Nomination firestorm

President Barack Obama’s nomination of David Hayes, former Sempra and SDG&E lobbyist, for Deputy Secretary of the Interior has some opponents of the proposed Sunrise Powerlink Project up in arms.

The high transmission line project, proposed by the utility companies for a route that goes east-to-west across the southern San Diego County, would carry energy from the planned Stirling solar power project in Imperial Valley to the San Diego area. On its way, it could traverse sensitive lands and potentially impact species which environmentalists want to protect. The project has cleared the Public Utilities Commission.

Now, opponents to the Hayes nomination are outraged that a former Sempra lobbyist could be put in a position of having a high level voice in the ensuing government agency approvals needed for the plan.

“Hayes is just the kind of lobbyist that the new administration promised to avoid,” the chairperson of the Boulevard Planning Group in East County, Donna Tisdale, wrote to the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee before the committee approved Hayes’s nomination on March 18.

San Diego energy engineer Bill Powers has previously fought Sempra and SDG&E over transmission of natural gas generated electricity from Baja California to San Diego. He said he has become intimately acquainted with Sempra operations due to a lawsuit against Sempra and the Department of Energy filed by his non-profit group Border Power Plant Working Group.

“Hayes is exactly the type of person we’ve been fighting over for the past six years,” he said. “That’s why it rankles so much.”

Powers said Hayes lobbied the Department of Energy to allow Southern California to become a “critical energy corridor” of national interest.

“Hayes was very effective at contributing to the stripping away of state authority by the federal Department of Energy,” he said.

The lawsuit was filed in 2002. The environmental activist group was successful in making sure that a more detailed environmental analysis was done.

Dennis Trafecante, co-founder of Protect Our Communities (POC), a backcountry group formed to fight the Powerlink, said, “How could you trust his judgment after his prior duties?”

Hayes was employed in Washington D.C. by the law firm which has represented the utility companies, Latham & Watkins, before retiring on Dec. 31, 2008. While Hayes is not known to have lobbied the Department of Interior on natural resource issues in the past two years, he is reported to have represented various energy related entities and manufacturing companies.

He also reportedly helped with the energy and natural resources transition team for President Obama. A Sempra spokesperson stated that Hayes was “a consultant” for the utility in 2002. Latham & Watkins did not respond to two phone calls requesting information about the nomination and Hayes’s clients over the past two years. Hayes could not be reached for comment.

Trafecante lives on 50 acres in Santa Ysabel. He said Hayes’s nomination is, “Totally unfair to ratepayers and totally destructive to our environment.”

“Call me a nimby, if you like, because originally I was concerned about my 50 acres in Santa Ysabel,” Trafecante said, “but this is just one of several big projects all over the US. This isn’t just about Sunrise Powerlink. They’re going nuts over big solar and wind projects.

Trafecante added that he believes in building solar projects but only in “already disturbed lands, not pristine areas.”

“Hayes will be involved in the bigger picture to make it a lot easier to get these big projects through,” Trafecante said. “These projects are for profit and to exclude the little guys from earning credits by putting energy back into the grid.”

The Department of the Interior manages about one-fifth of the nation’s land, including land under the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The protection of sensitive lands is one of two core aspects of the Powerlink project that are at issue. The other is whether or not the high transmission line is necessary.

Hayes’s resume on the Latham & Watkins Web site shows a long list of affiliations with environmental and wildlife organizations. He also has written several books on environmental subjects. However, Hayes’s work for Sempra is still too fresh in the minds of those who have fought a long, hard battle to try to kill the Powerlink proposal.

“He is far too close to the energy industry, especially to Sempra and San Diego Gas & Electric …” Tisdale wrote in her letter to the energy committee.

Residents of Ramona and the backcountry opposed the Powerlink because one of the proposed routes was through the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, as well as the Witch Creek area, where the devastating Witch Creek Fire started in 2007.

Hayes’s nomination was approved by the energy committee on a vote of 17 - 5. There’s no word yet on when the nomination will go before the full Senate. Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) has threatened to hold up the Senate hearing unless Hayes answers his questions about canceled oil and gas leases in his state.

Julie Pendray is an SDNN contributing editor.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Environment, Politics & Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.