- Withdrawn
- LADWP dropped the 500 kV line in 2010
- Coalition
- Beaten by residents, businesses, and local officials
- No benefit
- A line through communities that got nothing from it
A big-city line through someone else's communities
Green Path North was a 500 kV transmission line proposed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to carry desert renewable power to the LA Basin — routed through the Morongo Basin communities of Desert Hot Springs, Yucca Valley, Pioneertown, Landers, and beyond, near the Morongo reservation. The communities it crossed got the towers; Los Angeles got the power. [1]
Beaten without a regulator's “no”
There was no court ruling and no regulator denial. Residents organized as the California Desert Coalition — citizens, businesses, conservation groups, and local officials — alongside conservation landowners whose land sat directly in the line's path. The pressure made the project untenable, and LADWP withdrew it in early 2010. [1]
It is the clearest organizing template for Temecula: a broad coalition, a “this serves someone else, not us” message, and land in the path used as leverage — enough to make a utility abandon a 500 kV line on its own. (Note: LADWP is a municipal utility, and this was a political, not a regulatory, defeat.) [1]
Sources
- [1]Green Path North — LADWP 500 kV line withdrawn after desert coalition (2010) — California Desert Coalition / Basin & Range Watch