South San Jose utility project could threaten wildlife

A proposal to strengthen Santa Clara County’s electrical grid could become an environmental hazard and threaten efforts to protect Coyote Valley wildlife from being killed along busy roads south of San Jose.

That’s the warning from local environmental advocates, who spoke out at a Wednesday community meeting held by the California Public Utilities Commission to gather input on a new electrical facility on an orchard next to Coyote Creek. The construction could also pose a fire risk to the area.

The project by New York-based energy company LS Power proposes building a terminal for a transmission line connecting a PG&E substation in the area to another station in downtown San Jose — bolstering the grid’s resilience from overload and helping import renewable electricity.

But dozens of speakers voiced concern about the impacts to wildlife, and state officials are concerned with the area’s flammability. One of the facility’s staging areas falls approximately 3,000 feet from a tier 2 high fire threat district, according to a protest submitted by the California Public Advocate’s Office.

“We’re concerned that we should be studying this to see if there is an issue or not,” Chloe Lukins, an energy infrastructure program manager for the public advocate’s office, told San José Spotlight.

LS Power initially asked PG&E if it could build its six-acre terminal facility on PG&E’s existing Metcalf substation property — the same station where the project would connect to San Jose. LS Power’s own environmental assessment said the Metcalf site would be less environmentally damaging. But PG&E has refused, leaving LS Power to propose bulldozing an orchard a mile away and build a longer transmission line to connect the terminal to the substation. Environmentalists argue this could increase the transmission line’s cost — and the cost to ratepayers.

Lukins said that’s also a concern for her agency, which is tasked with challenging proposed utility bill increases that companies such as PG&E submit to state regulators.

“The cost is important to us. We should start looking at that now,” Lukins told San José Spotlight. “We want to be involved earlier in the process.”

PG&E representatives said they communicated to LS Power that the utility is unable to accommodate its request for space at the Metcalf substation.

“PG&E has plans to use existing substation space to expand the substation facilities to serve our customers,” PG&E spokesperson Stephanie Magallon told San José Spotlight.

Jacob Diermann, LS Power’s project director, said the project’s upcoming environmental impact report will assess the wildfire risk. He said LS Power was selected in a competitive bid process to develop, own and operate the proposed facility at the lowest cost.

“(The project) will create a robust new electrical connection in the South Bay to improve grid reliability and support the state’s climate goals,” Diermann told San José Spotlight. “We are careful to work with local partners to design projects to best meet the community, environment and reliability needs within constraints like availability of property.”

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has been key to conservation efforts in and around Coyote Valley. Marc Landgraf, the group’s assistant general manager, said the project site is in the heart of an area being studied to build safe road crossings for wildlife, including under-crossings and bridges — right where the terminal would be located.

“To us it doesn’t make sense from a public cost standpoint, because if the destination of the power is in downtown San Jose to the north, why go south over a mile first, incurring the cost of more lines, trenching underneath Monterey Road and the ongoing cost to pipe the power that much further?” Landgraf told San José Spotlight.

He said the project would undermine the millions of dollars local officials have invested into Coyote Valley conservation efforts.

“Our preference is for that terminal to be co-located at the PG&E substation,” Landgraf said.

Alice Kaufman, policy and advocacy director at Green Foothills, said the orchard site by Monterey Road is already a hotspot for cars killing bobcats, badgers, coyotes, deer and other animals. She said adding LS Power’s facility would subject animals to noise, nighttime lighting, human activity and other disturbances from its construction and operation.

“There are wildlife populations that depend on Coyote Creek, which is right adjacent to this orchard,” Kaufman told San José Spotlight.

The energy facility proposal came about in 2022 — about one year after city and county officials took action to shield more than 300 acres of Coyote Valley land from development. For decades, the expanse of protected open space and farmland was viewed as a future site for sprawling housing development, tech campuses and industrial warehouses. Agricultural land in Coyote Valley has declined by 45% over the preceding two decades.

The proposal for an energy facility comes after a group of landowners raised the idea as a way of maximizing their property value. It could put the city and state’s goals of achieving a carbon neutral power supply at odds against ongoing work to preserve open space for wildlife, flood control and water supply safety.

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X, formerly known as Twitter.