FAQ & Fact Checks

There is no document behind that. No City record, no specific-plan exhibit, no recorded map, no builder disclosure — and nobody repeating the claim has produced one. Nor could a chatbot have found one: 1999 escrow files and a developer's internal correspondence are not on the public internet, so no language model has ever read them.

The dates settle it. The line now called Golden Pacific is the grid operator's “Imperial Valley – North of SONGS” project, and it entered the record when CAISO's Board approved its 2022–2023 Transmission Plan on May 18, 2023. ^[1] The sponsor CAISO then selected — Horizon West Transmission, not SDG&E — assigned the line to SDG&E on August 29, 2025, ^{[2] [3]} and Temecula first heard from SDG&E in mid-April 2026. Set that against the neighborhoods: the Wolf Creek Specific Plan's Draft EIR, 2,601 homes on 557 acres, went out for state review on October 20, 1999, and homes were built from roughly 2004. ^[4] There was no Golden Pacific to know about, disclose, or plan around.

Nor was a corridor waiting for it. We read every mapping element of Temecula's adopted General Plan and none of them reserves, maps, or names one — here is what they actually say. What is out there instead is an old 69 kV distribution line, which is not the same thing at all — see About 500 kV lines.

So why did ChatGPT say yes? Because asked a question that assumes a fact, a chatbot supplies the fact. OpenAI's own researchers published the reason in 2025: language models “sometimes guess when uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty,” because training and grading “reward guessing over acknowledging uncertainty.” ^[5] In June 2023 a federal judge sanctioned two lawyers and their firm $5,000 over a brief citing six court decisions that did not exist, created by ChatGPT — which told them the cases were real when they asked. ^[6] A wrong answer is not vague or hedged. It is confident, detailed, and shaped exactly like the answer you were hoping for.

None of which means stop using AI. Use it to find documents, never as the document: ask which filing would show a thing and where it is filed, then go read the filing. “ChatGPT said so” cannot be filed with the CPUC or handed to a reporter.

One part of the post is fair, and it is the part that travels. On August 12, 2026 the City of Temecula sent SDG&E a nine-page consolidated list of questions it said were still unanswered or answered vaguely — route selection and alternatives, where the power goes and who benefits, wildfire and emergency response, property values and insurance, tribal and cultural resources, seismic risk, the wine-country viewshed, balloon operations, and the hospital's helicopter flights. See the timeline. That is the answer to “SDG&E won't tell us”: make the unanswered questions the record, rather than filling the silence with a guess.

The true history is also stronger than the invented one — SDG&E really did try to run 500 kV through this corridor, and the CPUC denied it. If you hold a document that changes any of this, a plat or a specific-plan exhibit or a recorded easement, send it to us. Documents are the currency here; the rest of what helps is on Take Action.

The element that inventories utility infrastructure is Growth Management / Public Facilities. Its energy section reads, in full: “Southern California Edison (SCE) supplies electricity to the Temecula Planning Area via underground and overhead lines. SCE's main substation is located on Mira Loma Drive in Temecula.” It then defines the generic hierarchy — transmission, sub-transmission, service line — and moves on to natural gas. No planned facility, no corridor, no route. ^[8]

The Land Use Map is the only place a corridor could actually be drawn. Under its legend heading “Public Uses & Open Space” there are exactly two designations: Open Space and Public/Institutional Facilities. There is no utility, transmission, or corridor designation on the map at all. ^[9]

“Power transmission easement” appears once in the whole plan, in the Circulation Element — and it is about a hiking trail: “the Riverside County bikeways plan identifies a future Class I Regional Trail crossing the City from north to south along the power transmission easement.” The City's posture toward that easement was recreation, and its axis is north–south, not the east–west Temecula Creek alignment SDG&E now proposes. ^[10] No voltage figure appears anywhere in the plan — not 500 kV, not 230, not 115, not 69, not the word kilovolt — and SDG&E is named exactly once, as a part-owner of San Onofre 25 miles away. ^[11]

Two limits, stated rather than left for someone else to find. This is the 2005 plan as amended; the original 1993 document is not online, and we intend a records request for it. And a General Plan records what the City planned — it is not a title record. So this answers “did the City reserve a corridor” (no), not “is there an easement on my lot” (check your title report).

In December 2002 the Commission denied it — Decision D.02-12-066 — on two independent grounds, either sufficient alone: the line was not needed for reliability within the planning horizon the Commission adopted, and it could not be justified economically. CAISO had supported the project. The Commission said no anyway. ^[15]

Notice what that does to the rumor: at the one moment a 500 kV line through this corridor was a live, filed application, the regulator killed it. This was never a corridor quietly reserved on a map for someone to activate later. And notice what it does for the fight now — SDG&E's whole public case for Golden Pacific is need, and need is the exact ground on which the Commission has already rejected this utility, at this voltage, in this place.

It is also the proof of what works: a community group took formal party status, built an evidentiary record, and won. ^[16] The full case study — what the coalition did, and what it cost them — is at Valley-Rainbow.

The word doing the work is “known.” Golden Pacific entered a grid plan in 2023 and was assigned to SDG&E in 2025; the neighborhoods named in the viral post were entitled starting in 1999 and built through the mid-2000s. ^{[1] [3] [4]} Nobody could have known a project that would not exist for two more decades, and no one circulating the claim has produced a document showing any builder knew of a corridor.

What your particular seller knew is a question about your transaction, and no website — and certainly no chatbot — can answer it. If your purchase file, title report, or preliminary title policy references a utility corridor or easement you did not understand at the time, take it to a California real estate attorney. We would want to hear about it too.

Today is different: the proposed route is public and squarely disclosable. If you are selling now, raise it with your agent. Our resources for owners — including the survey-access letters SDG&E has been sending — are at Homeowners, and what a route does to value is at Property values.