The Pacific Palisades Community Council voted unanimously last Thursday against a proposed electrical route that would result in 63 steel poles running through Topanga State Park. ‘You are going to deface the park,’ Council member Gil Dembo told a representative of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. LADWP has plans to upgrade and replace the 31-mile Sylmar Ground Return System, which travels overhead and underground between Sylmar (north of San Fernando) and the Pacific Ocean (traveling under water for about a mile past Gladstone’s restaurant at Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway). The department is considering three possible routes, all following the same overhead route from where the line originates in Sylmar to the intersection of Mulholland Drive and Sullivan Fire Road. Then, the route could travel overhead through Topanga State Park and underground down Palisades Drive or it could travel overhead along Kenter Canyon to the terminal tower located near Sunset and Homewood Road and transition underground either along San Vicente Boulevard or Sunset. The ocean-based portion will remain the same. ‘If you take [the San Vicente or Sunset routes], it will take a few months to construct, and then it’s underground and forgotten,’ Dembo said, adding that with the Topanga route, ‘for 100 years or more, we will have those poles in our park.’ Juan Diaz-Carreras, the lead environmental scientist and consultant to LADWP, explained that there are already a series of 210 wooden poles in the park that carry power transmission. If LADWP chooses the Topanga route, the wooden poles would be removed and replaced with 63 taller poles. Diaz-Carreras could not specify where each pole would be located in the park because first a biological and archeological assessment report must be completed. LADWP recently released an initial study for the project (available on its Web site: www.laLADWP.com/laLADWP/cms/laLADWP013671.pdf), and the public has until Monday, October 25 to submit comments. The draft environmental impact report (EIR), which will closely examine the potential impacts of all three routes, will be released in spring 2011. At that point, the public will have 45 days to provide feedback. The final EIR will then be released that summer and submitted to the Board of Water and Power Commissioners for approval. Construction is scheduled to begin in summer 2012 and last until fall 2014. The Sylmar Ground Return System is part of the Pacific Direct Current Intertie (PDCI), which carries power between the Pacific Northwest and the Los Angeles area. PDCI is owned by LADWP, Bonneville Power Administration, Southern California Edison and the cities of Glendale, Pasadena and Burbank. LADWP operates the southern portion of the system. The ground system serves as a back up to the PDCI, providing power when the line is experiencing problems. The goal of the project is to increase reliability of the ground system, which has not been upgraded since 1970. At this point in the process, Diaz-Carreras could not say how much the entire project would cost. Jessyca Avalos, field deputy for L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, said that the councilman has not taken a position on the route because he wants to hear from his constituents first. Before voting on whether to support the San Vicente or Sunset routes, the Council decided to wait for the release of the draft EIR, which will provide more details on the proposed routes, including full traffic studies.
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