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Conservation groups and residents along Arizona's San Pedro River are challenging a plan to build a 45-mile long utility corridor that would cut through the river valley. The Bureau of Land Management says the proposed SunZia Southwest Transmission Project would accelerate habitat loss, affect migratory birds, and remove riparian vegetation along the river, which is home to more than 60 species of mammals, 14 species of fish, and millions of birds that migrate along the San Pedro each year.
Nevertheless, the BLM settled on the current route in 2015, which was approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission. The transmission line would carry renewable energy from the proposed SunZia wind farm in New Mexico into Pinal County, running along the river roughly 25 miles north of the San Pedro Riparian Conservation Area, near the boundaries of Saguaro National Park East and Coronado National Forest.
But the Arizona Republic reports that last year SunZia asked to split the project into separate ownership, one company for alternating current and one for direct current. The AC line would provide reliability to Arizona's power grid, while the DC line would transmit electricity to California, with no hookups along the way. Advocates call that a "bait and switch," running the risk that the AC line will never get built, denying benefits to Arizona consumers.
Conservation groups are calling on the Corporation Commission to withdraw its certificate of environmental compatibility for the SunZia line, citing that change in ownership, and calling for an alternate route that avoids the San Pedro. In 2020, the BLM adjusted the SunZia route in New Mexico to avoid cutting through the White Sands Missile Range. Conservation groups had warned the line would harm migrating birds and other wildlife in the area.
Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter, suggests a similar modification would avoid conflicts in Arizona.
“Why couldn’t we say, ‘okay, site it along I-10 and underground it, so you aren’t affecting people in those communities,’” Bahr told the Republic. “Then you're siting it along a major transportation corridor and you’re not impacting one of our state's most important rivers?”
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Once you build these things in the San Pedro River Valley that’s forever, and the damage is done. I’ll take a few extra years of them having to permit versus a hundred years of damage to the San Pedro River Valley.”
