An influx of public interest on San Diego Gas & Electric’s Sunrise Powerlink project has prompted the California Public Utilities Commission to set up a special toll-free number and email address to deal with the feedback. The impetus for the move, announced Sept. 13, was to streamline the process, according to regulators. “There were a number of calls that were going to [local] legislators and then were going to us, which was slowing down the process,” said commission spokesperson Andy Kotch. Kotch added he did not know how high the volume of calls was thus far. The high voltage project has been stridently opposed by residents in rural east San Diego County since it was first announced. Some of those residents have actively monitored the project for construction violations and incidents, even going so far as to videotape infractions and send proof to the commission and local media. According to a series of weekly reports on the project by a contractor overseeing the process, there have been more than two dozen serious and minor incidents and safety issues since construction began on the project last fall. One of the most recent occurred Sept. 19, when a worker with a San Diego Gas & Electric subcontractor was hospitalized after a fitting for an electrical pole came loose, rolled down, and struck him. The man, whose name has not been released, was not seriously injured and has already returned to work at the rural east county worksite, according to Deborah Tate, a spokesperson with his employer, Par Electrical Contractors. Among the more serious incidents reported over the past few weeks were a two-acre brush fire that was ignited on Aug. 15 when a loose chain on a vehicle generated sparks and the accidental dumping of about 32 ounces of diesel fuel into the local soil by a construction truck on Aug. 26. Other incidents occurring in the past few weeks have included an Aug. 5 fire that burned a 50-by-50-foot patch of land, caused by excavation work; an Aug. 13 accident where a project truck fell 300 feet off an embankment; and an Aug. 4 case where a helicopter dropped an air compressor, resulting in about 55 gallons of diesel fuel being spilled on the ground. The phone number and email address are not actually maintained by the CPUC itself, but by the consulting company that monitors the construction and submits the weekly reports to the commission, Aspen Environmental. When a member of the public sends correspondence to the newly set up email address or calls, they’ll receive a return call or email. It could possibly be from a commission official, but Aspen Environmental is expected to handle the bulk of the calls and emails. “I guess if it’s something they could address, they would,” Kotch said. Construction of the 117-mile, 1,000 MW capacity Sunrise Powerlink began in September 2010 and is expected to be complete by late 2012, at a cost of $2 billion, according to SDG&E.