Supervisor Margie Barrios on Tuesday claimed the Panoche Valley solar farm project is being held up in Sacramento and she speculated about possible involvement from environmentalists.
Barrios addressed the matter and warned that the company behind the project is expecting tax credits that could expire if the project’s environmental review doesn’t move ahead at the state level.
She received board support to lobby in Sacramento along with other project proponents. Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz offered to go along as well.
“I believe the environmentalists are trying to hold it up as much as possible,” Barrios said.
Supervisor Robert Rivas responded by calling her claim about environmentalists “vague.”
“I’m an environmentalist and I’m not blocking the project,” Rivas said.
Barrios corrected herself and said she is “an environmentalist of sorts, too.” That prompted a chuckle from Rivas at the dais. The two officials were on opposite sides of the recent oil extraction debate, with Rivas in support of the successful Measure J ban against enhanced practices such as fracking.
The company vying to build a 247-megawatt solar farm in Panoche recently submitted a draft supplemental environmental impact report addressing plans to address impacts under a revised, reduced proposal.
PV2 Energy filed the supplemental draft EIR on Dec. 23. The prior company overseeing the project, Solargen Energy, had an initial EIR approved by the county board in late 2010.
PV2 submitted the supplemental draft—the public comment period was open until Feb. 10—to address changes to the project such as its reduced scope, a more condensed but intensified construction schedule, and variations in water use. That latest draft EIR came after PV2’s August announcement that it secured a power purchase agreement—the last, major step in the process—with Southern California Edison.
Primarily prompting the need for a revised draft EIR were clarifications with transmission lines, said Byron Turner, interim director of planning for the county. According to the supplemental draft document, Pacific Gas & Electric identified necessary upgrades to transmission lines resulting from changes to the project.
Solargen Energy first proposed the Panoche Valley project in 2009, but when the company ran into financial problems in 2011, PV2 bought the assets for the project. Duke Energy Renewables, part of the largest utility company in the country, formed a partnership with PV2 to oversee the project.
With the initial proposal, there was talk of building a 1,000-megawatt solar farm on up to 30,000 acres. Under the current plans, PV2 would build a 247-megawatt facility on 2,506 acres.
The supplemental draft EIR prepared by San Francisco-based Aspen Environmental Group highlighted the following changes in the revision, among others:
• The project footprint and overall disturbance area have been reduced, resulting in a larger on-site conservation area for species conservation.
• There will be an accelerated construction scheduled, with one 18-month phase as opposed to a five-year construction rollout.
• The accelerated schedule will mean the number of daily workers to and from the project working at the site would go from 200 per day to 550.
• The applicant is proposing to increase the amount of water used during the temporary construction period. Due to the reduced project size, the amount of water used for washing panels would go down.
• The applicant is proposing to build temporary construction water ponds and three temporary water tanks near existing or new wells.
• Permanent, on-site access roads would be eliminated, with dirt paths between rows of panels used as transportation corridors for maintenance.
