Coyote Valley, a rural expanse of farmland and scenic open space between San Jose and Morgan Hill, has been the center of development battles for decades. Apple proposed building its world headquarters there in the 1980s. Cisco had similar plans in the 1990s.
Now, even though environmental groups and taxpayers have spent $120 million to preserve 1,500 acres of open space and farmland in the past decade, a new battle is shaping up.
State officials last year gave New York company LS Power approval to build a 13-mile long high-voltage transmission line from San Jose to Coyote Valley. The project, according to officials at the California Independent System Operator, the agency that runs most of California’s power grid and chose LS Power over four other competitors for the project, is needed to expand the amount of electricity that can flow in and out of Silicon Valley to handle a big jump in demand in the coming years from more electric cars, the expansion of artificial intelligence and population growth.
The wires would be buried underground. But the controversy is over their endpoint.
For the northern part of the project, LS Power paid $56 million last year to buy 10 acres near downtown San Jose next to an existing PG&E substation at the corner of Coleman Avenue and Santa Teresa Street, just west of Highway 87. The company had planned to build the southern endpoint of the project adjacent to PG&E’s Metcalf substation, located along Highway 101 in South San Jose.
But PG&E said no.
So LS Power chose another location, a 14-acre apple and peach orchard at 8262 Monterey Road, about 1 mile south of the Metcalf substation, and signed an agreement with the landowner.
Environmental groups say that’s the wrong place for it.
“Coyote Valley is uniquely important for wildlife habitat, farmland, and for people to get out in nature,” said Alice Kaufman, policy and advocacy director for Green Foothills, a Palo Alto nonprofit group that has worked since 1962 to preserve the open space in Coyote Valley and other parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. “It’s a critical wildlife linkage between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range.”
Green Foothills, along with the Sierra Club and Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, are particularly concerned that after it bulldozes the orchard, the company plans to construct buildings up to 50 feet high to house transformers, converters and other equipment, along with several lightning rods up to 100 feet high, on the site, surrounded by security fencing.
“San Jose is the third largest city in California,” Kaufman said. “And Coyote Valley is the last large, undeveloped part of it. We shouldn’t be paving it over. We should be preserving it.”
PG&E’s Metcalf substation, as seen from Highway 101 in South San Jose, Calif., in July, 2024. (Photo: Google street view)
The California Public Utilities Commission has primary authority over the project. It held a hearing last week in San Jose, which was attended mostly by opponents.
Kaufman said the environmental groups support the new transmission line, …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
