It's been fought here — and won
This is not the first time a destructive project has threatened this corridor. Each of these was met — and stopped, rerouted, or denied. The records are public; the playbook still works.
- Precedent
It Was Denied Here Before: The Valley-Rainbow Powerline
Before this fight even begins, know this: the last time SDG&E tried to push a 500 kV line through this same Temecula–Rainbow corridor, the state didn't reroute it or soften it. It said no. The project was denied outright — because SDG&E couldn't prove the line was needed. What was done once can be done again.
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A 500 kV Line in Our Own Backyard That Never Got Built: LEAPS
Right next to Temecula, a 500 kV line through the Cleveland National Forest was pushed for nearly two decades — and the people who lived here simply outlasted it. It never cleared review. It was dismissed at both FERC and the CPUC, and it was never built.
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Denied Because the Host Got Nothing: Devers–Palo Verde 2
This is the clearest mirror of Temecula's case — and it ended in a win for the people in the line's path. A 500 kV line that mostly served California was denied by Arizona's regulator for one plain reason: it gave the communities it crossed no real benefit while they bore all the impact. That argument beat the line. It can beat this one.
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A Coalition Made the Utility Walk Away: Green Path North
Sometimes the people win without a courtroom or a regulator's ruling at all. A broad desert coalition made LADWP's 500 kV import line so unworkable that the utility simply walked away. It was a line routed through communities for Los Angeles's benefit — and the ordinary residents in its path beat it on their own.
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They've Beaten Sempra Here Recently: Line 3602
This win is recent and close to home: in 2018 the CPUC denied a $639 million Sempra project because the company couldn't prove it was needed. It was a gas pipeline, not a power line — but it was the same parent company, the same Commission, and the same “we don't need this” argument that can stop Golden Pacific.
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It's Been Rejected Before: The Sunrise Powerlink
The last time SDG&E tried to run a 500 kV line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, regulators called every route through the park “environmentally unacceptable and infeasible” — and forced the line off the park entirely. The company swore there was “no other way.” The state proved there was.
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Even After the Towers Went Up: Chino Hills
Edison had already built ~200-foot 500 kV towers over Chino Hills backyards — and a small city and its residents still forced the state to halt construction and order the towers torn down. It is one of the great grassroots victories in California utility history, and it carries the most encouraging lesson of all: the fight outlasts the permit. (The one caution below is not about those residents — they did everything right. It's about the relocation the system handed them, and why Temecula, entering the fight before the towers go up, should aim higher.)
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We've Won Here Before: Stopping the Liberty Quarry
This victory is ours. Between 2008 and 2012, the City of Temecula and the Pechanga Band defeated a massive open-pit mine proposed on the very Riverside–San Diego county border this powerline would cross. Same community, same border country, same fight — and it was won. The coalition, and the playbook, are still here.
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