Stop Them: Put the Brakes On Transmission Lines

Towers & Lines iIS THIS WHAT YOU WANT YOUR FOREST TO LOOK LIKE?

Angeles National Forest Supervisor, Jody Noiron, (pictured) is taking responsibility for selling out your National Forest to Southern California Edison. The proposed project is a new Power corridor consisting of several miles of High Power 500kV Transmission Lines. Noiron is has approved locating the Lines the length of Bouquet Canyon, through virgin land, recreational land and across the public roadways within a few hundred feet of quaint cabins, homes and the Big Oaks restaurant which was built in the 1920s. The USFS 50-year lease to Edison would bring in untold revenue at the expense of creating significant fire and environmental threat to both people and habitat, according to the government's own Environmental Impact Report. Supervisor Noiron and staff failed to clearly notify the cabin permit holders and private property inholders within the Angeles National Forest of the impending project. She and her staff excluded these inholders' properties from maps misrepresenting the impact of the project on the Forest and surrounding communities.

Who profits from this sell-out? General Electric, Southern California Edison, the USFS and the Wind Industry, primarily. Sources say the California Public Utilities Commission is maneuvering politically to preserve its agency's power over the Federal Energy Commission and its comprehensive national energy corridors plans. The USFS wants the Lease revenue. Apparently it's about the money and political power, not the people's land, homes and endangered habitat. Help us stop this insanity! Click here to donate.

Wildfire Can Travel to Neighboring Communities As Fast As 1 Mile Every 15 Seconds.

Acton, Aqua Dulce, Canyon Country, Junniper Hills, Leona Valley, Lake Hughes, Green Valley, Palmdale and Santa Clarita are all in harm's way.

Helicopter While several communities successfully fought Transmission Lines coming directly through their neighborhoods, Alternative 2 is in everybody's backyard. Fires that start in Bouquet Canyon will no longer be able to be fought as in the past according to the Final EIR Report. Fatal electrical currents can be conducted via smoke, water mist and retardant to fire-fighting air and ground crews. Because of firefighters' concern of electrocution, fires that start in proximity to the Lines will be allowed to grow larger before they can be suppressed away from the Lines. And fires can more likely grow out of control, raging over the hills to neighboring communities, producing what could be the most catastrophic wildfire losses ever seen in the area. This can lead to more homes and structures in the Canyon being consumed by fire that otherwise might have been saved, and an increased risk of lives being lost.

Fire-fighting Super Scoopers will be at increased risk with Transmission Lines towering hundreds of feet in the air across their flight path. Bouquet Reservoir is valuable fire-fighting resource and has been critical in saving the Canyon and its surrounding comnmunities. The Los Angeles County Fire Department originally came out against the Alternative 2 Transmission Line Route, but for some unknown reason is now willing to adjust its flight paths instead of having the lines moved, which they could easily have done. Instead, they are requesting large orange balls be attached to the Lines so that pilots can see them better to hopefully avoid collisions during fire-fighting maneuvers. The question remains, why would the Fire Department allow the hazard at all when the lines could have been placed out of harm's way? All they had to do was ask, according to Edison and the California Public Utilites Commission.