Project Type: Energy
Panoche Valley Solar Farm (San Benito County)
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.
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