A state commission has voted to allow a major transmission project to share space at a substation near Morgan Hill rather than build on undeveloped land in Coyote Valley—a change officials say protects a critical wildlife corridor while adding enough power capacity to supply more than 600,000 homes across the South Bay.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the plan March 19, clearing LS Power Grid California to place a high-voltage converter terminal at Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Metcalf substation in south San Jose instead of on an undeveloped 14-acre property beside Coyote Creek that wildlife advocates say is a critical chokepoint for allowing native species to cross the valley.
The project aims to improve reliability in a power grid that has struggled to supply consistent power to homes and businesses in South County. The 1,000-megawatt transmission terminal connects south San Jose with the communities south of Coyote Valley, allowing power to flow in either direction as needed.
“There’s a shortfall in being able to reliably deliver electricity to customers now, and that’s expected to be exacerbated in the coming years,” said Casey Carroll, senior vice president of LS Power Grid California, citing expected increases in demand from new development projects, EV charging, new housing and electrification of existing homes and businesses.
“It is bidirectional, and so power is going to want to go to where it’s being utilized,” Carroll said. “Under severe weather events or other circumstances, it can move power in both directions to better reinforce the system.”
The original proposed site for the terminal sat along Coyote Creek near Monterey Road in the heart of the Coyote Valley Conservation Program Area, a greenbelt that occupies the narrowest gap between the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range. Conservation groups say that gap is essential for allowing native wildlife to safely cross the valley between a combined 1.1 million acres of habitat.
The co-location of the Power Santa Clara Valley project on the Metcalf property also eliminates the need to underground more than two miles of transmission lines along Monterey Road and Coyote Creek Parkway.
Andrea Mackenzie, General Manager of the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, said placing infrastructure at the original location would have jeopardized a years-long effort to build wildlife crossings across Highway 101 and Monterey Road.
“This would have been a roadblock, literally, to a critical wildlife crossing,” Mackenzie said. “We would have lost the ability for the critical wildlife crossing connection, and with that, the investment the public has made, more than $120 million, for wildlife connectivity.”
The OSA continues to develop plans in collaboration with the VTA, Caltrans and San Jose’s Department of Transportation for an above-ground wildlife bridge and improved undercrossings, funded in part by $5 million from the state Wildlife Conservation Board. Construction is expected to follow in a few years pending additional funding from federal, state and local sources.
“Larger species need bigger underpasses,” Mackenzie explained. “We have evidence now of mountain lions in the Coyote Valley, but we don’t have evidence of them crossing between the Santa Cruz mountains and the Diablo range.
“That’s kind of the keystone species we are looking at, but there are also bobcats (and) deer that are of a size that need bigger crossings. Some of them won’t go through an underpass unless they can see, literally, light at the end of the tunnel.”
Other species, Mackenzie said, won’t brave the tunnel underpasses at all, and require a wildlife overpass in order to cross the highway. She cited similar projects in Southern California as a model, including the under-construction Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing at Liberty Canyon, which will also connect critical mountain lion habitats in the Santa Monica Mountains with isolated inland populations.
San Jose District 4 Councilmember David Cohen, whose district borders the valley, said the compromise sets an example for effective collaboration between development and conservation priorities.
“If we get people together, we collaborate, if we address problems like we do in Silicon Valley all the time, we can find solutions that are beneficial for all of us,” Cohen said.
