From pv magazine USA
The board of California’s Westlands Water District has adopted a clean infrastructure plan that it projects could result in 21 GW of solar power at full buildout.
The Valley Clean Infrastructure Plan is a “major land-repurposing initiative” in response to water shortages that “force large-scale land fallowing across the San Joaquin Valley,” the water district said in a statement.
The Westlands Water District is the nation’s largest agricultural water district, encompassing 1,000 square miles and providing water to 700 farms with an average size of 875 acres, in western Fresno and Kings Counties.
California law AB 2661, enacted in September, authorizes the water district to develop, construct and own solar generation, battery storage and transmission facilities as identified in the plan. The law also requires the district to adopt a community benefits plan with input from local communities, a requirement the district has endorsed. A community benefits plan typically involves payments from a project owner to the neighboring community.
The water district said that by adopting the land repurposing plan, the district and partners may begin advancing project-level planning, permitting and implementation steps.
Last year, “chronic water shortages forced” more than 215,000 acres, or more than a third of the water district’s irrigable farmland, out of production. The district expects additional acreage to be fallowed as California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act “further constrains groundwater use.”
The Valley Clean Infrastructure Plan will help “preserve the long-term viability of agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley,” the water district said, allowing growers “to concentrate limited water supplies on their most productive and resilient acreage.”
The loss of acreage available for irrigated agriculture has had “real consequences for hardworking family farmers, workers and rural communities,” said Allison Febbo, the water district’s general manager. “Westlands is leading in finding solutions that protect the future of farming in the district and provide landowners with viable alternatives when water simply isn’t available.”
California Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria, who sponsored AB 2661, said the law authorizing projects to convert fallowed farmland to solar farms “will create jobs, help farmworkers retrain and transition into skilled trades, and spur economic development.” Soria is the daughter of farmworkers.
The water district said it would evaluate placing solar, storage and transmission facilities under the operational control of the state’s transmission grid operator CAISO, and would continue working with stakeholders on environmental compliance, land-use coordination and phased development activities.
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