Farmers, conservationists and anyone else who values sustaining a healthy, vibrant community in San Benito County’s Panoche Valley have a common concern: the industrial-scale Panoche Valley Solar Project, which is owned by New York-based Con Edison and RET Capital.
This massive project could break ground as early as this week.
As California builds a sustainable, clean-energy economy, we must also continue our proud tradition of protecting our lands, wildlife and natural heritage. The Panoche Valley Solar Project is the antithesis of this approach.
Vigorously opposed by local, state and national organizations, the project would threaten our tight-knit farming community and destroy the last remaining intact habitat for several of California’s most endangered species, including the federally endangered San Joaquin kit fox, giant kangaroo rat and blunt-nosed leopard lizard.
The developer has already started attempts to move the kangaroo rat from the more than three square-mile site.
A conservationist and a local farmer, we share the goal of keeping this special place thriving.
One of us operates a flourishing, small, family-owned livestock farm, part of a growing agricultural community that provides the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas with sustainably-grown food.
The other is proud to work with that farmer and with many local groups to maintain a healthy ecological community.
The farmers and ranchers of Panoche place great emphasis on being good stewards of this land, maintaining most of the valley floor as grassland with small pockets of vegetable, fruit and livestock farming. This protects space for wildlife, conserves water and protects the valley from decertification in times of drought.
But this land, and the groundwater that is essential to our agriculture and the survival of threatened wildlife, is under attack. The Panoche Valley project has received most of its state and federal permits to move forward, but we are fighting back, together.
Covering half of the valley floor, the project would exacerbate drought conditions at the worst possible time.
Panoche Valley contains San Joaquin Valley grassland habitat, which supports many rare birds and, for this reason, is designated an Important Bird Area of Global Priority by the Audubon Society. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified it as one of three core areas necessary for the survival and recovery of its endangered animals.
It has become even more important because the other two core areas have already been developed.
We both support solar and other forms of clean energy, and we want to be part of the solution to climate change in California and around the world. But protecting ecosystems like the Panoche Valley is part of that equation. Not only is the valley important for biodiversity and sustainable agriculture, it is also instrumental in removing greenhouse gases from the air and slowing climate change.
At least one endangered species, the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, will need this area as a future climate refuge as temperatures warm.
California has many other locations that would allow for sustainable, clean energy development, including others in our region, that are not as ecologically significant or vulnerable as this one. For example, there are hundreds of thousands of acres of degraded former agricultural lands in the San Joaquin Valley that environmental and agricultural groups have identified as “low conflict” areas suitable for solar.
Developing the Panoche Valley is not necessary for California to meet its clean energy goals, and protecting it is necessary to keep our air clean, produce food and provide valuable wildlife habitat for some of California’s most imperiled species.
Kim Williams owns and operates Your Family Farm in Panoche Valley. Kim Delfino is California Program Director of Defenders of Wildlife, Sacramento.
