They are unlikely allies. The largest farm water district in the state and two of the best known environmental groups, NRDC and the Sierra Club.
On the opposite side of the table on many issues these strange bedfellows are now on the same wavelength when it comes to a proposal that recently surfaced to build utility-size solar panel farms on thousands of acres of fallow land in the Westlands Water District.
“We’re more than excited about the idea - we are introducing the sponsors to all the groups and permitting agencies they need to get approvals from” says the Sierra Club’s Carl Zichella, Director of Western Renewable Programs.”We want to help make it happen.”
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)attorney Johanna Wald aggress. “Conceptually this is great location for large scale solar on land already severely degraded and close to statewide transmission lines.”
Few Delays in Permitting
Zichella who has been the recipient of - sorry the pun - some heat from other groups in the environmental community says since there is some 100,000 acres of “unusable and contaminated land there are few impacts we need to worry about.” That would translate into fast approval times expects Zichella who along with Wald sit on the California Energy Commission Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) steering committee. The group advises the state through a diverse stakeholder process where public moneys should be spent to bring the transmission of planned renewables power to the state’s urban areas.
The RETI group has been working since 2007 to identify the best places to site both generation and transmission of new green energy. The goal is to increase the state’s energy portfolio to 33% renewable sources.
Besides being a fairly sunny spot Westlands is located along major power line crossroads coming from the Coast inland and north/south on Pathway 15 next to Highway 5.
Approached a few months ago by a small group called Westside Holdings,a consultant group with an equity stake in this venture with Westlands, the unaccustomed environmental support is certainly welcome says Daniel Kim, a partner in Westside Holdings.
“We believe building a solar energy park in Westlands would have community, political and environmental support to be permitted more easily than other areas around the state” he says.
Indeed, energy planners have been surveying up and down California to look for sunny( and windy) locations near the big transmission grid to move power north and south. Recent environmental and political pressure has placed some desert and grazing lands off limits eliminating thousands of planned megawatts of solar and wind power.
Suddenly, one of the hottest venus for solar is the western side of the San Joaquin Valley including Kings County where much of the new Westlands Solar Park would be located.
Westlands spans both Fresno and Kings counties but a large portion of lands earmarked for retirement is in the southern part - in Kings County - says Westlands Assistant Manager Tom Glover. “We have lots of land that no longer can be farmed.”
If there is growing environmental support,political support may not be far behind. US Senator Feinstein has been a vocal opponent of big solar in parts of the Mojave but a has been an advocate for Westlands on other projects. Moreover, the feds have a stake in seeing drainage-impaired lands come to some resolution. That’s in part because they may have some share of responsibility for the severity of the problem .
Despite fellow environmental critics who argue that large scale solar isn’t necessary Zichella says “we need both roof top and large scale solar energy.”
Because of the global warming crisis “we need to do them fast and we need to do them well.”
Bouncing Around
Some argue that installing today’s solar technology will be tomorrow’s dinosaur but Zichella counters that ”while technology will improve it should not delay what we can do today knowing that every greenhouse gas emission we can cut now will not be bouncing around the atmosphere tomorrow.” Zichella says the thereat of rising sea levels is critical enough to require quick action in California to reduce carbon emissions.
Ms Wald notes that assembling a solar industrial park in the parched westside “will help this hard hit area recover economically” perhaps providing jobs that farmers without water can’t offer.
Just how big could the Westlands Solar Park be? Through the RETI process the state has just designated the zone to accommodate 5000 megawatts - the size of two and one half Diablo Canyon nuclear power plants.
A Westlands solar farm my not be the only contaminated site government will look at for solar use. Solar is now being proposed in all sorts of unlikely places promoted recently by the EPA. The agency has estimated there are 5000 sites across the US where they are looking at the idea.
You can’t beat the Southwest for solar radiation although the west side of the Valley is pretty good says one expert.
Other areas of the state and Southwest continue to be held up facing environmental opposition due to the presence of the the desert tortoise in Mojave to complaints in the nearby Carrizo Plain about migrating elk and antelope. Meanwhile, barely any critter crosses whole sections of portions of Westlands.
The solar panels growing along Highway 5 in the future may offer something different than Kettleman City’s fast food signs and the despair in the barrio there. It could mean Kettleman City - close to this proposed “zone” - could have a new economic base. Say,why not assemble the panels here.
