their current thinking. However, I heard a whole lot of spin about how new Tucson routes were too expensive, too impractical, and caused too much "visual impact". Visual impact, by the way, is evaluated in large part by how many people there are in the immediate vicinity of a power line. One of the EPG consultants placed as much emphasis on visual impact to humans as he did on environmental impact to all the species and ecosystems that support our human population. He called this approach "balancing interests". All in all, it was a discouraging evening for me, and I had little to report in my last email. The main thing I wanted to accomplish with that email was to let folks know about the new deadline for comments and provide a sample letter.
However, this all changed when I read the revealing accounts of three members of the Cascabel Working Group (CWG). These reporters have had much more contact with the project promoters and BLM during the past several months than I have. They gathered and synthesized a much more comprehensive report. These are some highlights that are of particular importance to the Aravaipa region. My notes of clarification are in brackets, like this [ note ], and those of the reporters are in parentheses, like this ( note ). Remember that some of these statements reflect corporate spin, but most of them reflect current thinking.
COMMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO TOM WRAY,
Project Manager for the SunZia Transmission Project:
- The Aravaipa route is still SunZia's preferred route due to the shorter distance to Pinal County.
- The Sulphur Springs Valley/Aravaipa route has the least opposition and the least apparent biological impact.
- The riparian area along the San Pedro makes the San Pedro route more biologically sensitive than the Aravaipa route. Also, all of the people living along the river make the social impact of a San Pedro route much greater.
- The route on the east side of the Pinaleno Mountains is very strongly opposed by Safford residents. The least resistance is in the Sulphur Springs Valley.
- The Defense Department strongly opposes any routes in the Tucson Basin and the San Pedro Valley because of potential interference with flight training missions.
- Lines over the Galiuro Mountains at Aravaipa and the towers to hold them would likely be installed by helicopter for up to five miles. Smaller vehicles could be used for servicing by ground.
- These lines cannot be routed along Tucson streets. Sufficient right-of-way cannot be acquired, and sufficient distance from inhabited buildings cannot be maintained.
COMMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO EPG CONSULTANTS:
- The Aravaipa route has the least social and biological impact, although it would open an entirely new corridor.
- This project is similar to the Devers 1 line (Palo Verde generating station to Palm Springs). The line was absolutely needed, and opposition to any route was fierce [Palo Verde Nuclear Plant supplies a significant amount of power to Los Angeles] . The Secretary of the Interior finally had to make the decision. The Kofa National Wildlife Refuge was sacrificed in this case to complete the project.
- The proposed Pantano Wash-Rillito River route through Tucson would make the most sense biologically (Routes in the river beds of the Santa Cruz and the Pantano/Rillito would affect biological resources the least, other than routing the project in the median of the interstate, which is legally prohibited).
- Every inch of every route (in Arizona) is opposed by someone. This project is going to happen, however. It's a done deal, somewhere.
COMMENTS ATTRIBUTED TO ED BECK,
Line Siting Supervisor for Tucson Electric Power Company (TEP):
- TEP is interested in working with SunZia on a Tucson Area route. If TEP and SunZia worked together, TEP would probably buy a larger share in the project (they're currently at only 1%).
- If the SunZia Project could be routed in the Santa Cruz River Corridor where TEP has its 138-kV line, the SunZia lines could (or would) replace the 138-kV line. TEP would work with SunZia to coordinate this.
- If the SunZia's 500-kV lines followed the Winchester to Vail route, this would eliminate the need to build the two 345-kV lines that TEP has planned.
COMMENT ATTRIBUTED TO A SUNZIA ENGINEER:
- Using single steel poles through Tucson could significantly narrow the right-of-way needed, as compared to lattice towers, but, he said, single steel poles require 7-8 poles per mile rather than 4-5 for lattice towers, making them a good bit more expensive.
Perhaps the most misleading statement made by the SunZia Transmission Project Manager at the January 13th outreach meeting at the Cascabel Community Center was that "not one red cent" would be taken from the taxpayers to build the proposed new high-voltage electrical corridor. This statement came following one of the many probing questions made by a full house of attendees. The Power Point presentation made by the SunZia rep and SunZia's publications clearly indicate that route selection for their proposed transmission lines has followed the stategy of seeking access to public lands, in order to exploit the fact that the true cost of acquiring these lands is heavily subsidized by taxpayers via economic loopholes for utility infrastructure in our public land use policies. Just to give you an idea of the level of taxpayer support, a similar project proposal on BLM land in southern California would pay the ridiculously low fee of $14.60 per linear mile of utility corridor per year, according to Michael Bennett, lead BLM representative for the L.A. Water and Power project carrying power from the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles. Can you imagine leasing a mile-long strip of land for that price on the open market?
SunZia started their project proposal by drawing a "Study Area" on maps, taking care to avoid the very urban areas that would benefit from this project in order to significantly reduce the cost of land acquisition. Like the I-10 Bypass Proposal, they also avoided Indian Reservations, because of those pesky autonomy factors. The shape of the resulting "Study Area" resembles the "S" profile of the Loch Ness Monster, with its head in the proposed wind generation zone of central New Mexico and its tail at the Eloy electrical substation, which connects to the big electical consumption markets in Phoenix, Tucson, southern California, and Las Vegas. They justified the southern dip of this route by highlighting proposed solar thermal resources in southern New Mexico. The SunZia rep explained why these lines would not be used exclusively for renewable energy.
By defining the "Study Area" in this way, project leaders were apparently hoping to avoid consideration of a path near Tucson. However, Congressional Representative Raul Grijalva recently wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Interior requesting consideration of this route, in order to avoid new infrastructure development in the San Pedro area. Although she sent a Tucson staffer to last night's meeting, Representative Gabrielle Giffords has been less vigorous in her opposition to tearing up the San Pedro region for the benefit of the big western electrical markets. Since power rates to consumers are currently regulated at levels that do not reflect actual costs to the environment, the probability of a Tucson route prevailing is slim. The two other alternatives being considered include one skirting the southern boundaries of the Aravaipa and Santa Teresa Wilderness Areas and one passing through the middle San Pedro area.
Most of you already understand why infrastructure development in our rapidly dwindling wild lands is a huge step toward habitat destruction and the cancerous growth of urban sprawl, so I need not repeat those arguments. I suspect that the compelling statements made at the Sun Zia outreach meeting by Cascabel Working Group, The Nature Conservancy, the Tucson Audobon Society, and the Center for Desert Archaeology were mostly appreciated by attendees rather than the SunZia Project leaders. However, these arguments will be used to fire up conservationists as they attempt to either stop this project or route it along the existing I-10 Corridor. The real juice at the meeting last night came when people touched on why some routes were kept while others were eliminated from consideration, and why the Bureau of Land Management seemed to be proceeding as if selection of one of the current proposed routes through public lands was a foregone conclusion. If the western energy markets cannot afford the true cost of delivering electricity to the concentrated demand centers without more destruction of the environment, then these centers should look toward reducing demand or developing local renewable sources. If we don't stand up for protecting the environment, then this project will do just what electrons do in the national power grid, follow the path of least resistance.
An open house format meeting was held June 23rd at the Oracle Community Center. Environmenal consultants, a BLM representative, and project engineers/administrators were available for one-on-one consultation with the public.
The SunZia project proposes to erect two parallel 500,000 volt transmission lines running between a power substation near Eloy, Arizona and another substation located near Socorro, New Mexico. The project leaders said that these lines are needed to carry "new" power from renewable sources in New Mexico and Arizona to western power markets. The renewable power sources highlighted on project maps mainly included wind generators in central New Mexico and solar thermal generators in southern Arizona and New Mexico. These lines would also have the capability to transport non-renewable sources of electricity.
The markets for the renewable sources of energy are being driven by Renewable Energy Standards that currently vary from state to state in the Southwest. The largest market appears to be in California, where 33% of that state's energy needs must be generated from renewable sources by the year 2020. In Arizona, the mandated target for renewable energy sources is only 15%, and the deadline is the year 2025. The proposed lines are currently scheduled for construction and operation in 2013.
Primarily because of these new Renewable Energy Standards, SunZia project administrators tend to portray the project as environmentally friendly. One comment quoted by the Arizona Daily Star from SunZia Project Manager Adrian Garcia was, "What we're trying to do is develop a site that has the least amount of impact". Wouldn't you know that the first SunZia person I ran into at the Oracle meeting was Adrian Garcia. I asked him, "If the idea is to minimize impact, why would your preferred route run right through an area that has never had any infrastructure corridor, and why would you choose a route that the recent I-10 Bypass Study determined had more miles running through or within one mile of environmentally sensitive areas than any other route considered?" His reply was rapid and somewhat scattered, mentioning "other impacts that need to be considered" and "alternative routes that are still on the table".
So, what are the alternative routes through our region? Four portions of the route are repeats of the I-10 Bypass Study, and project leaders admit that once a route goes on anybody's planning map, it tends to get picked up by subsequent project proposals. These four routes include the one that threads the needle between the Aravaipa and Galiuro Wilderness Areas, the route that runs just south of the Santa Teresa Wilderness Area toward Safford, the route that runs south from the headwaters of Aravaipa Creek down though the Sulphur Springs Valley, and the route through the middle San Pedro Valley.
The towers for these lines would range up to 125 to 175 feet in height, in order to maintain the lines at the minimum safety elevation above the ground. Distance between towers would range between 800 and 2000 feet, with the typical distance being 1300 to 1500 feet. Project engineers told me that typically the easement for these lines would be about 200 feet wide, and this includes a no-build zone beneath the power lines for safety purposes. They said that two types of roads would be required, temporary construction access roads and a permanent service road. In remote areas, the service road could be simply a dirt road, but it would require a compacted surface, such as AB mix or decomposed granite in areas subject to erosion. No mention was made of excluding the service road from public use, and one consultant thought that it would be difficult to limit public access to a new road, since the lines would primarily be on public lands.
I asked almost everyone associated with the project, "How did this Aravaipa portion end up being shown as the preferred route?" The engineers basically said, "Because it's the shortest and cheapest", and one mentioned political cost as well as financial costs. The environmental consultants either said "I don't know" or "It was shown that way when I was hired". One environmental consultant said that the Bureau of Land Management mainly sees the land they oversee as "resources" for human civilization, and they try to "balance" the use of these resources in a multi-purpose way. One consultant also used that harmonious word, balance, when she spoke of balancing environmental impacts with visual impacts for humans in populated or recreational areas.
Well, you can always make more roads and more power lines and you can do that in a couple of years. But, it takes hundreds of thousands of years to develop wilderness areas. So, don't mess with these areas, especially when there are other alternatives that may cost a few more bucks and a few more political chits in the short term, but will preserve something far more irreplaceable and valuable in the long term. Our wilderness areas and wildlife corridors are disappearing, because politicians see these areas as easy pickings for any new project that comes down the pike. Since there are fewer humans along these routes, there tends to be less of the NIMBY phenomenon, and less of the headaches associated with eminent domain.
Whether you call it the natural world or creation, we should not continue to systematically send out development tentacles into our dwindling wildlife areas, destroying more and more of the web of life on Earth, even as we attempt to be more "green".
I think most of us favor replacing electricity from fossil fuel plants with electricity from renewable sources, so long as the people in the large western energy markets such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and Albuquerque are also subject to rigorous energy conservation standards.
So, I favor choosing a route that already has an existing access road, and preferably a route that already has an existing infrastructure corridor. There are such routes listed among the alternatives, and if the study area needs to be widenened to include additional alternatives, then so be it.
Feel free to voice your own opinions, and please take the time to make your formal comments by the deadline. Make your comments and reasons for objections as specific as possible.
Please spread the word!
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