JOSHUA TREE – Developers applying to build solar farms here should have to notify every landowner within two miles, while the county discloses every step of the application and construction process online.
Staff members of San Bernardino County 3rd District Supervisor James Ramos had asked the MAC to create a checklist for county planners to use on applications for solar development in the Morongo Basin.
MAC Chairman Mike Lipsitz brought a draft letter with seven recommendations to the council’s four-member land use subcommittee and a dozen community stakeholders, including a member of the county planning commission. The initial recommendations are:
• Create for developers a specific application, questionnaire and 32-point checklist that follows requirements of the county’s solar-project ordinance.
• Establish a step-by-step disclosure process for an application from the first request through the planning department’s determinations.
• Notify property owners and affected entities within a two-mile radius of a proposed project, as well as local news media and anyone requesting automatic noticing by email.
• Post all project documents online.
• Clarify terms in the planning process so they are understandable to laypeople.
• Require applicants to verify their statements about their estimated water use, grading and environmental impacts, and require reviews, monitoring and fact-checking through construction.
• Do not create a separate solar planning commission, to avoid added bureaucracy and possible crony-ism.
Lipsitz said he sought input from the Basin Energy Assessment Team and the Morongo Basin Conservation Association to write the checklist, and he got more recommendations at the workshop.
Speakers advised adding several items to the list, including asking the U.S. Geological Survey to take soil samples of a proposed site to ascertain the potentials for wind-blown dust hazards; linking all documents about the project in perpetuity to the assessor’s parcel number; and requiring that any application by a solar developer for a conditional use permit trigger a separate process for evaluation under the California Environmental Quality Act.
“Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley have each said ‘no’ to solar development and we have a very good reason to say, ‘It doesn’t fit here,’” Victoria Fuller, president of Joshua Basin Water District, said. “But today we’re here to talk about transparency in the process.”
“None of us is for widespread solar development in the Morongo Basin, but we are tasked with working within the process,” Lipsitz agreed. “We need to make sure people can evaluate projects accurately that are up for approval, see what kind of impacts they will have and then have time to respond on them from an intelligent standpoint.”
Paul Smith of Twentynine Palms is a county planning commissioner but said he attended the workshop as a private citizen. He is concerned about the effects utility-scale energy projects could have on the Basin.
“This is new stuff; solar projects are experimental,” Smith said after the meeting. “Every single environmental consideration of any significance that are said to be addressed by solar developers are not supported by peer-review science.”
The advisory council is slated to approve a final draft of the checklist at its meeting at 6:30 p.m. March 10 in the Joshua Tree Community Center.
Full story by Rebecca Unger at hidesertstar.com.
