CWA considers energy project near Mussey Grade

San Diego County Water Authority and the City of San Diego are considering building a reservoir as a pumped storage hydroelectric facility near Mussey Grade Road.

Kelly Rodgers, energy project manager for San Diego County Water Authority (CWA), told the Ramona Community Planning Group, “A large part of treating and delivering water is energy.”

Rodgers said the water authority looks for ways to reduce energy costs.

The proposal is to create an upper reservoir near the San Vicente Reservoir as a hydroelectric project, capable of generating up to 4,000 megawatt hours of electricity per 8 hours of daily operation.

As proposed, the project would use energy to pump water from the San Vicente Reservoir up to a new Foster Canyon Reservoir for storage during periods of low electrical demand and generate electricity by releasing the water from the upper reservoir through the generating units and back to the lower reservoir during periods of high electrical demands.

Rodgers said the project could hook into a nearby power link and has the potential to generate revenue to offset future water rates.

Four sites were considered for the upper reservoir — near Iron Mountain, Foster Canyon, .8 miles east of San Vicente Reservoir, and 1.8 miles southeast of the reservoir — and the Foster Canyon site near the bottom of Mussey Grade Road was selected as the preferred site.

Rodgers said she met with members of the Mussey Grade Road Alliance (MGRA) who were concerned about the impact to their rural area.

In a letter to the planning group, MGRA spokesperson Diane Conklin stated the group’s opposition to the project.

Among the alliance’s reasons:

•It is a $1 billion industrial project to be potentially outsourced to contractors to build a 100-acre lake on land preserved by California Fish and Wildlife and the County of San Diego.

•The project would straddle the Multiple Species Conservation Plan protected lands and would include a large transmission line to tie in with San Diego Gas & Electric’s Sycamore Canyon Substation, as well as other supporting infrastructure.

Rodgers said CWA has a preliminary permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and is in the early stages.

“We’re just looking at the potential for a project here,” she said.

Planning group chair Jim Piva asked if the public would have access to the upper reservoir but Rodgers said it would be secured and remotely monitored with security cameras.

Rodgers conveyed to the Sentinel in an email that the San Diego County Water Authority expects to receive FERC’s decision on CWA’s proposed licensing track for the hydroelectric facility by late September.

A proposed schedule shows that CWA would conduct studies on the project from March 2016 to March 2018.