The Los Angeles Times reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is touting the benefits of building the Sunrise Powerlink, the 150-mile-long power line proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric.
The Times writes:
Schwarzenegger, in turn, called environmentalists and Democrats hypocrites for trying to block clean-energy projects.
“It’s a kind of schizophrenic behavior,” the Republican governor said recently at a Yale University conference on climate change. “They say that we want renewable energy, but we don’t want you to put it anywhere.”
He cited opposition to SDG&E’s plan for “150 miles of transmission lines” — the precise distance of the company’s proposed route through Anza-Borrego. The alternative southern route is 40 miles shorter.
The power line’s opponents say the governor is inappropriately intervening. The story continues:
“In the 25 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen this kind of hands-on intervention by the commissioners and the governor this early in a case,” said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, a San Diego nonprofit advocacy group fighting the power line.
Sempra donated $25,000 to Schwarzenegger’s 2007 inaugural committee, state records show. In 2004, the company gave the governor a $50,000 political contribution, which he returned due to a pending lawsuit between Sempra and the state.