Why we built We Save California

SDG&E's Golden Pacific Powerlink is a proposed 500-kilovolt transmission line running from the Imperial Valley Substation to the San Diego–Orange County line, near the decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Public reporting puts it at roughly 145 miles, on towers 150 to 200 feet tall, at a cost of somewhere between $1.6 and $2.3 billion, and likely more — recovered from ratepayers.

It crosses a state park, backcountry San Diego County, and the Temecula Valley. And it has produced something unusual: a string of towns, conservation groups and planning bodies that had never worked together, all objecting to the same line for overlapping reasons.

The problem with fighting alone

Each community's objection is real, and each is easy to file away as a local complaint. A park association worried about wilderness. A town worried about wildfire. A valley worried about its views and its wells. Taken one at a time, these are the ordinary friction of building infrastructure.

Taken together, they are something else: a record, spanning four counties, that the same route creates the same category of harm everywhere it goes.

This has worked before

In 2010, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power walked away from Green Path North — a 500 kV line routed through the Morongo Basin for the benefit of Los Angeles. No court stopped it. No regulator denied it.

What stopped it was the California Desert Coalition: residents, businesses, conservation groups and local officials who made the project politically and practically unworkable. LADWP defunded the line and withdrew its federal right-of-way applications.

A line crossing communities for someone else's benefit, beaten by the people it would have crossed. That is the template, and it is why this site exists.

What happens next

SDG&E released its proposed route in April 2026 and is accepting stakeholder feedback through early November 2026. A formal application to the California Public Utilities Commission is expected afterward.

The environmental review and the CPUC proceeding are where this project will actually be decided — which means the record being built right now is the one that will count later.

If your organization is fighting this line, get in touch. There is room on this page for you.