We the residents of the
Sierra Nevada foothills stand together to save the foothills from any
type of degradation from any source. We care about nature's flora and
fauna as well as our families' health and safety, the value of our homes
and property and the beauty of the foothills in which we are privileged
to live.
About Save the Foothills
Coalition:
The Save the Foothills Coalition
began to form in January 2008 to oppose the building of PG&E's
proposed Central California Clean Energy Transmission Project, or C3ETP,
anywhere in the Sierra Nevada Foothills.
C3ETP
will be built through 100 miles of the Sierra foothills, through Kern
County and Tulare County, ending at a 40-50 acre substation in eastern
Fresno County at one of three possible alternate sites. One site for
the substation, undeveloped Watts Valley, is one of the most scenic
foothill valleys in California. The Humphreys Station site on Pittman
Hill Road is more developed and populated and will disrupt many home
owners. The Blasingame site northeast of Academy, California will
devastate a scenic and undeveloped area where the San Joaquin Valley
meets the Sierra foothills.
Please email the link
to this site to your friends and click on the links below to help fight
C3ETP.
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.
To Property Owners Affected by C3ETP:
If
you are a property owner on the C3ETP route or own property adjacent to
the route, it is in your interest to contact us.
If the California Public Utilities Commission approves a route for
C3ETP through your property and issues a CPCN (Certificate of Public
Convenience and Necessity), PG&E will then have the right to take
your property for this use.
At that point there is
little property owners can do except fight an eminent domain
case in court for more money. Those with property adjacent to the route
but not on it may suffer even worse consequences. They may not even be
able to collect damages because of loss of real estate value. In any
case, they would have to sue PG&E to collect such damages.
The only effective way to fight PG&E is as a
group. Therefore, again, it is in your interest to contact
Save the Foothills Coalition. At this stage there
is no cost. All donations to our collective cause are voluntary. At
some point we may determine that we need to amass a warchest to take
legal action. At that point, if you decide to leave the coalition, you
may of course do so, with no hard feelings on our part.
Again, it is in your interest as a landowner on or
adjacent to the route of C3ETP to contact us. You have
nothing to lose by joining us. Joining Save the Foothills will give you
a fighting chance to save your property from the C3ETP invasion.
It is also obviously in your interest to bring your
neighboring property owners into this coalition. So please send or give
them our contact information. The greater our numbers, the better our
chance of preventing PG&E from hurting the foothills and taking our
land and negatively affecting our property values.
All
we need is your name, address, phone number, email, and the general
location of your property. Just use the email address at the bottom of
this page. Or call 559-855-6376, 559-322-1442, 559-356-1964, or
559-332-1964. We would like to talk with you, and your information will
be kept strictly confidential.
To People Whose
Property is Not On or Adjacent to the Route of C3ETP:
Save the Foothills Coalition has many members whose
property is not affected by C3ETP. Many join and support us because
they love the natural surroundings of the Sierra foothills and do not
want to see them degraded by yet another destructive project. Many
others join because they oppose eminent domain. Whatever your reason
for wanting to support us and giving your name and information to our
cause, we welcome your support and thank you for it.
