Power substation sparking discord
New development near downtown San Antonio is driving a proposal for a new power substation that is drawing opposition from nearby homeowners.
CPS Energy officials said the proposed 138,000-volt Midtown Substation is needed to ensure reliable service northwest of the fast-growing Broadway corridor and Pearl redevelopment complex. There are more than 100 such facilities throughout the city-owned utility’s service area.
The substation would be located near San Pedro and Hildebrand avenues, where circuits in the utility’s electrical network converge. Nearby businesses include an H-E-B, a Jim’s restaurant, a Taco Cabana and a Bank of America branch.
“There’s a lot of growth occurring,” said LeeRoy Perez, director of substation and transmission engineering with CPS Energy. “And so because those circuits converge in this area and the growth is here … the ideal location is in this area.”
Residents of Monte Vista Terrace who received a Sept. 5 letter informing them of the project have raised concerns about the
substation’s appearance, as well as traffic, safety, long-term health effects and potential impact on property values. The utility has an option to purchase a 3-acre industrial site that some had earlier hoped could be converted to affordable housing for seniors.
Mary Johnson, president of the Monte Vista Terrace Neighborhood Association, said a developer was interested in providing affordable housing, possibly letting neighbors have input on the design. But at least two people opposed the idea.
“And I told the neighbors, ‘Look, if we don’t do this now, something even more horrific could go in.’ And a substation in your backyard is pretty horrible,” Johnson said at a CPS-hosted open house on the project this week.
Monte Vista Terrace, located north of Monte Vista, one of the nation’s largest historic districts, recently began a typically yearlong formal process with the city to become a neighborhood conservation district of about 200 homes. Such a designation would create a zoning overlay with height limits and other design rules for new structures.
Without those restrictions, multistory condominiums have been built in the area, sometimes without front yards. The substation site is just west of the proposed district boundaries.
Johnson said single-family homeowners are being trampled by new development, with the city projected to have 1 million more residents by 2040. High-density growth in the city’s core helps prevent urban sprawl, but threatens the character of the neighborhood, she said.
“Maybe they need to start setting an example for the rest of us and not come into our little besieged neighborhoods and say, ‘We’re going to do this here so we can support all these luxury condominiums down the road.’ I don’t think that’s fair,” Johnson said.
The CPS Energy board is expected to vote on the site purchase in December, and could approve the project in early 2020, with construction starting in 2021, officials said.
Plans for power substations typically have drawn at least initial push back from residents, sometimes resulting in concessions such as screening barriers or underground placement of transmission lines. Twenty years ago, in the face of opposition, CPS Energy abandoned plans for a substation on Boerne Stage Road, north of San Antonio. One was built near Fair Oaks Ranch instead.
While some outlying CPS substations have a distribution level of 35,000 volts, the proposed Midtown Substation would have a more typical output of 13,000 volts. Perez said there were no other sites in a targeted study area where the facility could be built displacing residents or businesses.
The substation would be the first to use gas-insulted switchgear technology, placing metal pipes and other high-voltage hardware inside a building, resulting in a more “aesthetically pleasing” project, Perez said. There also would be a southwest driveway access facing San Pedro, and a decorative concrete wall that Perez said would buffer the noise of trains using Union Pacific Railroad tracks on the site’s western edge.
Although people are used to seeing substations with horizontal and vertical aluminum piping running the entire length of the fenced-in site, residents were shown illustrations at the open house of a cleaner looking site, with the new style of compacted hardware contained in a small building surrounded by open space. It would have the wall facing the neighborhood and chain link fence facing San Pedro.
The site, with a street address of 2215 Belknap Place, belongs to Duderstadt Foundation & Construction, which plans to relocate its operations. The lot sits just south of the Olmos Park H-E-B parking lot.
Perez said the site currently has rusty tanks, an old shed and other industrial structures and old equipment.
“We believe that when we’re done with the substation, it’s going to look aesthetically a lot nicer than what is there now,” he said.
Lizzie Pearson, who has two young children and lives about two blocks away, said CPS could do more to prevent power outages caused by heavy tree limbs hitting power lines in old neighborhoods during storms.
The utility provides free treetrimming service near overhead lines when a resident requests it, but does not have a systematic approach to trimming whole blocks or neighborhoods.
Pearson said the substation would be “too nestled among houses.”
“As homeowners in the neighborhood, we’re wondering if it’s really necessary in this particular spot at this particular time, or if some of those other issues might help solve the problem,” she said.
A CPS Energy brochure said “construction activities” would ocwithout cur within the rectangular study area, bounded by Fresno Street to the north, McCullough Avenue to the east, Ashby Place to the south and Blanco Road to the west. Although most construction work would occur at the substation site, Perez said there also could be some work on distribution lines in the area.
CPS also is studying plans for a five-acre Scenic Loop Substation site in Northwest Bexar County. An open house is set for 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3 at Cross Mountain Church Student Center at 24891 Boerne Stage Road.