TANC power line terminated

TANC commissioners this morning unanimously approved unplugging planning for a proposed 600-mile long power line.

The decision cheered local property owners who have been fighting the power line since they learned late this winter the Transmission Agency of Northern California was going to consider running the transmission corridor through or near their land.

TANC general manager Jim Beck had recommended that the consortium of municipal utilities end planning for the line. That planning had started in October 2005.

TANC officials have said Northern California needs more transmission to tap renewable energy that may one day be developed in the Lassen County area, improve power grid reliability and reduce transmission costs. TANC members, including Redding, must get 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, under current legislation.

The decisions by Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Modesto Irrigation District and Turlock Irrigation District to pull out of planning has made it financially impossible for that planning to continue, Beck said.

Over one dozen STOPTAC activists listened to the decision from the Enterprise Conference Room at Redding City Hall. Shasta County Supervisor Les Baugh and Redding City Council member Dick Dickerson also attended.

About a dozen other members from the public attended the teleconference in Sacramento and Lodi.

Baugh and all the STOPTANC activists asked the commission to terminate the power line, end the environmental review process, take the project off the federal register and remove the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) from the planning process.

The conference room erupted in cheers when TANC commissioners participating in the transmission line voted by roll call to end the project that has galvanized opposition from property owners in the proposed path.

Redding Electric Utility was by far the smallest of the five participants in the power line, which would have run from Lassen County to Silicon Valley with a spur into the Sierra Nevada foothills north of Yosemite.

TANC officials were unsure whether WAPA, a Denver-based federal agency that wholesales hydroelectric power throughout the west, will continue planning for a power line in Northern California. That uncertainty left some STOPTANC activists uneasy.

Dennis W. De Cuir, attorney for TANC, said property owners in the proposed power line path can rest assured that TANC will no longer continue environmental studies for the project and has no plans to resume. But, he said, he could not speak for WAPA.

WAPA officials were not immediately available for comment this morning.