CLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST FOUNDATION OBJECTS TO APPROVAL OF POWER LINE UPGRADES IN EAST COUNTY FOREST AND WILDERNESS AREAS

East County News Service

“Eagles need forests, not electricity.” – Duncan McFetridge, Cleveland National Forest Foundation co-chair and woodcarver who created this eagle statue.

September 6, 2015 (San Diego’s East County) --The Cleveland National Forest Foundation (CNFF) has issued a written objection to a draft Record of Decision (ROD) issued by Cleveland National Forest Supervisor Will Metz. That decision permits SDG&E to replace electrical lines and poles as well as upgrade of electrical service on lands within and adjacent to Cleveland National Forest.

The Decision lists two reasons for the project: continuing SDG&E’s electrical service and reducing fire risks in the Forest.

SDG&E , in a fact sheet it prepared on this project and related transmission upgrades in the forest, states that this will improve “safety and reliability by replacing the existing electric infrastructure that currently serves the USFS, emergency service facilities, campgrounds, homes, businesses and other customers within the CNF and surrounding areas. The proposed projects include replacement of several existing 12-kilovolt (kV) and 69-kV electric facilities spread throughout an approximately 880-square-mile area in eastern San Diego County. The existing electric lines also extend outside of CNF boundaries.” 

The weatherized steel poles will resemble wood poles, some also equipped with weather stations.

But the CNFF says that fire hardening and continuing electrical service are “meaningless” reasons  compared to the Forest Service’s mission to “sustain the health, diversity and productivity” of the nation’s forests and grasslands for future generations. CNFF contends the real dangers facing the forest are urban development inside its boundaries and urban pressure from outside.  In addition, the CNFF states, “the threat of drought and climate change places ever increasing burdens on the forest and elevates the importance of protecting California’s dwindling wilderness resources.”

CNFF criticizes what it calls a “cavalier disregard of the forest and wilderness setting” by the Forest Service, since the project would allow a four-fold increase in power transmission which increases the “technical/industrial dangers to the forest.” 

Metz recently announced that the Forest now has new areas managed as wilderness, the highest level of protection the Forest Service can provide here in San Diego’s East County.  But the CNFF statement notes that the ROD does not address how this critical nature of wilderness preservation aligns with a rationale to increase electrical service in the forest, where a unique system of meadows which constitute the “biological heart” of the forest are privately owned and threatened by development.   CNFF asks whether the Forest Service’s mission is to “provide energy for urban uses or to serve the people by protecting the land?”  In 1993, the public voted to pass the Forest Conservation Initiative which restricted urban development on private inholdings within the federal forest over the next 20 years.

The Decision cites the importance of fire-hardening power poles by converting them from wood to steel, a step that could help prevent major conflagrations.  But CNFF states, “If forest officials were truly concerned about the danger of fire to forest habitat they would give serious consideration to prohibiting hunting since two of the greatest fires in California history, along with many others, were started by hunters—the Cedar fire and the Rim Fire.”

The project’s four-fold increase in electrical would be poised to supply new growth in and around the forest. CNFF observes, “The forest can survive fire but can never recover from urban development.”  The project area is a wilderness with fewer than 5,000 people concentrated mainly in rural villages such as Pine Valley, Guatay and Descanso.  “Why, to serve so few customers, should SDG&E regional rate payers subsidize this massive half billion dollar invasion into the forest when a majority of those same ratepayers voted to protect the forest when they passed the Forest Conservation Initiative?” CNFF asks.

The power transmission project would entail “intrusion of a massive armada of equipment and personnel into the forest and wilderness areas.”  A similar fire-hardening of poles in a Descanso neighborhood within the forest lasted over a month and involved drilling, jackhammers, generators, heavy equipments, cranes and trucks, the CNFF complaint states.

SDG&E’s statement maintains that the utility “understands its unique environmental role. This is why we’re dedicated to being a responsible steward of the earth’s natural resources.”  

CNFF asks the Forest Service to reconsider its decision and calls for alternatives to be developed, such as a microgrid solution similar to one n Borrego Springs that provides an off-grid solution to meet power needs.  CNFF contends this could cost less while better preserving the forest.

Alarmingly, the CNFF letter concludes, “What is missing in all these project details and from the project descriptions is the condition of the forest itself. It is in decline.  The umbrella species such as deer and mountain lion are disappearing. Over time the land area of the forest has diminished from 2 million acres to 600,000 acres that are now islandized in three counties. Our section of the Cleveland National Forest is in a region that is considered to be the endangered species capital of the nation.  San Diego County shelters approximately 200 imperiled plants and animals—more than in any other county in the nation.”

If steps are not taken to protect our federal forest, CNFF warns, many of these species could soon go the way of the grizzly bear, pronghorn, long-eared kit fox and California Condor, all now extinct in our region.   CNFF concludes that “what we have left of our forest is beyond precious and it is our duty to protect it.”