Aspen Celebrates 20 Years Of Collaboration With The California Public Utilities Commission

Construction of Pacific Pipeline through the Angeles National Forest

In 1993, just 18 months after Aspen was founded, President Hamid Rastegar assembled a large team of experts to prepare an EIR/EIS for a controversial 150-mile crude oil pipeline from Kern County, through downtown Los Angeles County, ending at refineries in Wilmington. The Pacific Pipeline Project became the first of many successful collaborations between Aspen and the CPUC – collaborations that have now lasted for 20 years!

The Pacific Pipeline was also a first for the CPUC: a joint CEQA/NEPA document (shared with NEPA Lead Agency, the Angeles National Forest). The massive pipeline construction project presented another “first” for Aspen and the CPUC: the implementation of a complex mitigation monitoring program. With concurrent construction spreads in the southern Kern County farmland, over the Tejon Pass, through rugged mountains of the Forest, and into the San Fernando Valley, downtown LA, and southern LA, the CPUC and Aspen worked together to track the hundreds of adopted mitigation measures in diverse and challenging environments.

PG&E Natural Gas Pipeline Construction, Shasta County

After pipeline construction was finished, Aspen had developed its successful monitoring team. The CPUC learned that it could trust Aspen to support its decisions on complex and controversial proposals, and selected Aspen to work with its Energy Division staff on many more exciting projects, including:

Alturas Transmission Line EIR/EIS, our first transmission project with the CPUC, between Reno and Alturas;

PG&E’s Divestiture of Hydroelectric Assets, for which we prepared a massive Draft EIR before the project was superseded by legislative action;

Level 3 Telecommunications, a multi-volume Mitigated Negative Declaration with construction monitoring across the entire state;

PG&E Northeast San Jose Transmission EIR, where the CPUC adopted our underground route alternative that became the first 230 kV solid dielectric cable in California;

SCE Tehachapi Renewable Transmission Project (TRTP) EIR/EIS, for which Aspen prepared several EIR/EISs to address the multiple project phases;

SDG&E Sunrise Powerlink Project EIR/EIS, which evaluated nearly 100 alternatives to SDG&E’s proposed 500 kV line through Anza Borrego Desert State Park;

Numerous substations, smaller high-voltage line improvements, and telecommunications upgrades through four separate on-call contracts.

Devers-Palo Verde tower east of Colorado River

We’re especially excited to continue our collaboration with the CPUC in two major 500 kV transmission projects that will help carry renewable power from the deserts into the Los Angeles Basin. We assembled teams of experienced managers and specialists to support the CPUC, and NEPA Lead Agency BLM, in their assessments of the SCE West of Devers Upgrade Project and the SCE Coolwater-Lugo Transmission Project.

Throughout the last 20 years, we have worked side by side with the CPUC staff in permitting many of California’s major infrastructure projects. These projects have allowed the efficient transmission of electrical energy, transportation of oil and gas, transmission of telecommunication signals, transportation of water supplies, and storage of fossil fuel resources. We are extremely proud of our 20 years of service to such an important agency in California and look forward to providing them with responsive, innovative, and expert services in the years to come.