Under contract to San Benito County Department of Planning and Building Inspection Services, Aspen prepared an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for a fast-track utility-scale solar photo-voltaic facility proposed for siting in the rural Panoche Valley, in unincorporated southeastern San Benito County. The Panoche Valley Solar Farm Project would be located on approximately 5,000 acres of rangeland and would produce up to 420 megawatts, or enough to power 90,000 homes annually. This controversial project is located within an area identified in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Recovery Plan for Upland Species of the San Joaquin Valley, and the project site is located within high-quality habitat for a number of state and federally threatened and endangered species, including but not limited to San Joaquin kit fox, giant kangaroo rat, California tiger salamander, and the fully protected blunt-nosed leopard lizard. In addition, the project required cancellation of Williamson Act contracts on over 7,000 acres of rangeland-representing the state's largest contract cancellation in history. The project is expected to begin construction in December 2010 and be fully online by 2016.

The comprehensive Draft EIR was released in June 2010 after an extremely short preparation window. Environmental impact analysis for the Draft EIR got underway in April of 2010 after the project applicant submitted a first round of responses to the Team's first data request. After only 3 months of focused work, the Draft EIR was released on time and within budget. After a 60-day comment period, which produced over 1,000 pages of comments on the Draft EIR, the Final EIR was prepared and released in only one month.

Aspen carried out a full public participation plan for this highly controversial project, including holding two public scoping meetings, translating public information materials into Spanish, publi-cation of notices in a wide range of newspapers, updating and maintaining a project website, hosting a project hotline responding to public inquiries on the project, and presenting the conclusions of the EIR at a public information hearing.