There is a project moving quietly through Sacramento that will change rural North County forever, and most of the people who will live with it have never heard its name.

It is called the Golden Pacific Powerlink.

A 145-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line. Steel lattice towers up to 200 feet tall, the height of a 20-story building. A right-of-way hundreds of feet wide. A price tag of $2.3 billion, with San Diego County ratepayers on the hook for roughly 9 percent of it. Scheduled to go live in 2032.

The preliminary route runs from the Imperial Valley Substation, cuts straight through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and heads north along State Route 79 through Warner Springs, Lake Henshaw, Palomar Mountain, Pala, Pauma, Rincon, and Valley Center on its way to Temecula.

That is our backyard. That is our backcountry. That is our state park.

Here is what bothers me most.

This is a Sacramento decision. The California Independent System Operator approved it in 2023. The California Public Utilities Commission has the final say on the route. The CPUC is not required to listen to the County. It is not required to listen to the people of Borrego Springs, Valley Center, Pauma Valley, or Warner Springs.

The communities that take the impact have no vote in the decision.

That is not how this is supposed to work.

Think about what is on the table. Anza-Borrego is the largest state park in California. Almost 650,000 acres. Dark skies you cannot find on the coast anymore. Wildflower superblooms. Endangered species. Cultural sites that tribal nations have protected for generations.

There is one transmission line in the park today, a small 69-kilovolt line on wooden poles built before the park existed. It would not be legal to build under modern law. Now the state wants to drop 200-foot steel towers across that same wilderness.

In Valley Center, in Pauma, in Rincon, in Warner Springs, those towers would loom over family homes, working ranches, vineyards, and tribal land. Property values take the hit. Views are gone. The character of these communities, the very thing that drew people here, gets traded away for a power line that is just passing through to somewhere else.

Why this route? Because it is the cheapest one. Routing around Anza-Borrego, going north of Temecula, or putting segments underground would add hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe more than a billion. Sacramento looked at the map and decided our park and our communities were the discount option.

And here is the part that should make every Californian angry.

We import nearly 30 percent of our electricity from out of state. We shut down San Onofre. We block new generation inside our own borders. Then we turn around and build 145-mile lines to haul power across the desert from plants in Arizona and Nevada.

That is not an energy strategy. That is a policy failure 30 years in the making, and rural North County is being handed the bill.

If we generated power where people actually live, we would not have to scar a state park to keep the lights on.

So I am going to fight this.

My office will be at every public meeting. We will file formal comments at every stage. We will push for any route that spares Anza-Borrego and protects the rural communities of District 5. And we will keep saying the simple thing out loud: the people who live with these decisions deserve a real voice in making them.

The timeline matters, because public input counts most early. In-person open houses are coming later this year. The formal CPUC application is expected in the fall or winter of 2026. SDG&E is accepting stakeholder feedback through early November. When the application is filed, my office will share exactly how to get your comments on the record where they count.

This is going to be a long fight. I need North County in it.

If you want to weigh in or ask a question, reach my office at (619) 531-5555 or Jim.Desmond@sdcounty.ca.gov.

Our backcountry is worth defending. Let’s defend it.

Jim Desmond is a member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors. He represents the 5th District, which includes Escondido, Valley Center, Pauma Valley, Palomar Mountain and much of the Backcountry.

 

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