Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday 12/8/2010 Page: 7
THOUSANDS of hectares of farmland in California's San Joaquin Valley have been removed from agricultural production, largely because the once-fertile land is contaminated by salt from years of irrigation. But large swathes of the dry fields could have a valuable new use in their future - making electricity. Farmers and officials at Westlands Water District, a public agency that supplies water to farms in the valley, have agreed to provide land for what would be one of the world's largest solar power complexes, to be built on 12,140 hectares.
At peak output, the proposed Westlands Solar Park would generate as much electricity as several big nuclear power plants. And unlike some renewable energy projects blocked by objections that they would hurt the landscape, this one has the support of environmentalists. The San Joaquin initiative is in the vanguard of anew approach to locating renewable energy projects: putting them on polluted or previously used land. The Westlands project has won the backing of groups that have opposed building big solar projects. Landowners and regulators are on board, too.
"It's about as perfect a place as you're going to find in the state of California for a solar project like this", said Carl Zichella, who until last month was the Sierra Club's Western renewable programs director. "There's virtually zero wildlife impact here because the land has been farmed continuously for such along time and you have proximity to transmission, infrastructure and markets".
Recycling contaminated or otherwise disturbed land into green energy projects could help avoid disputes when developers seek to build sprawling arrays of solar collectors and wind turbines in more pristine areas, where they can affect wildlife and water supplies. The US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, for instance, are evaluating a dozen landfills and toxic waste sites for wind farms or solar power plants.
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