It would be arguably the most ambitious public works project in San Diego history.
The envisioned pipeline would carry Colorado River water more than 130 miles from the Imperial Valley through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, tunneling under the Cuyamaca Mountains, and passing through the Cleveland National Forest to eventually connect with a water-treatment plant in San Marcos.
An alternative route would run through the desert to the south, boring under Mount Laguna before emptying into the San Vicente Reservoir in Lakeside.
Advertisement
Estimated cost: roughly $5 billion. New water delivered: None.
Proponents of the modestly named Regional Conveyance System say the project has the potential to save ratepayers billions of dollars by the end of the century.
David Corby
Borrego Badlands. We feel the locations selected in Borrego Springs are not suitable for an industrial scale energy project.
Where s the best place for renewable energy? Many backcountry locals think San Diego rooftops would be ideal. The county, however, is eyeing the wide open spaces of the desert.
Out where bighorn sheep roam, the Milky Way is always on at night, and the Anza Borrego Desert State park unfurls over 1,000 square miles. Officials say large scale wind and solar are needed to meet the county s goal to achieve 90 percent renewable electricity for the unincorporated area by 2030, a plan that will include community choice energy.
It’s also severly unstaffed.
Last year, there were eight to 10 rangers on staff, plus two supervising rangers and a superintendent.
Today, there are no supervising rangers. The superintendent position has been eliminated. And there are only four rangers patrolling the largest park in California.
Advertisement
The lack of coverage for the 600,000-acre desert, coupled with the exodus of a number of rangers after the suicide of a beloved ranger, has led former park employees to sound the alarm.
They say their warnings are not being taken seriously enough in Sacramento. State park officials said there are staffing shortages at all the parks, not just Anza-Borrego, and they are trying to fill the vacancies.