June 18, 2013, Protect Our Communities Foundation (POC) and Backcountry Against Dumps (BAD)
San Diego County Supervisors are being sued over their May 15th approval of the technically and legally flawed Wind Energy Ordinance & Plan Amendment—that benefits wealthy industrial wind and solar developers, San Diego Gas & Electric, Sempra, and absentee land-owners at the expense of rural east county residents and valued resources – when viable point of use alternatives in the already built environment are available (roof top solar, combined heat & power, fuel cells, and more)
The Boulevard Community Plan, approved by the Supervisors in August 2011 with the General Plan Update, was gutted and noise waivers granted to Tule Wind – opening the doors for conversion of wildfire-prone rural neighborhoods and iconic landscapes into industrial wind, solar, and transmission corridor sacrifice zones and noisy electrical firetraps. Most San Diegans have no clue of what is planned.
Above: View from Boulevard’s Tierra Del Sol Road of the Sierra Juarez mountain range looking across Jewel Valley and Jacumba Valley – where real people and diverse wildlife now reside. Wind turbines close to 500 feet tall have been proposed by Enel Green Power on the Tierra Del Sol ridgeline in the foreground and on the distant Sierra Juarez ridgeline in Northern Baja by SDG&E’s parent Sempra. The two photos, below, of Soitec Solar’s experimental Concentrator PV unit at UCSD, show just one of the close to 7,300 glaring Soitec CPV modules planned to cover approximately 1,500 acres (2.3 square miles) of Boulevard’s carbon sequestering ranchland and chaparral habitat – next to homes and recreation areas. The square footage of Soitec’s four Boulevard projects is equal to about 48 Walmart Supercenters.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) complaint was filed last week by Stephan C. Volker of Volker Law on behalf of two rural East County grassroots non-profit groups. It challenges the San Diego County Board of Supervisors May 15th 4-1 vote approving the Wind Energy Ordinance and Plan Amendment that sacrifices predominantly low-income rural communities and valued resources for unreliable, intermittent, and expensive industrial-scale wind and solar projects. These rural projects also require billions of dollars for new fire-sparking webs of electrical transmission lines and massive new substations—all in underserved areas zoned by Cal Fire as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones that are ripe for catastrophic firestorms—and all heavily subsidized by mostly unwilling tax and ratepayers (Fire hazard map: http://frap.cdf.ca.gov/webdata/maps/san_diego/fhszs_map.37.pdf).
The Wind Ordinance lawsuit is based on the following issues:
The Final EIR recognized at least 24 significant and unavoidable adverse impacts (http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/pds/advance/BOSMay8POD10-007.html):
Iberdrola, Spanish utility developer of Tule Wind in Boulevard’s McCain Valley, major Gamesa turbine stakeholder and recipient of over $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies, was granted an unjustified and dangerous noise waiver by claiming there will be no unmitigable adverse impacts to residents, wildlife, or public recreation and conservation areas—in direct contradiction to real world impacts:
Quotes from Donna Tisdale:
CONTACT: DONNA TISDALE 619-766-4170; tisdale.donna@gmail.com
POC Secretary, BAD President, and Chair of Boulevard Planning Group
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/06/25/groups-sue-san-diego-county/