By PETER DAY
Editor
A small but highly interested number of Lucerne Valley residents attended last Thursday’s open house hosted by Southern California Edison at the Senior Center.
Dozens of tasty-looking cookies and other refreshments were untouched, however, as the attendees were more concerned about digesting how SCE’s Coolwater-Lugo Transmission Project may affect them.
The project adds high capacity transmission lines to handle the increased demand due to population growth and new renewable energy projects. The wind and solar projects will help power homes and businesses throughout Southern California.
SCE’s Lucerne Valley open house was the final of several public outreach events in the region for this stage of the project.
“It is a very public process,” said Nancy Jackson, SCE public affairs region manager. “We want to be transparent.”
For some, however, the transparency didn’t necessarily equate into happy news.
Lucerne Valley resident Brad Hicks expected the project’s alternate route to go near his property. But when Hicks was shown an image of the route by an SCE employee, it was closer than he had thought.
“I was going to build a home there,” Hicks said. “Now I don’t think so. This is actually worse than I thought.”
Longtime resident Linda Gommel, who serves on the Lucerne Valley Economic Development Association, said SCE is just doing its job and understands the need to put the transmission lines somewhere. However, Gommel believes the large scale renewable energy projects, which create the need for the extensive project, do not serve the interests of the region and California in general.
Other locals attending the SCE event included LVEDA president Chuck Bell and Richard Selby, a member of LVEDA and former president of the Lucerne Valley Municipal Advisory Council.
The MAC was disbanded shortly after James Ramos took office as supervisor of the county’s Third District late last year. County Board of Supervisors recently voted to create a new MAC consisting of Lucerne Valley and Johnson Valley.
The Coolwater-Lugo Transmission Project, which was formerly known as South of Kramer, will expand transmission capacity in the Lucerne Valley and Kramer Junction areas.
The project will include the construction of approximately 65 to 75 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines from SCE’s Coolwater Substation in Daggett toward SCE’s future Jasper Substation in Lucerne Valley. The line will terminate at SCE’s Lugo Substation in Hesperia.
Additionally, SCE will create a new Desert View Substation southeast of Apple Valley.
Construction is set to begin in 2016 with the project expected to be in service by 2018.
For more information, call SCE at 866-785-7057.