CANTUA CREEK, Calif. — The fallowed farmland — too dry, salty and barren to develop crops — stretches throughout a distant, sunbaked expanse crisscrossed by rutted filth roads.
Quickly, roughly 15 sq. miles of those retired agricultural fields in western Fresno County will maintain one of many world’s largest photo voltaic and battery vitality storage initiatives — a behemoth able to powering some 850,000 houses for 4 hours.
The Darden Clear Power Venture, authorized by the California Power Fee in June, is the primary growth to be fast-tracked below a 2022 state legislation that enables massive renewable vitality initiatives to be reviewed and permitted with out sign-off from county and municipal governments.
However in rural western Fresno County — the place vitality companies have deliberate a number of large-scale battery and photo voltaic initiatives — many residents really feel blindsided. They’ve raised critical questions on who advantages and who will get left behind when main initiatives are fast-tracked.
Espi Sandoval, a board member for the nonprofit Rural Communities Rising, a western Fresno County advocacy group, mentioned the impoverished, principally Latino space has lengthy been exploited by company agriculture and now’s taking part in catch-up because it finds itself immediately on the forefront of California’s vitality transition.
“We’re forgotten by the government. Now we’ve got this private sector coming in with these huge solar panel farms,” mentioned Sandoval, who has lived in western Fresno County since 1972. “I don’t want to see the same exploitation of our people.”
Espi Sandoval, board member of Rural Communities Rising, says clear vitality corporations haven’t listened sufficient to residents of rural communities whereas they plan initiatives.
Inside just a few miles of the Darden web site are a number of tiny farmworker cities, together with Cantua Creek, 5 Factors and Three Rocks (often known as El Porvenir). The photo voltaic and lithium-ion battery venture will likely be constructed inside a census tract the place greater than a 3rd of residents reside in poverty — double the speed in Fresno County as a complete.
In its oversight of the Darden venture, they wrote, the state “has the potential to either set the stage for an equitable, just transition or, conversely, to continue patterns of disinvestment in low-income communities of color.”
The Darden venture’s proprietor, IP Darden I, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Intersect Energy, is ready to develop into the second-largest property tax payer in Fresno County, behind Pacific Fuel and Electrical. Intersect can pay no less than $232 million to the county over the following decade, in line with an financial affect report by the corporate.
Acres of orchards in western Fresno County, which has lengthy been dominated by agriculture and now’s on the forefront of California’s clear vitality transition.
A tractor tills farmland in Cantua Creek, close to the location the place an enormous photo voltaic and battery venture is deliberate.
The venture is also projected to generate tens of tens of millions of {dollars} in native gross sales tax, together with via the acquisition of building gear and supplies, in line with Intersect Energy. The corporate mentioned it’ll create greater than 1,200 building jobs whereas it’s being constructed and 16 full-time operational jobs as soon as it’s up and working.
Maria Pacheco, the mayor of Kerman, a small metropolis northeast of the Darden web site, wrote in a letter to the Power Fee this spring that the venture’s jobs and tax income will likely be transformative for the San Joaquin Valley. They’ll assist present “essential services and infrastructure improvements, directly benefiting the often-underserved west side,” she wrote.
Eight different initiatives, from Imperial County within the south to Shasta County within the north, at present are pursuing approval via the opt-in course of. And after important native pushback, a developer that has been planning to construct a lithium-ion battery storage facility on the location the place Morro Bay’s iconic smokestacks stand pulled out of the municipal allowing course of this spring, indicating it would pursue the state’s fast-track program.
A lady walks by a mural in downtown Firebaugh, a small metropolis in western Fresno County. Intersect Energy mentioned it’ll donate $2 million over the following decade to organizations benefiting the area.
As a part of the fast-track course of, Intersect Energy was required to enter into no less than one so-called “community benefits agreement” with a neighborhood group and to offer tangible advantages to the area.
Intersect Energy agreed to donate $2 million to native teams over the following 10 years and $5 million over the lifetime of the venture.
In a press release to The Instances, Elizabeth Knowles, the pinnacle of group engagement for Intersect, mentioned the corporate has been assembly with residents, colleges and different native stakeholders since 2023. Intersect’s group advantages spending, she mentioned, is “going directly to highly reputable nonprofits” and community-based organizations that may concentrate on western Fresno County.
A lot of the preliminary $2 million will likely be cut up amongst Fresno-based nonprofits that work to construct housing and cut back bronchial asthma and starvation. An Intersect donation to the nonprofit Centro la Familia Advocacy Providers was used to offer away 250 high-efficiency window air-conditioning items to households near the Darden web site this summer season.
The corporate additionally agreed to offer cash to Westside Elementary College, about 4 miles southeast of the location, to help campus upgrades and efforts to construct extra native housing.
Some donations have raised eyebrows. An undisclosed quantity of the Intersect Energy donations additionally will fund two years of after-school piano classes from the Steinway Piano Gallery of Fresno at Cantua Elementary College.
Uriel Sanchez lives on this trailer together with his father in Cantua Creek.
A number of dilapidated and closed retail areas are situated close to the crossroads on the middle of Cantua Creek. The Darden venture ought to have the ability to energy 850,000 houses after darkish.
Intersect Energy is donating an undisclosed quantity to the nonprofit Tree Fresno, which crops shade bushes to scale back the consequences of maximum warmth and air air pollution.
Sandoval, a former member of the Kerman Metropolis Council and longtime instructor in close by Tranquility, scoffed on the piano classes and tree donation, noting that Cantua Elementary is throughout the road from an orchard. He mentioned he was pissed off to see Intersect Energy working primarily with Fresno-based nonprofits.
“This thing is dictated from the top,” he mentioned. “How is the money going to filter down to the community? Property taxes? That’s going to the county. How can we get some of those benefits?”
Throughout a public assembly in Coalinga this April, Leticia Villegas, a farmworker from 5 Factors, advised the Power Fee that she lives three miles from the place the Darden photo voltaic panels will likely be constructed. She mentioned via a Spanish interpreter that she works in fields throughout the day, when the solar is baking, and comes again to a run-down house with no air-con.
She mentioned she hopes cash from the event will “go directly to our community.”
“Please,” she added, “we want to be listened to.”
Felipe Perez, a Metropolis Council member in close by Firebaugh and a former fieldworker, mentioned he used to choose crops close to the Darden web site. He mentioned it was not straightforward seeing new industries arrive, “using soil that we used to use for ag.”
Felipe Perez, a Firebaugh Metropolis Council member and a founding board member of Rural Communities Rising, mentioned that agricultural jobs have been going away in western Fresno County and that the area wants actual funding.
Perez, 56, who got here to the U.S. from Sinaloa, Mexico, in 1988, mentioned there usually are not as many area jobs as there as soon as had been, partly due to drought and out-of-town farmers promoting their land.
“The question is, are they going to hire us?” he mentioned of unpolluted vitality builders. “In what language are they going to teach us? And what are we going to do when they don’t help us and we still get those kind of bills?”
The Darden Clear Power Venture will likely be constructed on practically 15 sq. miles of fallowed farmland in western Fresno County.
Building on the Darden venture is predicted to start by the top of this 12 months, and it needs to be absolutely operational in late 2027 or early 2028, Knowles mentioned.
It will likely be constructed on 9,500 acres offered by the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural water district. Many years of farming and irrigation have degraded the soil, drawing salts and metals to the floor. That and the district’s unsure water provides have made the land impractical for farming, prompting Westlands to divert water to extra productive land.
The Darden venture — situated close to a significant PG&E energy line that may transmit electrical energy north or south — will embody a 1,150-megawatt photo voltaic facility with roughly 3.1 million photo voltaic panels.
It additionally may have as much as 1,150 megawatts of battery storage through 1,440 Tesla Megapack 2XL items — primarily delivery container-sized items crammed with battery modules. Such battery programs retailer extra vitality generated throughout the day and launch it into the facility grid throughout instances of excessive demand, together with night hours.
However in western Fresno County, many residents have expressed concern concerning the lithium-ion batteries catching hearth — a worry that intensified after an enormous blaze in January tore via a battery vitality storage system in Moss Touchdown, a rural group in coastal Monterey County.
A hearth at a lithium-ion battery plant in Moss Touchdown, Calif., in January prompted the evacuation of about 1,500 folks and spewed poisonous smoke for days.
That fireplace, which burned greater than 54,000 LG battery modules, spewed poisonous smoke into the air and smoldered for a number of days. Firefighters let it burn, citing the hazards of dousing lithium-ion battery fires with water, which may trigger harmful chemical reactions. The danger of reignition has been so excessive that cleanup crews are simply now starting to take away the charred batteries.
Knowles mentioned the Darden web site will likely be safer as a result of batteries will likely be in impartial enclosures separated by open area open air, not stacked and positioned in an enclosed constructing like they had been in Moss Touchdown.
With correct engineering, lithium-ion battery storage websites pose little danger of catching hearth, mentioned Shirley Meng, a molecular engineering professor on the College of Chicago who’s an knowledgeable on batteries and research ethically sourced, recyclable supplies for vitality storage. Security has improved dramatically lately, and the failure charge is about 1 in 10 million for every type of lithium-ion batteries, she mentioned.
“Everybody has batteries in their hands,” Meng mentioned, referencing smartphones. “Batteries are safe. The chemistry that’s in those [large-scale] facilities is even safer than the ones that you hold in your phone.”
In western Fresno County, residents have “been very vocal” concerning the Darden venture being in-built a spot the place emergency response instances are already lengthy, mentioned Ryan Michaels, assistant chief of operations for the Fresno County Fireplace Safety District, which offers emergency providers for the world.
There isn’t any hearth station within the nearest communities of Cantua Creek, 5 Factors and Three Rocks. Response time is often greater than 20 minutes, and “we want to make sure that as solar grows we don’t reduce our current level of services within those communities,” Michaels mentioned.
A number of massive photo voltaic farms have already got been constructed and are deliberate, and “it really hit us by surprise how many were coming to western Fresno County,” he added.
The newly constructed Scarlet Photo voltaic Power Park in western Fresno County, about 3.5 miles from the city of Tranquility, is operated by EDP Renewables North America.
In latest months, Michaels mentioned, firefighters have responded to quite a few malfunctioning alarms and inverter fires at photo voltaic farms, he mentioned. One latest blaze was sparked by vandals making an attempt to steal wiring.
Intersect Energy and the Fresno County Fireplace Safety District mentioned they’re nonetheless negotiating hearth mitigation measures. A state-required emergency motion plan has not but been finalized.
Stacey Shepard, a spokesperson for the California Power Fee, mentioned Darden, like all such initiatives, should meet strict security requirements. When batteries are being shipped from the manufacturing facility to the venture web site, they will solely be charged as much as 30%, and the developer has to offer no less than two gates into the battery storage facility broad sufficient for emergency entry. On web site, she famous, the batteries will likely be surrounded by thermal detection cameras.
Even so, the hearth safety district mentioned it might want to construct 4 new stations and rent further workers as extra massive clear vitality initiatives are constructed.
Michaels mentioned Darden and different initiatives must be deliberate for the long run. If it’s going to be working for as much as 35 years, he mentioned, “we need to be ready to fight fire there — and provide for their workers — for decades.”
An agricultural truck kicks up mud in an orchard in Cantua Creek in August.
This text is a part of The Instances’ fairness reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Basis, exploring the challenges going through low-income staff and the efforts being made to deal with California’s financial divide.
