Panoche Valley Solar Project moves forward

The San Benito County Board of Supervisors unanimously decided to move ahead with a $650 million solar project on Tuesday after an appeal from several environmental groups.

The Panoche Valley Solar Project has been more than five years in the making. The 247-megawatt solar panel farm could generate enough power for 68,000 homes in California. It could also generate hundreds of construction jobs, indirect jobs and other opportunities. In fact, more than a dozen people spoke about such benefits during the public comment portion of the meeting.

“This is what we have to turn to is renewable energy,” said Manny Pinheiro, of the Operating Engineers Local No. 3. “It brings not only jobs here, people spend their money. They build up San Benito County.”

However, environmental groups say they aren’t giving up the fight. While Defenders of Wildlife recognize the importance of renewable energy, they are against the solar farm at its proposed location. The group is concerned about some of the threatened or endangered animals that live there. Some of those include the San Joaquin Kit Fox, the giant kangaroo rat and the blunt-nosed leopard lizard.

“We are going to continue to oppose the project,” Kim Delfino, California program director of Defenders of Wildlife said. “And as noted before, there is a lot of mitigation from this project and there are benefits from having a renewable energy project and we acknowledge those. But the fact we are opposing this and taking the position this cannot be mitigated and has to be moved shows, I think, how severe the impacts are to this project. It’s not a position we normally take on these types of projects, normally we are able to work things out, but as we said several years ago, this project is in a location that cannot be fixed or mitigated, so we have to continue to oppose it.”

The company’s CEO, John Pimentel said they are trying to help the natural habitat and have changed the 2010 proposal to reflect that in a revised “mitigation package.” Their experts concluded there was kangaroo rat activity in the southeastern portion of their proposed location. Because of that, they revised their proposals to avoid installing panels in that area. They also plan to build 500-meter wide corridors through the project area to accommodate the kit foxes that travel through the valley.

“We’ve taken some extreme efforts to improve the project,” Pimentel said. “We went from having a 400 megawatt project down to what is now a 247 megawatt project. It’s a 40 percent reduction in the generating capacity in the project itself with the primary objective to making the project better for those species impacted.”

They plan to have biologists onsite during construction. Animal populations will be relocated, however the environmental groups said many die during relocation. Despite this, it’s still not enough for some activists who want the project moved. They also vow to continue fighting the project.

“Short of them moving the project to one of the places we’ve asked them to,” Delfino explained. “There’s no way of fixing it.”

The next step for the Panoche Valley Solar Project is to secure permits from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. If the permits are secured this summer, construction will begin in the late summer-early fall. It has to be completed by the end of next year to quality for a federal tax credit.

“That deadline is critical because a major component of the project is the federal investment tax credit which gives the project a tax credit based on how much the project costs,” Pimentel said.

Former San Benito County supervisor Reb Monaco approved the project in 2010. Five years later, he said he still supports it and wants to see it come to fruition.

“I think the timing was right and all indications today show we need to look for alternative energy resources,” Monaco said. “Here is an ideal area given the amount of sunlight that’s out in that area. It’s pretty isolated so it wasn’t that disruptive.”