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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSDGE ENERGY AS LAND USE EDGE ENERGY AS LAND USE ' 1 SDSE San Diego Gas & Electric L ,l FILE NO. l9 ~ R e�fr NOVl N4, Sv � 98$� l3 eJ ENERGY AS A LAND USE Prepared for: Prepared by: Orange County Chapter Don L. Rose Association of Environmental Dave S. Siino Professionals Sr. Land Planners October 4, 1985 (619) 696-2409 POST OFFICE BOX 1831 • SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 92112 • TELEPHONE: 6191696.2000 ENERGY AS A LAND USE Loosely defined Land Planning is the arrangement of uses and physical elements on the surface of the earth in an organized manner to accomplish a specific purpose. Now, of course, there is a lot of things you can add to that, such as . . . with sensitivity to the environment and existing adjacent uses, etc. , etc. However, for purposes of this paper, it is appropriate to stick close to this loose definition. The point that needs to be made is that energy is a land use and as a land use it should be included in land use plans both current and long range. Energy is produced, transmitted and distributed via tangible structures and mechanisms that occupy space on or near the surface of the earth. Maintenance and operation of these facilities also requires space on the earth' s surface. This is a very real and signifi- cant but frequently ignored land use. The State of California recognized this and has incorporated this concept into their planning laws, i.e. , General Plan Guidelines Page 112 (circulation element) . These sections require that certain energy facilities be shown on general plans. There appears to beAe little effort to comply with these sections. one reason may be that planners themselves have not considered the land use aspects of energy to be important or legitimate except for power plants, offices and operation yards and other maintenance and service facilities. Rights of way, substation, regulator stations, and gas transmission lines are seldom considered in city and land use planning. Rights of way may be the biggest omission because they are the most intensive energy land use. In our opinion, energy is the third largest land user in the San Diego region following the Federal Government and the street/highway system. This has not been verified but this statement has been made before many public groups and has not been challenged so far. Even if energy is only 4th, 5th or 6th, it deserves more attention from planners than it receives. The APA has an Energy Planning Division, but it tends to focus on non-land use issues. Most of the energy elements in general plans have to do with conservation, insulation, solar collectors for residential hot water, etc. Very few focus on the production transmission and distribution of the commercial energy that most all developments depend on. I feel that as city, regional and land use planners, we need to recognize that: o Energy is a land use. o There is a need to include energy land use plans in local and regional land use plans. o There is a need to come up with innovative ways to incorporate energy uses into local and regional plans in a manner that makes them compatible with other uses that are near or share the same space. The need for planning energy facilities far in advance is quite apparent. Seldom are there any major energy projects developed without a great deal of public controversy: Witness Diablo Canyon, San Onofre, San Diego to Arizona 500kV trans- mission line, the Helms Hydro Electric Plant. These projects stimulated major controversial issues that took years to resolve and frequently cost millions of dollars in delays which are born by ratepayers and taxpayers as well as shareholders. At a more localized level even a substation can become a major issue. These facilities should be shown on local general plans long before they are actually needed. If local agencies and utilities work together to insure that the land uses around these projects were compatible with each other, the controversy and more importantly, the impacts would be greatly reduced. The end product would result in a better, more comprehensive plan. Of course, that is the purpose of long range planning. -2- III ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES OF ENERGY AS A LAND USE INTRODUCTION Energy is either generated on site or off site . If it is generated off site , then it must be transported' to the site and distributed to the users . If generated on site, it will take a space at the site for generation• and distribution. In either case, the energy production and distribution system occupies space on or near the earth' s surface, thus qualifying it as a land use. The State recognized this and has incorporated this concept in their planning laws , i .e. : Government Code Section 65302 (6) , 65304, 65400, and California General Plan Guidelines , Page 112 (Circulation Element) . There appears to be little effort to comply with these sections . One reason may be that planners , themselves , have not considered the land use aspects of energy to be important or legitimate except for power plants , offices , and operation yards and other maintenance and service facilities . Rights-of-way, substations , regulator stations are seldom considered in city and land use planning. Rights-of-way may be the biggest omission because they occupy the most land. Energy may be the third largest land user in San Diego (that' s a guess , but so far,. I have not been challenged) . Federal Government is first, street system is second. APA has an energy planning division but it tends to focus on non-land use issues . The purpose of this presentation is to try to influence land use planners and environmental professionals , like yourselves , to recognize : 1. the land use aspects of energy; 2. the need to include energy land use plans in local and regional plans; 3. the environmental impacts and mitigations of energy systems ; 4. the need to come up with innovative ways to incorporate energy land uses into local and regional plans - 1 - 1 in such a way as to make them compatible with other uses that are adjacent to or share the same space on or near the earth' s surface. ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES OF ENERGY AS A LAND USE Show slides of the various ways the energy uses occupy land/ space , i.e. : power plants of various kinds , substations, gas compressor stations , office buildings , electric and gas trans- mission rights-of-way (R/W) , etc. Classification of uses . Some are easy to classify, some are not. Generators are clearly industrial , but how would rights- of-way be classified? Land Use requirements . There is frequently less flexibility in siting energy land uses than there is other forms of uses . Examples : Generators are quite restricted as to where they can be located - Fossil fuel and nuclear generators need the mechanical device to generate fuel to operate the generator and a place to store it and large quantities of water for cool- ing, besides a considerable amount of land for the gener- ation facility and for the transmission lines that transmit the energy. - Hydroelectric must be located where energy can be created via falling water. - Geothermal plants must be located near a geothermal resource. - Solar generating plants must be located where fairly consis- tent solar access is available. - Wind generators are restricted to areas that have air move- ment in sufficient, continuous velocity. Substations have a little more flexibility than generators . It is e� sirabl7e to locate them close to the load they service. A transmission substation needs to be located on or near a trans- mission right-of-way. Substations need land, noise buffers, and visual screening depending on surrounding land uses . Gas compressor stations are loud and have the appearance of an iEUustrial installation. They need to be located on a gas transmission right-of-way. Frequently they are located in isolated areas , but encroaching development becomes the land use issue. 2 - Rights-of-Way sometimes have a great deal of flexibility but frequently do not. High voltage transmission lines usually occupy their own right-of-way because of the size of their structures and the difficulty with undergrounding. Offices , service centers , operation yards , and other main- tenance type uses need to be somewhat close to the areas they are intended to serve. However, location is less of an issue with these uses than it is with the energy hardware. - Impacts and compatibility issues . Impacts and compatibility issues are greatest with energy hardware, more than with the maintenance, customer service facilities , and offices . The hardware is more likely to be involved with such things as : Aesthetics Impacts Noise Air pollution Water quality Safety - Dealing with these issues . Generators frequently raise compatibility issues , nuclear generators in particular. It may be necessary to provide large buffers in order to appease public concern. What kinds of uses could occupy such a buffer? (Show slides of various types of generators and discuss issues of each. ) Substations are easier to deal with than generators . Fre- quently,a design solution is adequate. Major substations , such as large bulk power subs , are more complex. The land requirements for buffers may be an issue here although not as great an issue as with generators . The primary impacts are visual and noise . (Show slides of substations . ) Rights-of-way are becoming an increasingly greater issue as 1—and uses intensify. Not only has routing new gas and electric transmission rights-of-way become extremely complex and expen- sive, but maintaining the position of existing rights-of-way has become a major planning problem. One reason rights-of-way are becoming a greater issue is because .generators are now being built farther from the loads they serve. Thus , the proliferation of transmission facilities . In California, all the major utilities are revising their resource plans to increase the amount of energy that is imported from out of the state and out of the country. As the amount of transmission rights-of-way increase, we can expect that land use conflicts , compatibility, and environmental issues will also increase. - 3 - Electrical transmission rights-of-way occupy both ground and air space. Because much of the hardware is aireal, there is space within rights-of-way that can, some times , be made available for secondary uses . Utility companies have had considerable experience in dealing with secondary right-of-way uses (show slides) . Unfortunately, as land use problems evolve, the requests for relocations of trans- mission rights-of-way increase. This shows the need to integrate the long-range land use plans of the utilities with local and regional planning agencies . Visual, noise, safety, aireal navigation, radio interfer- ence , and electrostatic/magnetic effects are the primary environmental concerns . Gas transmission suffers from the same relocation pressures as the electrical to some degree, but because they are subsurface and the right-of-way requirements are not as great, the compatibility issues are not as great. I am not going to cover the compatibility issues of every kind of energy facility. There are a lot of facilities that I haven' t addressed today that need to be considered in any planning effort, i.e. : LNG facilities Fuel storage Gas regulator and compressor stations Equipment and materials yards Compost yards Lineman' s school Others - For the most part, the compatibility issue is dealth with by reactive planning rather than with- an integrated, long- range approach. The reactive approach is providing a short- term solution to a long-term problem. This needs to be adjusted. The mechanisms exist to do this--local and regional plans or long-range planning. LONG RANGE PLANNING California planning laws mandate that local agencies prepare long-range plans . We usually refer to them as general or master plans . I have named a few of the sections of the - 4 - Government Code that require incorporation of certain energy considerations into these plans . I have also stated that many plans have not fully complied with this charge. Locally, there has been compliance to some degree . Actually, compli- ance with the letter of the law might only be a partial solu- tion. But, compliance with the spirit would be a great evolu- tionary leap forward as far as comprehensive planning is concerned. Existing example of this sort of planning effort in California : The California Desert Conservation Area has provided for util- ity corridors , power plant sites , and microwave sites .within the BLM desert lands of California. The plan was completed in 1980 and approved for implementa- tion in 1981 . This recent effort may be the vanguard for similar efforts . Completing the plan was a massive cooperative effort involving the BLM staff, the utilities, and other competing interests and the general public. Utility planning corridors vary in width from two to five mi es . This provides flexibility for ultimate location of lines while informing other interests of the strong possibility that transmission facilities of some sort may be located in the area. Pacific Gas and Electric Company has made some efforts towards this end also . They will provide a "utilities element" of sorts for jurisdictions requesting it. It includes such things as definitions and descriptions of facilities , a list of suggested policies , and a list of siting guidelines . RESULTS The map, policies , and guidelines are important. They provide ample notice of the intent to establish a land use . They also provide a method for determining general plan compliance and appropriate mitigation. Planning in advance should reduce the environmental impacts to people and the natural environment. This is mainly an exercise in planning on what and where to avoid. Another important benefit is that rights-of-way and other facilities can be planned in such a way that future reloca- tions are minimized because land use conflicts should be greatly reduced. It should also result in the reduction of compatibility issues due to poor siting or encroaching land uses . 5 - It will improve community design while improving energy service and reducing the difficulties of providing service. General plans will be more comprehensive, thus more valuable, thus improved. Planners, themselves , will have improved their planning skills which, hopefully, will result in better planning. 6 - October 3, 1985 M E M 0 TO: Association of Environmental Professionals FROM: Don Rose b Dave Siino SUBJECT: ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL DOCUMENTS We received many letters from environmental consultants and public agencies seeking energy information to include in environmental documents. In our opinions, most of the questions asked are not only difficult if not impossible to answer, but would not contribute to legitimate environ- mental information needed by decision makers when reviewing a proposed project. These typical kinds of questions are: o What are the cumulative impacts of projects of this type on your facilities? o Please estimate the project's electric demand and impact to your system. o What are the nearest existing electrical and gas facilities to the project? Please provide their capacities and identify if they are overhead or underground. o Would the existing facilities mentioned above be extended to provide electrical service to the property or would new facilities be required? o What energy conservation methods would be required and may be recommended in order to reduce electrical consumption? o_ Provide an assessment of the ability of the existing system to accommodate the proposed project. It would be nearly impossible to give an accurate figure describing the impact of any particular project on our ability to provide electricity and gas at a regional level . During any given moment there are hundreds ENERGY E ENVIRONMENTAL DOCUMENTS October 3, 1985 Page 2 of projects being processed by all the jurisdictions within our service territory. We also could not adequately describe the impacts of any single project to the system. We would have to consider the impacts of every project that is being processed at any given moment. Currently, we do not have the mechanism to do that and I am not sure that it would be of value to SDG&E or the CEQA process. Identifying facilities in the area that are closest to a proposed project is also of little value. Projects that require an EIR frequently take years to be develop. By the time they are developed they may be served from an entirely different area than first mentioned. The backbone of most utility systems is in the urbanized areas. The weakest portion is usually in the most rural areas. Projects within an urbanized area are usually very easy to serve with existing facilities. The rules which govern public utilities give the utility no descretionary choice on who they serve. If a development requests energy services they must be provided. There is not a question of whether or not they will be served. However, if the development were located in a very remote part of the service territory where there are no existing energy facilities, then it may be appropriate to discuss extensions of facilities and impacts to that part of the system. But, in the overwhelming majority of new develop- ments service is simply not an issue. There are a few exceptions. For instance, a heavy industrial development could include something like an electric arc furnace which might require an on-site substation because of the huge electrical demand of this kind of facility. Then it would be appropriate to ask the utility to comment on what kinds of facilities may be needed to serve the project. While we are reluctant to respond to the kind of questions listed above, we do think that it is important to address energy in environmental documents. In fact, we encourage it. We are grateful for the opportunity to review environmental documents from all jurisdictions in our service territory and we would like to continue to do so. Most of the time we will have little to say other than, we will serve the proposed development according to the rules of the Public Utility Commission. But there are enough cases con- taining significant issues where we believe our review process has been effective in preventing impacts that may otherwise have been overlooked until it was too late. The kinds of issues that we most frequently comment on are: o If there are existing electrical transmission facilities, substations, gas regulator stations, gas transmission lines, etc. within the proposed project area, we feel they should be addressed as an exist- ing land use. Impacts to these facilities and the potential impacts of energy facilities to proposed developments should be addressed. ENERGY s ENVIRONMENTAL DOCUMENTS October 3, 1985 Page 3 o Proposed development should not interfere with access to existing electrical and gas facilities before, during and after construction. Access to these facilities is imperative 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Environmental documents should address any possible hindrance to access. o If the development -is going to be adjacent to existing transmission lines or an existing substation, the potential for noise and visual Impacts should be discussed. It should be noted that substations are noisier when they are not underload. That period is the late night and early morning hours when the ambient not-se level is down. This should be taken into consideration when proposing noise sensi- tive uses within the vicinity of a substation. o Uses proposed within rights-of-way should be approved by the utility that manages said rights-of-way. o Rights-of-way frequently are ideal for secondary uses such as riding and hiking trails, parking lots, recreational facilities, parks, open spaces, agriculture and others. Appropriate secondary uses for rights of way can be discussed in an environmental document and in some cases should be. As you can see, most of the issues that we feel should be discussed In the document are related to land use and the energy hardware itself. Very seldom is it appropriate to get involved with capacities, locations of nearest facilities, impacts to the system, etc. However, we don't want to overlook those few instances where it is appropriate. If you have any questions on which kind of issues should be addressed in an environmental document, please don't hesitate to give us a call before you send the letter. It may shorten the review time and result in improved project documents which should be a goal for all of us. If you have any questions about this presentation or our role as utility land planners, please give us a call . Dave can be reached at (619) 696-2410, I can be reached at (619) 696-24o9. DLR:DSS:mcm