Can threatened tortoises and utility-scale solar plants coexist in the California desert? Since the solar rush began a few years ago, results have been discouraging. But an ambitious new plan aims to strike a long-lasting compromise. Northern Californians get a chance to weigh in on the process at a public meeting in Sacramento on Wednesday, September 5.

BrightSource Energy

The sprawling Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is scheduled to go online next year.

The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan — just call it the DRECP — is designed to establish habitat protection guidelines for dozens of species, not just the elusive desert tortoise, across an incredible 22.5 million acres of desert caught in the crossfire between conservation and clean energy.

It’s already being called the nation’s largest-ever Habitat Conservation Plan (a tool created by the federal Endangered Species Act of 1973), and the first to be framed around renewable-energy development. Habitat conservation plans work by addressing mitigation and conservation needs up front and requiring developers to pay into them — rather than the scattershot, reactionary approach employed in the desert to date.

No matter how the DRECP turns out, its implications are likely to be enormous — even beyond California, where it could set an example for other states pursuing large-scale clean-energy development in remote areas.

And yet the plan has flown quietly under the radar since the planning process began in March 2009 with a diverse, often contentious group of stakeholders. But next week at the California Energy Commission’s offices in Sacramento, members of the public can listen in and offer comment as state and local government agencies, renewable-energy developers, environmental groups, and land-use attorneys debate the ins and outs of habitat conservation on public land. The federal Bureau of Land Management owns more than 11 million acres in the California desert.

According to DRECP Director Dave Harlow, the plan relies on sophisticated, state-of-the-art species-distribution models and tools to account for a wide variety of desert plant and animal species, including 36 plants, 20 birds, ten mammals, seven amphibians and reptiles, and even four fish.

But April Sall of Southern California environmental group The Wildlands Conservancy, one of the numerous stakeholders, is worried that everything may not come together as planned. She claims that industry representatives have been lobbying to keep land open for development, and the project’s rapid timeline — a final draft is due next spring — may not allow sufficient time to fill in knowledge gaps about habitat and species distribution in certain areas of the desert.

“I’m hopeful that this will work, but at this time I have a bit of concern,” she said. “It’s kind of our only chance for the desert at this point.”

Barbara Boyle, the Sierra Club’s senior lead for energy issues, who has also been participating in the planning process, shared Sall’s concerns. “They are moving it pretty quickly, and that makes us nervous. They are on a very fast track.”

In addition to conservation considerations, the DRECP will also help determine how many new transmission lines can be built in the California desert, Boyle said, and ultimately how much the state will rely on remote, large-scale renewable energy to meet its Renewable Portfolio Standard. “There are some really important policy choices here that are being made that are going to affect things over the long-term,” she said. “These are huge policy issues that are all wrapped up this in plan.”

A draft version of the DRECP will arrive in December.

Salt ponds in Redwood City where the new Saltworks development is proposed. Photo: Lauren Sommer.

What do Bay Area airports and some big Silicon Valley companies have in common? They sit right on the edge of San Francisco Bay, where sea level rise is expected to have a big impact by the end of the century.

That may seem far in the future, but state agencies are preparing for climate change now by writing new rules for construction along the bay’s shoreline. As you can imagine, developers and environmentalists aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye.

That’s evident on a patch of land at the edge of the bay in Redwood City. For more than a century, it’s been home to one thing: salt.

“As you look out, you can see it looks sort of like a frozen pond,” said David Smith, a Senior Vice President with DMB Associates. “On a typical season, you would hope to establish a layer of 8 to 12 inches.”

Cargill Salt owns these ponds as part of their salt-harvesting operations. Smith is with a developer that’s working with Cargill on a different vision for these more than 1,400 acres.

“Welcome to the Redwood City Saltworks site,” he said. Saltworks is DMB’s proposal for 8,000 to 12,000 new housing units. Smith said half of the site would be dedicated to open space uses including tidal marsh restoration, and then the other half would be an integrated, transit-oriented development.

Smith said it’s housing that’s sorely needed in the Bay Area.

“You have had the explosion of economic success of Silicon Valley. We should be ashamed of our inability or unwillingness to provide housing to support those workers and that economic activity,” he said.

David Lewis, Executive Director of Save the Bay, is on the other side of the issue.

“This site is not a site for housing,” he said. “Salt ponds in Redwood City are actually one of the last unprotected areas that could be restored to tidal marsh for San Francisco Bay.”

It seems like a pretty typical story: a developer wants prime land to build on, and environmental groups want to see wildlife habitat restored. But there’s a twist.

Bay Waters Rising

“What we’re looking at is a blue inundation zone and it depicts the projections for sea level rise for the region around Redwood City,” Smith said, pointing to map showing the low-lying parts of the bay’s shoreline at risk from sea level rise.

Smith says their plan calls for a three-mile levee to protect the development from the bay. Projections from state scientists show sea level could rise by nearly six feet by the end of the century.

“We’d like to ignore it. But if we ignore it, we’re ignoring it at our own economic peril,” said Will Travis, Executive Director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. BCDC is the state agency with jurisdiction over the bay.

“We’re building things now that will be around for a hundred years. And we should, we believe, think about how those cities, how those communities will remain viable and sustainable,” he said.

BCDC is writing new regulations for development along the shore, which they’ll use in future permitting decisions. They’ve been guided by a state plan from the Schwarzenegger administration called the California Climate Adaptation Strategy. It discourages building in low-lying areas and encourages wetland restoration.

“Wetlands are wonderful for dealing with climate change,” said Travis. “Wetlands soak up flood water. So the wider the wetland in the front, the lower the levee can be in the back.”

Battle Over Shoreline Rules

But when BCDC released the first draft of its new development policy two years ago, the agency faced a wave of protest, especially from folks who see bay-front property as prime real estate.

“It tried to do too much too fast,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a group representing business interests.

“We should be absolutely concerned about sea level rise, but we shouldn’t allow the concern about it to say let’s just stop doing everything,” he said.

A number of bay-front cities had the same complaint. Public meetings got ugly.

“People said things that they probably weren’t proud of when the meeting was over, and I know we’ve had epithets hurled at us,” said Wunderman.

So BCDC backed off a little, saying that new development would be considered on a case by case basis.

David Lewis of Save the Bay said those changes concern him, because the policy is leading the way for others.

“Most small cities don’t have the resources to change the way they plan and permit developments with a big change like sea level rise,” Lewis said.  “I think BCDC’s at the forefront, and it should be brave about doing the right thing.”

Will Travis of BCDC says the changes were necessary, so the plan works for the dozens of cities it involves.

“We want to achieve environmental protection. We have to, but not at the expense of regional prosperity. So we’re trying to achieve that balance,” he said.

The challenge, Travis said, is making a global issue like climate change part of regional planning.

“A society likes dealing with climate change at the abstract. It’s when you actually get down to doing something about it that people have concerns,” he said.

In October, BCDC expects to finalize the sea level rise policy that will govern development along San Francisco Bay for years to come.

Flocks of birds near wind turbines in Solano County. (Photo: Craig Miller)

It’s hard to find people who are just flat out against wind energy. As with real estate, attitudes seem to come down to location, location, location. That’s why three of the thorniest issues with wind are project siting, transmission (lines for the power produced), and the industry’s turbulent history with birds and bats. Some of those challenges are highlighted in this slide show, designed to accompany my two-part radio series.

Last fall, even the National Audubon Society, one of the nation’s most stalwart protectors of winged creatures, published a position statement generally favorable toward wind power, calling it a “good news, bad news” proposition. The statement calls California’s Altamont Pass “notorious for killing many raptors, including golden eagles.” A 2003 study by the National Renewable Energy Lab calculated that on average, each turbine in the pass was claiming a bird about once every five years (0.19 birds/turbine/year) — but there are thousands of turbines in the pass, many older models that are more of a danger to birds.

Developers are in the process of “repowering” the pass with newer, larger turbines, less lethal to birds. That may seem counterintuitive but the older, smaller models caused more problems. Since they had lower output, more of them were required. The blades were positioned lower, spun faster, and supported by lattice towers that provided inviting nesting spots, unlike the smooth tubular towers of new turbines.

Altamont is the oldest of California’s four biggest wind energy zones, highlighted on this interactive map.

View Major Wind Energy Pockets in California in a larger map

The Audubon statement concedes that newer turbine designs are becoming more bird-friendly, and finds climate change a bigger threat to avian critters in the long run. The Society went on to call for an extension of the federal Production Tax Credit for wind development, fearing its expiration next year encourages wind developers to rush projects along and “cut corners” on siting.

Meanwhile industry and wildlife groups have joined forces to address the bat mortality issue.

Hear my two-part radio series on challenges facing wind energy development in California on The California Report. Those and all other stories in our series, “33 x 20: California’s Clean Power Countdown,” are archived at our special series page.

Ken-ichi Ueda and Scott Loarie demonstrated the new iNaturalist iPhone app at Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve (Photo: Richard Morgenstein)

At Jasper Ridge, a biological preserve and study area on the Stanford campus, a dozen of the preserve’s docents gathered this week to learn about a new iPhone application that could ultimately help scientists study how ecosystems are adapting to climate change.

The new app, called iNaturalist, is the mobile version of a citizen-science website by the same name.  The iPhone app is still in testing and not yet available, but the website, iNaturalist.org, is already an active online community of citizen-scientists around the world who use the site to record and share their sightings.

One of the original iNaturalist creators, Ken-ichi Ueda, has teamed up with Scott Loarie, a post-doctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institute at Stanford. The two are hoping to leverage the site and the mobile application to engage more citizens to contribute to a growing database of field observations that could help scientists track biodiversity.

“One of things that’s most pressing in conservation is that species are going extinct about a thousand times faster than they ever have before,” said Loarie.  “So the scale of this problem is just incredible. It’s way too difficult for a handful of museums and graduate students to stay on top of.”

With the iNaturalist site, and especially with the new iPhone app, which streamlines the uploading process, Loarie hopes to get as many “eyes on the ground” as possible, documenting where species are, and where they aren’t.

“You can think about species around the world like little lights blinking on and off,” Loarie explained. “Whats happening with climate change and land use change is that those lights are blinking off faster than they are blinking on, and a lot of them are happening totally under the radar screen.”

Ueda originally co-developed the iNaturalist site as a project during his Masters studies at UC Berkeley’s School of Information.

“My initial goal with the site was to get people engaged with nature, not necessarily to do the science,” said Ueda. “The scientific data is a really valuable and useful by-product, but my primary motivation is to get people outside and thinking about the plants and animals that they’re seeing.”

But now Ueda and Loarie are trying to take iNaturalist to the next level by finding ways this crowd-sourced data can be useful to scientists.

“It’s really cool if I’m walking around and I see a horned lizard because they are really cool animals,” said Ueda. “But it’s even cooler if I see one here at Jasper Ridge, because no one has seen one here for a long time, and it could be locally extinct.”

An observation like that, he said, could be valuable to scientists. One of the tasks now, he said, is to find ways to connect that data with the scientists who care about it and to establish standards of data quality so that scientists can trust it.

Ueda said the iPhone app may not be ready for the public for another month, but in the meantime, users can easily upload their digital photos from the field to the site, once they get home.   The site is connected with Google Maps, and Wikipedia and the photo-sharing site Flickr, so adding comments, information, and geographical information is easy.  The app, when it’s ready, should make logging observations even easier.

In the field on Friday, Loarie and Ueda were showing off a testing version of the app.

“I think the idea has a a lot of merit,” said Ross Bright, a docent at Jasper Ridge who was at the presentation. “Whether its workable and doable is the problem.  My own personal perspective is that most docents are not necessarily literate in the high-tech gadgetry that’s involved in the this.  There will be a learning curve.”

Ueda and Loarie hope that not only will the docents at Jasper Ridge start cataloging their observations with the new app, but also that the public at large will catch on and record their observations wherever they are.

“There are no geographic or taxonomic restrictions on the site,” said Ueda. “You don’t even really have to know what you’re looking at. You can be like, “Oh, sweet, a tree. There are trees in my yard,”  That’s good to think about.  Anyone can do it.”

Listen to Alison Hawkes’ companion radio feature on The California Report, Monday morning, and see a slide show of the island’s transformation, below.

Architect's rendering of a proposed "eco-city" on Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay.

San Francisco’s twin islands in the Bay – Treasure Island and Yerba Buena – are not exactly jewels of nature. Although they have stunning views, a half-century of use by the U.S. Navy and years in redevelopment limbo have taken a toll.

Some sites on Treasure Island are severely contaminated, and much of the island is cracked asphalt and derelict buildings. Yerba Buena is solid rock but Treasure Island is entirely artificial, conjured from bay mud as an engineering showcase for the 1939 World’s Fair. As time passes, a corner of Treasure Island is gradually sinking into the sea. Rising sea levels as a result of climate change could subsume the island entirely, returning it back to its natural state, which is to say underwater.

In short, the place needs some serious help and this is where a massive multi-billion dollar redevelopment takes stage. Private developers want to transform the islands into a high-density “eco-city” with as many as 20,000 residents, making use of the best that technology and city planning have to offer in sustainable development.

But some environmentalists are critical of the plans. Mike Lynes, the conservation director of Golden Gate Audubon Society, says bay wildlife has been suffering with the loss of about 40% of open water habitat and 90% of wetlands.

“The nice thing about Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island is that they’re relatively unpopulated compared to most of the central Bay,” Lynes says. “It was highly developed, especially Treasure Island, so the biological resources there are very limited right on Treasure Island itself, but Yerba Buena has areas rich in bird species and butterflies.”

Lynes says 20,000 people — nearly tenfold the number living there now – will take a toll. High-rise buildings pose a hazard to birds, trash attracts predators to native species, and cats and dogs kill wildlife, he explains.

He’s looked in detail at one aspect of the plans – a high-speed ferry that will take island commuters to San Francisco. Lynes says he’s worried that the ferry will disturb birds that raft together in the bay during winter as they rest up for the spring migration.

But Craig Hartman, a design partner at the San Francisco architectural firm SOM, and the development’s master planner, says the project’s net impact on wildlife will be positive, considering the conditions out there today. Asphalt – which sends contaminated rainwater directly into the bay – will be replaced with parks. Three-quarters of the islands will be open space and new plantings will replace invasive species with natives.

“It’s actually a major transformation of the constructed natural system,” Hartman says. “This is an interesting anomaly because this island is not a natural place and we’re now constructing wetlands and green space that’s never existed there. So it will be a major new sanctuary for wildlife that has not existed in the past, especially for bird life.”

The debate illustrates a longstanding tension within the green community about whether people – by their very presence – are a harm to nature. Or whether they can, with proper planning, play a positive influence on wildlife, even in densely populated areas.

Two brands of environmentalism are at odds – the wildlife preservationists versus advocates of “smart growth” strategies, which include higher-density, transit-oriented communities, to reduce car travel and greenhouse gas emissions. Lynes sees no easy answer.

“It’s more energy efficient if people live in tall buildings than if we live in a more sprawling suburban lifestyle,” he says. “I have particular concerns about wildlife, but I also acknowledge that if were going to have smart growth in the bay area we have to figure out how to balance those values.”

Panoche Valley is located in San Benito County, between Hollister and Fresno. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Cupertino-based Solargen Energy cleared a major hurdle this week in its plan to build a nearly 400-megawatt solar farm in the Panoche Valley. Late Tuesday the San Benito County Board of Supervisors unanimously  approved the company’s environmental impact report. The project has seen opposition from environmental groups and valley residents concerned about the impact of covering more than 4,700 acres with photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. The Board also approved the water supply assessment and canceled several Williamson Act contracts, both paving the way for the project to move forward.

“It was a difficult decision for the Board,” said San Benito County Supervisor Anthony Botelho. “It’s a change in a very rural area of our county, and this is a different type of land use than people are used to, ” said the supervisor. “We all have concerns when there’s a change this drastic.”

The EIR approval is just one step the company will need to take before it can break ground.  At the county level, Botelho said, the next step is a conditional use permit from the planning commission, which is likely to be taken up by the Board next month.  Then the county and the company would negotiate a development agreement, to sort out issues like job preference and training, and revenue streams to compensate for some of the project’s impacts on the area, he said.

Before the Board vote on Tuesday, supervisors spent several hours hearing public comments. Objections to the plan have included encroachment on agricultural land and the habitat of several threatened species, as well as impact on the valley viewshed. Botehlo said that the Board will take the concerns of the project’s opponents into account throughout the remaining steps of the process.

“Hopefully there’s room for everyone,” he said, “including sustainable agriculture, green jobs, renewable energy, and maintaining habitats in this unique valley.”

As part of KQED’s 33×20 series about California’s renewable energy goals, Climate Watch and Quest reporters explored what’s at stake in the Panoche Valley, in a series of radio reports.

Caribou on Alaska's North Slope (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

By Andrew Freedman

Calling global climate change “the transformational conservation challenge of our time,” the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) issued a new climate change strategic plan on Monday, which represents a significant shift in the agency’s approach to protecting species. The plan puts a heavy emphasis on the need for the federal government to work closely with state and local agencies, academia, and private groups as climate change alters the suitable habitat for many species across the country.

As the plan notes, climate change is already shifting habitat and threatening species large and small, from polar bears to alpine plants.

“In the history of wildlife conservation, the Service and the larger conservation community have never experienced a challenge that is so ubiquitous across the landscape. Our existing conservation infrastructure will be pressed to its limits — quite likely beyond its limits — to respond successfully,” the plan states.

The agency, which is part of the Interior Department, announced several concrete measures to respond to climate change, including placing a high priority on helping species adapt to changing temperatures and precipitation patterns, and to sea level rise. The FWS plans to establish a network of regional hubs for scientific research and information sharing, to be known as “Landscape Conservation Cooperatives,” which will serve as a scientific research and information sharing arm of FWS and its partners. The scientific data produced from these cooperatives would be incorporated into FWS’ plans to help species adapt to the effects of climate change.

Map of new Landscape Conservation Cooperatives the Fish & Wildlife Service is establishing. Credit: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

I asked Nicole Heller, a biologist and colleague of mine at Climate Central, to comment on why climate change threatens to undermine traditional species conservation efforts. Here is what she told me:

“Climate change is a total game changer in the conservation of native plants and animals. Conservation has traditionally relied on the idea that if we just set the land aside, then animals and plants will be safe. But climate change is like pulling the rug out from under those species. The set of conditions in which they are most adapted are changing rapidly, and this means they better evolve quickly or migrate – both of which are very difficult in today’s landscape, which is already highly fragmented and disturbed.”

“That is why climate change is such a big deal to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. If society can’t mitigate climate change so that its not so fast or so great as to overwhelm our ability to keep up and adapt, then they are essentially going to fail at their mission. Protected species are going to go extinct.”

In outlining its goals, FWS has charted a strikingly different course than the one it followed during the George W. Bush administration, when climate change was kept on the back burner and largely omitted from species management plans. As Tom Strickland, assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, stated on a conference call with reporters Monday, “It wasn’t long ago that you couldn’t really discuss the issue or the challenge within the corridors of the Department.” Climate change is now clearly front and center in conservation planning, but major challenges lie ahead.

One such challenge concerns climate scientists’ ability to provide relevant, accurate information on potential climate impacts at the local scale, such as an individual National Wildlife Refuge. These efforts may make use of climate projections from global climate models that are adapted for use at smaller scales, through a technique known as downscaling. Although downscaling methods are improving, they are still not as reliable as climate projections for larger geographic regions.

“We need to build new capacities in science and technology that will allow us to be more predictive,” said FWS Deputy Director Dan Ashe.

Acknowledging the drawbacks of climate projections, the strategic plan states: “We need to plan for conservation on landscape scales and be prepared to act quickly, sometimes without the scientific certainty we would prefer.”

Heller seems optimistic that improvements in simulating climate conditions at the regional to local level will pay off for species conservation and other purposes. “While it’s true that uncertainty exists about how climate change will play out at local scales relevant to species management,” she said, “since the government has starting rallying for this information, the research to bridge this gap is progressing very rapidly. It’s only a matter of time now before the information at the right scale is available to inform planning.”

Another hurdle that FWS and its partners face is figuring out how to strike a balance between addressing traditional stressors on species, such as urbanization, with the growing need to tackle the effects of climate change. “We can no longer afford to simply work to reduce non-climate stressors on an ad hoc or opportunistic basis,” the plan states, calling for “targeted” efforts to reduce stressors that data shows will hamper species conservation or recovery.

The strategy also contains goals to reduce FWS’ own contribution to climate change, with the ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality as an agency by 2020.

The Interior Department’s new focus on climate change could come under closer scrutiny if Republicans take over one or both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, considering that many Republican candidates are skeptical about the cause of climate change and its severity. Strickland said the Interior Department, including FWS, has so far received bipartisan support from Congress to incorporate climate change into conservation planning, noting that the Department’s regional climate centers have received “substantial funding.”

“We believe these issues cross political lines and are certainly hopeful that if there is a change in the majority we will still have support,” he said.

The San Bernardino flying squirrel is a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel, pictured here. (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The San Francisco-based Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed petitions with the US Fish and Wildlife Service today to protect four mountaintop species from climate change, including the San Bernardino flying squirrel.  The CBD is requesting that the species be listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and that critical habitat be designated.

The San Bernardino flying squirrel is a subspecies of the northern flying squirrel. Historically it has thrived in the high-elevation conifer forests of Southern California, in just two locations: the San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains.  But according to Shaye Wolf, a biologist at CBD, the species has likely disappeared from the San Jacinto Mountains in the past few decades. Studies indicate that the remaining population is isolated in the San Bernardino Mountains, which is bordered on the north by the Mojave Desert, a formidable barrier to migration.

In its petition (PDF), the CBD argues that as temperatures warm, the squirrel’s habitat is shifting upslope and may eventually become compressed or disappear all together.

“The squirrel has been lost on a sizable portion of its range,” said Wolf.  “It’s worrisome that this is the last habitat patch for this species, and there are no options for northward movement and limited ones for moving up in elevation.”

At the same time,  drought is threatening the squirrel’s primary food source — truffles.  Truffles favor cool, damp environments, which may become rarer as the climate changes.

“As drought increases, there are real concerns that this will lead to a decline in truffle abundance,” said Wolf.

Wolf said the San Bernardino flying squirrel habitat is also threatened by air pollution, certain forest management practices, and development.

The other species the CBD has simultaneously moved to protect are the ‘i’iwi, a Hawaiian songbird; the white-tailed ptarmigan, a grouse-like bird of the Rocky Mountains; and Bicknell’s thrush, a northeastern U.S. songbird.

Earlier this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied a similar petition submitted by the CBD on behalf of the American pika.

“Like the pika, the flying squirrel is showing us that climate change is impacting wildlife in the mountains in our own backyard,” said Wolf.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has 90 days to determine whether the species may be warranted for listing.  If so, the agency has 12 months to make its decision.

Catch up by listening to the first part and reading the accompanying blog post from last week.

PG and E already has transmission lines running along the Panoche valley floor. Photo: Andrea Kissack.

One thing becomes clear when you visit the Panoche Valley and the people that live and work there, everyone is charmed by it. The local ranchers, the environmental advocates, even the biologists hired by the Silicon Valley company that is looking at developing part of the valley for a commercial solar farm.

Thousands of acres of vast cattle land ringed by golden, scrub covered hills make up the Panoche Valley. The area has a vast, open beauty that seems very Californian. But in the springtime locals say it looks like Ireland. The land has also caught the eye of the CEO of Solargen Energy.

The company would like to build a 420 megawatt solar farm that would power about 120 thousand homes. To do so, Solargen would cover much of 4,700 acres of the valley with photo voltaic solar panels. Locals like chicken rancher Kim Williams worry it would change the character of the valley and harm wildlife. A group of local environmental advocates and ranchers have formed a group called Save Panoche Valley.

Kim Williams runs Your Family Farm in the Panoche valley and is opposed to the Solargen project. Photo: Andrea Kissack.

Solargen, as required by law, has hired a team of wildlife biologists to do environmental surveys of the area which, it turns out, is home to several endangered species. Michelle Korpos, the leader of the team, has also developed a fondness for Panoche Valley where she has been working for the past year. Everyday she and group of biologists march out to the project site, and surrounding hills, searching out fox dens, canvassing creek beds and geo-tagging lizard scat.

Michelle Korpos, along with other biologists, has been hired by Solargen to run wildlife surveys for an Environmental Impact Report. Photo: Andrea Kissack.

Charlie McCullough has owned his cattle ranch, one of the biggest in the area, since the early fifties and was born in San Benito County. He is one of five ranchers who has agreed to sell some of his land to Solargen. But McCullough is feeling remorseful that his decision could lead to such a change in the valley he loves.

Charlie McCullough has agreed to sell some of his land to Solargen for their big solar project. Photo: Andrea Kissack.

The only commercial business in town is the Panoche Valley Inn which is not really an inn at all but a bar that serves as a stop for tired ranchers at the end of the day and birders and bikers on sunny weekends. The owner hopes the project’s contstruction jobs mean more business over the six year build out. But even the number of jobs Solargen promises to create has become contentious.

Larry Lopez, owner of the Panoche Inn, hopes construction of a big solar array would bring in more business. Photo: Craig Miller.

One thing is for sure, the valley gets lots of sun, 90-percent of the solar intensity of the Mojave desert. But the Mojave, with its protected federal lands and desert tortoises, has turned out to be a nightmare for big solar entrepreneurs. Listen to our stories on the Panoche Valley which now finds itself in the middle of the debate over big solar. It’s all part of our series, “33 by 20,” a look at the obstacles in the way of California’s plan for utilities to generate one third of their electricity from clean energy by 2020. Here’s a map of solar intensity throughout the U.S.

Well hidden among the coast ranges of San Benito County, there’s a valley where, as one ecologist put it, “the hammer is hitting the anvil.” Mike Westphal of the Bureau of Land Management’s Hollister field office was describing the current tension playing out in Panoche Valley between two environmental goals: the mandate to combat global warming with a transition to renewable energy, and the desire to conserve the habitat of endangered animals, as well as California’s remaining ag land.

Solargen argues that Panoche Valley is a rare combination of great sun, proximity to population centers, and existing transmission lines to get the power there. (Photo: Craig Miller)

As part of our collaborative series: “33 x 20: California’s Clean Power Countdown,” Quest Senior Editor Andrea Kissack and I have been exploring the effort by Solargen Energy to develop Panoche Valley as a utility-scale solar power array (the state defines “utility-scale” as any facility that produces 200 megawatts of electricity or more).

Like many developers, Solargen CEO Mike Peterson is racing to break ground by the end of this year, in order to cash in on up-front stimulus money from the federal government. He says Panoche Valley presents a rare alignment of attributes for solar power: high solar potential (he says 90% of the Mojave), relative proximity to population centers, and existing transmission lines to get the power there. Peterson told me that the lines already in place have enough available capacity to handle his 420 megawatts of solar power, though a spokeswoman for PG&E says that question is still under study.

Meanwhile, some farmers and wildlife advocates have opposed the plan, saying big solar “farms” are better placed on “degraded” land. Ron Garthwaite, who runs Claravale organic dairy, says “This is just not the place to put it. There’s other places which have no ag value and which have less of a natural value where they could put it.”

Standing at the valley's north end, BLM ecologist Mike Westphal points to where 2,000 acres might be covered in PV solar panels. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Westphal, whose agency is not directly involved in assessing the project, sees the valley as a rare microcosm for the once unspoiled habitat of the San Joaquin Valley, just over the hill. “What we really need to think hard about is do we want to risk ecosystems to get energy,” he told me, scanning the valley from Shotgun Pass at the north end.  “That’s what’s going on here in Panoche Valley is we’re making this equation: how much do we want to risk the continued endangerment or extinction of this ecosystem in order to get more energy? That’s the crux of this conflict here.”

In this video clip, BLM ecologist Michael Westphal gives Craig Miller an overview of the valley, looking south from Shotgun Pass.

Solargen is shelling out for a $1.3 million-dollar environmental impact report, which Peterson says does not include measures such as the two dozen biologists and a detachment of scat-sniffing dogs, trained to track down the droppings of other critters for DNA analysis. The results help determine what species are there. Peterson says the total tab in “preparing and preparing for the EIR” now tops $7 million.

In Part 2 of our Panoche Valley “case study,” Andrea Kissack will have a closer look at the wildlife issues. That report runs next Monday, June 28, on Quest Radio.

As for the Governor’s ambitious goal to have renewable energy sources account for one third of the state’s electrical generation by 2020, Peterson describes the process as “surprisingly harder than you would expect.” He says he ponders how to “get this done in a way that is able to meet the mandates, but also be a good steward to the environment, and try to make people happy. And we won’t be able to please everybody.”

He’s right about that. Dairyman Garthwaite says of the state’s quest for renewables: “Just because somebody in Sacramento says something, doesn’t mean that it can happen–or should happen. I mean there’s all kinds of political things involved in that, there’s lobbyists involved in that. People want to make money.”

Climate Watch intern Chris Penalosa mapped some of California’s larger solar projects in development, below.

View Utility Scale Solar Projects in California in a larger map