Bernalillo County commissioners deny PNM’s proposed Northeast Heights substation amid neighborhood opposition

Bernalillo County commissioners voted on May 12 to grant neighborhood appeals and deny PNM’s permit and sector-plan amendment requests for a proposed Northeast Heights substation and several miles of 115-kilovolt transmission lines.

The decision followed a multi-hour zoning hearing in which county staff reviewed the record, PNM presented technical studies and community members urged denial. Planner Karen Iverson told the board the county had received more than 1,380 unique public comments on the project, and county staff said an independent study—if contracted by the county—would cost roughly $750,000 to $1,000,000 and take about nine months to complete.

PNM senior vice president Lori Williams told the commissioners the utility had retained national engineering firms and concluded a new substation is needed to relieve overloads at the Hamilton and Tramway substations. Williams said the proposed substation footprint and associated transmission routing were chosen to serve the areas where reliability risk is highest and that undergrounding 115 kV transmission lines would be “highly unusual” and costly; she stated an initial undergrounding estimate of about $55 million and warned regulators may be unwilling to approve such costs.

Appellants and dozens of residents disputed PNM’s site-selection process and urged the board either to require a truly independent third-party study or to deny the applications and force PNM to restart site selection. Appellant counsel argued the proposal would create a “spot zone” in largely single-family, rural-designated neighborhoods and relied on prior administrative and court decisions in urging denial. Robin Doure Autton, president of the Sandia Heights Homeowners Association, and technical lead Keith Julian described what they said were missing corridor analyses, procedural errors and a disparity between the project location and areas of greatest growth.

Public commenters raised a suite of concerns: health and safety risks from electromagnetic fields (EMF) near preschools and residences; potential negative impacts on property values and insurance rates; viewshed and recreation-path impacts along Tramway Boulevard; fire risk near open space and the Sandia foothills; and the scale of the proposed facility—testimony described the substation as a 66-MVA installation roughly three times the capacity of nearby substations. Several speakers urged that if a substation or lines must be sited, the county should require the transmission route be placed away from Eubank and sensitive receptors.

PNM representatives said they had met with stakeholders repeatedly and defended their third-party studies; they also said some cost estimates circulated by commenters did not account for technical requirements. PNM declined to provide funding to the county for the independent RFP-driven studies, according to staff remarks at the hearing.

After public comment, commissioners deliberated. Commissioner Benson moved to grant the appeals and deny the sector-plan amendments and special-use permit requests for the seven cases on the agenda; the board adopted staff-prepared alternate findings for denial and recorded unanimous voice votes in favor of denial and granting the appeals.

The board’s action denies the specific plan amendment and special-use permit applications before it; staff stated the county has issued an RFP for independent analyses and that those studies would take months to complete if the commission chooses to fund them. The commission did not order the project to proceed elsewhere on the record; PNM said it would continue stakeholder engagement and maintain that reliability concerns remain.

What comes next: the county’s independent RFP process is active, and the studies described by staff would take approximately nine months and cost in the mid-six-figure range. PNM indicated it may continue to pursue solutions to the area’s reliability problems; the county did not approve the project as proposed. The board set the next zoning meeting for June 9, 2026.

Quotes from the hearing: “The risk to this area continues to rise and your action is essential to ensuring resolution,” PNM’s Lori Williams told the board. Appellant counsel urged the commission to “save the taxpayers three-quarters of a million to a million dollars” by denying the applications and sending PNM back to select an alternate site. Planner Karen Iverson said the record included “more than 1,380 comments from unique individual email addresses.”

The county’s finding language and staff reports are now part of the administrative record; the board used alternate findings prepared by staff in recording the denials. The denials and the underlying record can be used in any subsequent applications or appeals. The commission thanked staff and participants for their time and closed the hearing.