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Green Path Alert

STOP MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA FROM DESTROYING OAK GLEN AND YOUR NATIONAL FOREST

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa touts himself to be America’s “greenest mayor” as he brilliantly separates himself from L.A.’s environmentally destructive projects. In Kern County, environmentalists oppose his city’s dumping of L.A.’s sewage sludge on farmland. In Riverside County, environmentalists oppose his city’s plan to dump the city’s trash next to Joshua Tree National Park. Now Mayor Villaraigosa is proposing to destroy the scenic historic apple growing community of Oak Glen and 25 miles of pristine lands in the San Bernardino National Forest with roads, shaved ridges and leveled mountain tops for 200 foot steel lattice towers under a power project he cynically calls Green Path North.

There is nothing green about Green Path North. Its proposed routes through Oak Glen, desert preserves, and the San Bernardino National Forest have been opposed in letters to the Mayor from the Oak Glen Apple Growers Association, and ten environmental groups including the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, The Wildlands Conservancy, and the San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust. These groups all support using the existing Southern California Edison transmission corridor along Interstate 10, which is the shortest route to bring geothermal energy from the Salton Sea to Los Angeles. But L.A. will make more money owning its own utility corridor rather than sharing existing corridors so the Mayor proposes to destroy huge swaths of pristine lands. The only green in Green Path is found on dollar bills.

Under utility laws, the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) can condemn hundreds of private properties in other cities and counties over the objections of landowners and their elected officials. Mayor Villaraigosa’s Green Path routes are formally opposed by Riverside and San Bernardino County Boards of Supervisors, and most of the cities along its route. We ask that Mayor Villaraigosa respect our democracy and the will of the people. This past apple season, Oak Glen apple growers polled five percent of their visitors and over 95 percent of those polled signed postcards addressed to Mayor Villaraigosa opposing Green Path North. Over 25,000 people from throughout Southern California signed these postcards to the Mayor expressing disgust with the city’s greed and lack of concern for the environment in historic Oak Glen. Many noted that this project is being promoted by the same LADWP that secretly took over Owens Valley. An account of the lies and deception by the Mayor’s LADWP regarding the Green Path Project are recounted on the California Desert Coalition’s website: www.CaDesertCo.org.

Please send letters to Mayor Villaraigosa opposing this project and send copies of these letters to the Oak Glen Apple Growers’ Association at P.O. Box 1123, Yucaipa, CA 92399 so we can represent your opposition in public hearings. To help expand this billboard campaign, please send donations to the Oak Glen Apple Growers Association. One hundred percent of donations will be used for billboard advertising. Help preserve these beautiful southern California landscapes that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa proposes to destroy. Thank you.

WHAT OFFICIALS AND ORGANIZATIONS HAVE STATED IN THEIR LETTERS TO MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA

“The City of Los Angeles, under the guise of the ‘Green Path Project,’ is targeting many communities with blight including the front country communities along the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest. Oak Glen has worked for over one hundred years at preserving their scenic integrity as a major tourism and farming community. I fear you will lose all credibility in a run for statewide office if you destroy the scenic and biological integrity of so many southern California communities under the guise of ‘green power’.”Alison Law-Mathisen, Second Generation Apple Farmer
“The point of ‘green’ power, of course, is to reduce the environmental impacts of energy consumption and to promote more sustainable energy sources. But the ends cannot justify the means. There is no reason that providing access to renewable energy sources should mean the destruction of priceless vistas, natural areas, and wildlife corridors. Not only is such energy consumption not ‘green’, it is unacceptable under any name.Moreover, many of the communities and areas that would be impacted by the ‘Green Path Project’ have invested significant amounts of money, time, and effort in order to protect and enhance their scenic and natural values. To allow the ‘Green Path Project’ to undo those efforts would be a travesty.” Justin Augustine, Center for Biological Diversity
“Mayor Villaraigosa’s proposed utility corridors go through three of The Wildlands Conservancy’s Preserves: Oak Glen, Mission Creek and Pioneertown Mountains. These preserves were established to protect habitats and landscapes of statewide significance. They are open to the public for free and have hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Oak Glen and Pioneertown Mountains Preserves are in two historic communities that by virtue of our land protection program will remain picturesque communities for all time to come. No one ever imagined that projects originating in Los Angeles would blight these communities. The Green Path planners are obviously old school planners who look at the big blank spots on maps as the most expedient place for a new highway, a new utility corridor, or a new land fill dump. Most often these blank spots are our parks, our nonprofit preserves, our important habitat and wilderness areas, and communities that have consciously resisted unchecked urban sprawl. They are our sacred lands, if indeed anything is sacred in our culture.” David Myers, Executive Director, The Wildlands Conservancy
“The San Bernardino Mountains are an important scenic backdrop for many neighboring communities that would be visually impacted by unsightly power lines. They would greatly diminish the recreational and aesthetic appeal of the popular San Bernardino National Forest, which is the most heavily-used public land in the county, drawing visitors from all over southern California. We strongly urge you to recognize the great mistake of the present location and the devastating impact that invasive massive utility lines would bring to these popular mountains and desert areas.” Drew Feldmann, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society
“The mountains of the San Bernardino National Forest are an important scenic treasure in southern California. Degrading the visual magnificence of this monumental asset would be a terrible disservice to the people of the most populated region of the state. Construction impacts, indigenous vegetation clearance and access roads all will be enormously disruptive. The placement of large steel transmission towers across the base of the mountains will badly scar the pristine landscape and permanently encumber it with disfiguring blight.” Bill Engs, San Bernardino Mountains Land Trust
“We strongly oppose the so called ‘Green Path Project’ because it would severely impact several regionally important wildlife movement corridors, as well as, core habitat critical to the survival of many native plant and wildlife species.” Kristeen Penrod, South Coast Wildlands