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The Save the Foothills Coalition is a growing group of 150 citizens and land owners who began in September 2007 to learn that their lives and property are being threatened by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. PG&E sent out notices by mail to approximately 2500 people owning property along several possible routes of a proposed project called The Central California Clean Energy Transmission Project, or C3ETP, a 500 kilovolt project, whose purpose is to transmit electrical energy from the Midway Substation near Bakersfield to a proposed 500 kV substation called the E2 in the foothills of eastern Fresno County. The Project purports to be "clean," as in coming from renewable sources such as wind and solar; however, this line can transmit electricity from any source feeding into the huge Midway Substation. Moreover, the project is hardly green since building it will require the burning of a great deal of fossil fuels and the destruction of thousands of acres of the central oak woodland ecosystem. Our members have joined together in the Save the Foothills Coalition for many reasons. We come from many backgrounds. We represent all parts of the political spectrum. We share one thing in common: We all oppose routing C3ETP through the Sierra foothills. Some of us oppose the project simply because it threatens our homes and property values. Others feel it is a threat to our health because of electromagnetic fields or radiation. Still others oppose it because we feel the foothills must be protected from the kind of economic expansionism and development the project represents. We believe this sensitive and beautiful ecosystem should be protected. All of us strongly oppose C3ETP because in some way it threatens our quality of life. Many of us believe PG&E has better alternative routes that will be less destructive to people and land. Others believe PG&E should rethink the Big Project mentality it has followed since the company's inception early in the last century. We believe that modern technology now makes it possible to turn away from the highly centralized grid system with its huge generators, hundreds of miles long transmission lines, and giant substations to a decentralized system based on home-grown energy and on-site generation, in which homes and businesses produce their own electricity using new technologies like solar and hydrogen fuel cells. We all believe that a project that threatens and makes miserable the lives of tens of thousands of people--for it threatens not only the recipients of the 2500 notifications, but also their families and the families of those who own property bordering theirs--should very simply not be an option. While PG&E goes through the slow and laborious process of getting this project or some variant of it approved, the lives of tens of thousands of people hang in the balance. Projects like this have real and noticeable effects on people's mental and physical health. It is time for the utilities to find a new way. | ||
