Why farmers in California are backing a giant solar farm

A mammoth solar farm is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it's needed most.

Farmers are among the project's backers. They don't have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they're looking for new uses for it.

"We're farmers, and we would rather farm the ground," says Ross Franson, president of Woolf Farming and Processing, his family's business. "If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is, you don't. You have to deal with the cards you're dealt."

Franson is on the board of the Westlands Water District, a farmer-run organization that's a key player in this effort, negotiating with solar companies and government regulators on behalf of its members. Westlands is an agricultural power and has long represented the interests of farmers in a large swath of land on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, between the towns of Firebaugh and Huron. Decades ago, it helped persuade the federal government to build a giant canal to deliver irrigation water to this area from rivers far away in Northern California.

Jose Gutierrez, assistant general manager of Westlands Water District, on land that could become a solar farm.

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Dan Charles

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Yet these farmers are now facing a new water crisis. The canal has been delivering less water in recent years because of droughts and competing claims on that water. Until recently, the farmers had a backup water supply: They could pump water from aquifers a thousand feet underground. Now, though, a new state law is coming into force that bans overpumping from the aquifer.

So farmers in Westlands have been leaving large chunks of land unplanted. Another large piece of land, now owned by the Westlands Water District itself, has been fallowed because irrigating it could release high levels of a mineral called selenium that can poison wildlife or people. The farmers, and the district, have been looking for new ways to put that land to use.

A solar developer called Golden State Clean Energy seized the opportunity. Several years ago, it presented Westlands Water District with a master plan for a collection of vast solar projects.

Developers say scale will justify new power lines 

Patrick Mealoy, a partner at Golden State Clean Energy, says they had to propose a solar farm that would generate an enormous amount of power to make the case for new multibillion-dollar power lines to carry electricity from the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Mealoy says smaller proposed projects have stalled because they weren't big enough to justify building those power lines.

"In order to actually have solar be productive, you need size and scale, a mass of projects that support the necessary investment in high voltage transmission lines to collect the electrons and move them," Mealoy says.

Getting the managers of California's electrical grid to approve construction of those transmission lines could be the project's biggest remaining hurdle. If built, the cost of those power lines, along with the benefits of greater electricity supply, eventually will show up in consumers' electricity bills.

Franson says his immediate reaction to the proposal was "Yes, we need to do this." Negotiating the details and completing an environmental review took several years, but in December, the Westlands Water District's board voted to move ahead.

Golden State is the plan's architect, but other solar developers will build sections of it. Construction could take a decade. Even though the Trump administration has abolished some financial incentives for solar projects, Mealoy says it's still a solid business opportunity.

"The state needs it. It's permitted. It's the right place for it. I'm excited about this," he says.

Grace Wu, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says "this is a fantastic place for solar" because the fallowed farmland isn't high-value habitat for wildlife.

Farmworkers wonder if they will also benefit

About 150 farmers within the Westlands Water District, including Jeremy Hughes, have signed up to put solar on some of their land. "We look at it as a new crop. We're harvesting electricity," Hughes says. The guaranteed income from those acres makes it possible to keep farming the rest of his land.

"Because of solar, we can continue farming in Westlands. It'll keep the farming community alive," says Jose Gutierrez, assistant general manager of Westlands Water District.

In the small towns nearby where many farmworkers live, however, there are worries that local residents won't see many benefits from the project. Among those towns is Huron, home to about 6,000 people. Rey León grew up here, working in his family's restaurant. Now he's the town's mayor.

Rey León is the mayor of Huron, Calif., home to many farmworkers who aren't yet sure what they will get out of solar coming to the region.

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Dan Charles

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"I'm worried about Huron," he says. This solar deal may be great for the landowners of Westlands, he says, but less farming means fewer jobs for people who worked in the fields and orchards. León wants some of the solar revenue to flow to this community for education and training, to help people find jobs in this new solar industry.

"We are shareholders," he says. "We kept these communities alive, these economies robust. There's no excuse to leave us out."

Westlands and Golden State Clean Energy have been discussing what they call a community benefits package, but officials haven't released any details.

A possible model for other parts of California

Caity Peterson, at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), says other farming communities in California may try to imitate what Westlands is doing. Because they, too, will have to stop pumping so much water from the ground as the new state law comes into force. "There's going to be some kind of right-sizing of agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley," she says.

According to a study that PPIC carried out, farmers in the valley will have to stop growing crops on between 500,000 and 1 million acres. There will be a lot of dry, sunny land in California, just waiting for a solar developer.

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