Chino Hills Gets Power Line Buried

We’ve just been informed by Hope For The Hills that they have won their long battle to get Southern California Edison to bury part of a 500 kilovolt high voltage power line through Chino Hills.

On July 11, 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ruled 3-2 in favour of Southern California Edison burying 3.5 miles of its Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project 500kV line and removing 19 200-foot-tall towers they had already erected for an overhead line.

This is great news for the Chino Hills community because they have been fighting this battle for over 6 years. The transmission company had wanted to run an overhead line right next to people’s homes, schools and churches, and had already erected monopole towers for the new lines.

Hope For The Hills and Chino Hills City Council had argued the right-of-way through Chino Hills was too narrow for an overhead high voltage line, and that an overhead line would have negative health, safety, property value and visual impacts. Well… the CPUC agreed with these arguments, and has ordered the transmission company to bury the line (an XLPE cable) for 3.5 miles.

Congratulations to Hope For The Hills and Chino City Council for representing the many concerns of residents who would have been negatively impacted by an overhead line and for continuing the fight for so many years. Their story is an inspiration to the thousands of other communities that are opposed to the building of new overhead high voltage power lines through their communities. If the battle to bury high voltage power lines can be won in southern California, it can certainly be won elsewhere, where governments and electricity regulators appropriately consider the public interest.

For earlier coverage by RETA of the Chino Hills power line battle, see this link.

~ by RETA on July 22, 2013.