Tucson Electric Power Company states it didn’t disclose that the new 138 kV power line would connect to the mine because a substation was not part of the “stakeholder” disclosure process.
The Arizona Daily Star published a detailed story Sunday on how the proposed Santa Rita Connection power line extension would terminate at a substation that will also provide a direct link to a separate 138 kV power line that will go to the Copper World mine site.
TEP publicly stated that the Santa Rita Connection had nothing to do with Copper World in public meetings and in a discussion with an individual who inquired if the new power line would be connected to Copper World.
“Save the Scenic Santa Ritas urges the Arizona Corporation Commission to carefully review this project to ensure that ratepayers are not subsidizing the $18 million cost of the Santa Rita Connection to benefit Copper World,” said John Dougherty, SSSR executive director.
TEP is now saying power for the mine could come from a separate 138 kV power line that will also connect to the Santa Rita Substation. This line, known as the South Loop, provides power to the Green Valley and Sahuarita area. A TEP spokesman told the Daily Star the mine could get power even if the Santa Rita Connection wasn’t built.
This appears to directly contradict what TEP has been telling the public during the Santa Rita Connection line siting process that began last fall. TEP said the purpose of the new line is to provide additional power to 14,000 customers in the Green Valley and Sahuarita area where circuits were already reaching 75% capacity.
Customer demand for power in that area is “at or approaching operating limits” for the existing electrical system, Steve Eddy, TEP’s director of public affairs, told the newspaper. “This project is designed to increase redundancy to assure the community can grow.”
“If customer demand in that area is already reaching operating limits, then how can there be sufficient power to also operate Copper World which will require far more power than 14,000 customers?” Dougherty asked.
“State regulators need to carefully review the overall power supply and demand situation in the area and, if necessary, require TEP to obtain an independent analysis of Copper World’s impact on TEP’s electrical grid,” Dougherty added.
The Daily Star reported that TEP didn’t disclose that the Santa Rita Connection would terminate at a substation because the substation, unlike the power line, was not part of the formal “stakeholder” process in which the utility explains its proposed action to public officials, various interest groups and other parties.
“Not all of the work that TEP does is associated with public stakeholder processes,” another TEP spokesman, Joe Salkowski, told the newspaper. “Public notification of engineering design decisions is not always provided.”
In this case, TEP did not publicly disclose during the stakeholder process that TEP and Copper World would combine the mine’s long planned switch yard with TEP’s new substation. This combination would allow the Santa Rita Connection power line to feed power to the mine.
TEP said it has not determined how much Copper World, which is owned by Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals, would pay for integrating the switch yard into the substation.
SSSR learned about the combined switch yard and substation on May 27 when it discovered an email exchange between the Town of Sahuarita and TEP in records TEP filed hours before the May 26 public hearing on the power line.
The March 12 email exchange revealed that the Copper World switch yard would be “collocated” with TEP’s substation which would also house a direct connection to Copper World.
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