By CHUCK BELL
We all need and enjoy the benefits of electricity and its transmission. Southern California Edison’s job is to keep the lights on. Renewable energy is a neat idea with wind (but mostly) solar as a potential significant generator in our desert setting. We also have a unique environment, land-use character, custom and culture that would be adversely affected by even some of these projects with the integrity of our communities being diluted if not destroyed.
The two photovoltaic projects under construction in Lucerne Valley, Agincourt and Marathon, now called Lone Valley Solar, were approved under the County’s system before its current ordinance. They went through 10-acre-feet of construction water from the Morongo Pipeline’s untreated State water and are now getting truckloads after truckloads from a local source over six miles away (spewing out a lot of CO2) and could end up using another 20 or so acre feet of potable water from an overdrafted, adjudicated basin. And with all that water use during recent winds the plume of flying dirt reached miles from the sites.
Complaints took up a lot of County Code Enforcement’s and the Mojave Air Quality Management District’s time. The Soltec PV in Newberry Springs somehow morphed from an approved, low profile panels into huge panels over 40 feet high, with no apparent re-notification of surrounding residents, and also is subject to blowing sand from destabilized soils, which again instigated complaints. If we don’t get smart about such projects and get serious about adopting/enforcing binding conditions of approval, County Code Enforcement and MDAQMD will end up inheriting these projects, both with limited staffs and budgets. These projects got a Power Purchase Agreement with SCE and beyond that the two in Lucerne Valley requiring tremendous amount of grading (including the destruction of Joshua Trees and Yuccas), major flood control work, major water consumption, and the one in Newberry Springs with its sand-blow problem and major project revision, are only good for being ‘poster boy’ examples of what NOT to do.
We have to get smarter.
Take a good look at the included maps and see what other damage could be done before we get our collective act together.
SCE’s Coolwater/Lugo Transmission Line proposal, and its proposed Desert View Substation in Apple Valley, currently before the CPUC, has sparked numerous meetings, protests, letters of opposition, etc.
Its application to the CPUC states” “The Barstow ... Lucerne Valley ... areas have been identified to be rich solar and wind resource areas.... The purpose of the Proposed Project is to provide additional transmission capacity needed in the ... Lucerne Valley areas to support large-scale renewable generation development....”
Said statement likely references the draft DRECP’s Development Focus Areas (DFAs), totally engulfing and surrounding Lucerne Valley and other communities in all six alternatives, formulated with no local stakeholder participation inferring that solar/wind all over the place is a “done deal.” It’s not!
The potential MW generation that SCE cites in its application is too speculative and locally opposed to constitute rationale for this transmission project, with some of the proposed RE projects still “in study,” or withdrawn, “on hold,” not economically viable, etc. As such, if the potential for “renewable” generation in Lucerne Valley is one of the primary reasons for this transmission project, it is based on a failed premise, not much will come from here, thus SCE and PUC need to re-think the need for and benefit of this project.
We are working with the County to identify a suitable area in Lucerne Valley for industrial-scale PV that meets reasonable and functional siting constraints, an area about 2% of that identified in the draft DRECP, with our strong position contrary to the project description’s inference that we are a wide-open space, “available for these things.”
We won’t be.
Per our meetings, tours and numerous communications: SCE staff, CEC Commissioners, the Governor’s Office and San Bernardino County officials are well aware of our community’s adamant rejection of said DFAs and our opposition to utility scale solar or wind projects, particularly where they conflict with existing and projected land-uses, providing no real economic benefit, our major concerns re: surrounding property devaluations and our emphasis for and support of “point of use” (Distributed Generation - DG) rooftop/parking lot/backyard PV.
Parking lot/rooftop DG generation needs to be included and accounted for in the State’s and SCE’s 33% RE quota (likely increasing), not just industrial scale MWs, alleviating the need for additional long-distance transmission lines, their costs and known energy losses. DG doesn’t tear up native desert ground, doesn’t result in erosion/blowing dirt, isn’t a blight on the landscape, certainly provides more LOCAL jobs than do industrial scale projects (and even with various subsidies), provides more property tax revenue than exempt industrial systems, and its presence in a community would promote more incentive for localized installations.
We are all aware that these projects involve ‘willing buyers/willing sellers’ – that landowners/applicants have certain rights to the use of their properties, that BLM and the County are obligated to process said applications. However, approvals of even a few of these projects will dictate where other projects go, bastardizing the pending plans in the process , wasting the $700k the county got for the RE Element.
If the Coolwater/Lugo transmission line is approved prior to completion and adoption of all these pending plans — it will either trump said plans or unduly influence them because by virtue of its existence, alignment and substations — it will determine where industrial scale renewables are sited, where PPA’s will be the easiest to obtain, at the expense of what was intended to be good, regional planning. Just more tails wagging the dog.
The CPUC should shelve SCE’s application. The County and BLM should put all pending projects on hold, at least until regional RE plans are completed. The State’s draft DRECP (an energy plan but certainly not a conservation plan) is due sometime this summer. BLM’s West Mojave Plan update isn’t completed yet. San Bernardino County’s Renewable Element to the General Plan (and community zones for industrial scale projects) won’t be in draft form for probably more than a year. We are dealing with too many individual projects, too many “parts” before we understand the consequences of the whole, a systemic, dysfunctional series of reactions with no real PLAN to guide us, to determine the best places for this stuff with the least environmental/land-use/social damage.
How about the County, BLM, CEC, CPUC, SCE and community representatives have a meeting to determine the best way to deal with all this stuff prior to the pending plans being finalized, before we lose our best options and an opportunity for good land-use planning? We will help you set it up.
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Chuck Bell is president of the Lucerne Valley Economic Development Association and a longtime resident of Lucerne Valley.