Another Powerline Land Grab: El Monte Valley

If you drive east on I-8 toward El Cajon, you'll notice an impressive red mountain to the northeast of the freeway. That's El Capitan, and the valley at the base of it is absolutely gorgeous. El Capitan Reservoir is right next to it and besides being a popular fishing spot, it's one of San Diego's main water sources.

SDGE is trying to put power lines across El Monte Valley. They're doing so surrepetitiously too because they know the reaction this decision will provoke. To learn more visit Save El Monte Valley. It's in the interests of big developers and government agencies to get us ("us" meaning land- and property-owners plus outdoorsy types) to think our interests are opposed, but they're not. They played this same game with Anza-Borrego.

The problem of course is that we do need electricity. This certainly isn't a near-term solution, but we would have fewer problems like this if we had more nuclear power. Electricity has to come from somewhere, right now those wind turbines supply less than 2% of California, and as oil becomes more expensive we'll start turning to coal, which is filthy and a far worse greenhouse fuel. The fact that this is an outdoors blog and I just said that should count for something.