My Turn with Nina Gould

    Open letter to Supervisor Dianne Jacob

Thank you for calling the community meeting last Thursday night and presenting the town with very disturbing visuals of what will be done to our roads and our hometown when SDG&E blasts its way through Alpine with the Sunrise Powerlink:
     How it will disrupt, if not completely decimate the ability to enact business along Alpine Boulevard.
     The great difficulty of conducting business for two years while Alpine Blvd is dug up and "bunkers" are lowered into the heart of our town throughout a large majority of Alpine Boulevard.
     The fact that there will only be one lane open where east-bound traffic will have to wait for west-bound traffic, (and vice-versa), and all traffic will have to wait for at least 8 minutes while flat-beds load out street/rock/soil and maneuver out of the construction zones.
     The fact that due to construction of the main artery of town, rescue response-time will be affected to the center of town.
     The nightmare of driving through any part of Alpine, as all of Alpiners will be using backstreets to get to work, school, grocery stores, and gas stations!
     And the fact that SDG&E will be using millions of gallons of our groundwater, (lowering our well levels), for their project, which will not be for our benefit and will not be replenished.

     Thank you for also allowing our residents and firefighters to share their experiences of how:
     High-powered electric lines negatively affected their health.
     The fact that firefighting helicopters will not be able to descend upon areas where the high tension lines exist (which is throughout the back country!) because they will not be able to see the lines through the smoke of the fires.
     The question of what will happen when the power lines short-out and cause small explosions in the middle of the town?
     And lastly, the most visual effect, the decimation of the natural vistas of our lands, which will be marred by towering structures, reminding us we are no longer free, but Frankensteins of what we used to be.
     I asked the Question, “Since when can a company be allowed to ruin and destroy an entire town?” and “why would Alpine allow itself to be destroyed for the benefit of North County electricity-generation?”
     Thank you for continuing to look out for Alpine and East County's best interests and NOT supporting this, what turns out to be, a town and rural resident invasion.
     Thank you for giving us the tools to fight this as communities by:
     Writing to the CPUC at sunrise@aspeneg.com and grieving our opposition and concerns.
     Joining the current ongoing motions at East County Action.Org (info@eastcountyaction.org).
     And/or using our shareholder weight to get SDG&E/Sempra to invest in solar and sell (or lease) solar panels to its energy clients.

     The meeting was very successful.

     Nina Gould is a resident of Alpine and a parent of Alpine school children.