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Santa Clara Valley Audubon files lawsut over solar project in Panoche Valley

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XemaSab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 11:51 AM
Original message
Santa Clara Valley Audubon files lawsut over solar project in Panoche Valley
Hollister, CA – Following the approval of a conditional use permit and other authorizations for the Panoche Valley Solar Project, Save Panoche Valley and Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society joined in filing a petition in Superior Court challenging the certification of the Panoche Valley project Environmental Impact Report. A project of Solargen Energy, Inc., the entire proposed project footprint is roughly 5,000 acres of grazing land in Eastern San Benito County.

The Panoche Valley is designated Core Habitat for the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, San Joaquin kit fox, and giant kangaroo rat, all federally and state endangered species. Additionally, the valley is designated an Audubon Important Bird Area of Global Significance due to rare bird species, including the Mountain Plover, a candidate for the federal endangered species list.

The petition itemizes numerous inadequacies in the environmental analysis that is provided to inform decision-makers.

“The environmental analysis has been reviewed by the California Department of Fish and Game and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Both of these agencies, as well as numerous environmental organizations, have found the analysis, as well as the mitigations that are proposed to compensate for harmful impacts on endangered species, to be grossly inadequate. In other words, the project might have irreversible impacts on the survival of several species, and it has the potential to significantly contribute to the risk of extinction of these species” said Shani Kleinhaus, Santa Clara Valley Audubon’s environmental advocate.

http://audcalchapternet.blogspot.com/2010/12/santa-clara-valley-audubon-files-lawsut.html
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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:11 PM
Response to Original message
1. Where would you suggest that such large solar facilities
be built? What areas would be acceptable to you?
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XemaSab Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:12 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Try poisoned agricultural land 40 miles to the east
of the proposed Panoche site.

That sounds like a good start to me.
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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:15 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. Coordinates, please, or a Google maps link.
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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:43 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. OK, I looked up the area you mention, near I-5.
That area is not as suitable for solar power production. Less sun throughout the year. That "poisoned" farmland is still under cultivation. Sorry, but I'm not seeing your case being made here. I may live in Minnesota now, but I spent most of my adult life in California, and am intimately familiar with the Panoche Valley.
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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:37 PM
Response to Original message
4. For those interested in seeing the location of this solar
Edited on Fri Jan-07-11 12:39 PM by MineralMan
project, here's a satellite view of its location:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=panoche+road+and+little+panoche+road,+san+benito+co.,+ca&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Panoche+Rd+%26+Little+Panoche+Rd,+Paicines,+CA+95043&gl=us&ei=uEwnTeL7Gouhnwe7npjgAQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ8gEwAA

The entire site would be visible in this magnification. The site will take up 5000 acres, or an area equivalent to a 3.5 mile by 2 mile rectangle. Naturally, the site won't be rectangular, but that's how much area it will use. It's a small blip in this otherwise barren area. Yes, there are lizards there that are on the endangered species list, plus a couple of other critters. They have a wide, wide range of land not included in which to live. Currently, the land is used for cattle grazing, but doesn't support many cattle. If you'd been there, you'd think it was lifeless, even though it's not. There's lots of land in this area...more than you'd believe. It's very, very sparsely populated, and marginal for human activities. There is a major high-voltage powerline that crosses the site for the project. To the south, there are gullies and washes, as you can see in the map. Interstate 5 through the central valley of California is about 5 mouse clicks to the right, on the other side of the mountains. Very little rain falls in this part of California, which is why it's not very hospitable for human activities. It's desert country.

They used to mine asbestos in the hills nearby. That stopped for environmental reasons. There's some gemstone mining still ongoing in those mountains. It's an interested place to drive through or to explore, during the cool months of the year. When the rain does come, there are wildflowers for a brief time. Very few people visit this area, though.

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tularetom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. In the 50's and 60's my uncle had cattle in Panoche
In wet years he was able to keep a sizeable herd there but I can remember him trucking in hay from Los Banos when the winter rains didn't come.

There used to be many pigs in the hills around that area and every once in awhile my dad and my uncle would shoot one and we'd have a huge meal.
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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 12:57 PM
Response to Reply #6
7. I've hunted wild pigs in that area, too.
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MineralMan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 01:02 PM
Response to Reply #6
8. Didja ever see one of those blunt-nosed leopard lizards?
I saw one, one time. Picked it up and looked at it for a while, then let it go. Cute little critter. It was up in the hills, though, not on that flat land.
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joshcryer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-07-11 05:32 PM
Response to Reply #4
9. What I don't understand is how a solar field can really impact, by nature, these animals.
If you do it properly, send in a bunch of environmental college interns with gloves, you can move the critters that are in the way, put up your reflector bases, and they'll happily move back. Are there any real studies that show that reflectors or PV panels on their own are detrimental to desert life?
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