10:00 PM PST on Monday, March 8, 2010

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise

Open-space preservationists are staging celebrations in Oak Glen and Yucca Valley this week to mark assurances by the city of Los Angeles that it is withdrawing its application to construct electrical transmission lines across desert and scenic hilltops.

The Wildlands Conservancy, based in the San Bernardino County community of Oak Glen, is holding a 10 a.m. event Wednesday — complete with an apple pie giveaway. At noon, a similar party is planned at the community center in Yucca Valley, said Dana Rochat, the conservancy’s projects coordinator.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had proposed seven possible routes for the project to carry geothermal, wind and solar energy from Imperial County to Los Angeles and some Inland cities through 80 miles of high-voltage lines and towers.

Wednesday’s parties will include an announcement by a DWP representative, who is expected to confirm that the agency is dropping its Green Path North project.

Elden Hughes, a Joshua Tree resident and desert activist, said he heard it from David Freeman, DWP’s interim general manager.

Hughes said he was in Freeman’s office with David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, several months ago when Freeman made the commitment to pull the project application from the Bureau of Land Management.

“He wasn’t snowing us, he was telling us what would be,” said Hughes, former chairman of the Sierra Club’s desert committee.

A DWP representative said reports about Green Path could not be confirmed.

Freeman took over as head of the agency five months ago and immediately cast his focus on a solar development covering more than 600 acres in the Owens Valley, in the eastern Sierra Nevada, where the agency already owns land and transmission lines. Freeman has said he wants to develop renewable energy projects where transmission lines exist.

The Wildlands Conservancy bought billboards on I-10 to campaign against the Green Path North power plan. It appears that Los Angeles will abandon the plan on Wednesday.

In January, Green Path appeared defeated when the DWP board voted not to fund the project.

The official handling the application in the Bureau of Land Management’s Palm Springs office could not be reached for comment Monday about the status of DWP’s application.

Environmentalists say the project would destroy vistas and permanently change the landscape that is home to rare plants, the endangered desert tortoise and other sensitive species. It would cut a swath through the Big Morongo Canyon Reserve, which has a critical water source for migratory birds, bighorn sheep and bobcats.

One possible route through Oak Glen would put high-tension lines along mountain tops in the historic apple-growing town and tourist stop east of Yucaipa, they said.

In the past year, The Wildlands Conservancy purchased billboards along Interstate 10 and in Oak Glen urging Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to abandon Green Path. The organization also sponsored a postcard and e-mail campaign that generated 50,000 messages to the mayor.

In September, Villaraigosa’s office confirmed that the project could be abandoned because of community outrage.

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