Printable VersionPHOENIX — The Arizona Corporation Commission voted Wednesday to approve a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility for a $2 billion parabolic trough solar farm project in the works for a privately owned 4,000-acre parcel of land located 27 miles north of Kingman.
“It’s an important milestone for us to get our CEC so we are happy to get to that point. But the surprise was the uncompromising groundwater restrictions,” said Greg Bartlett, HVS project manager. Bartlett said HVS developers were hoping for a transitional period or lifetime cap of groundwater allowance that would allow Kingman’s treatment plant to grow large enough to provide enough effluent water to cool the trough-style solar set up.
According to the project’s website, anticipated water usage for the solar farm’s wet cooling technology ranges from 2,000 to 3,000 acre-feet in an average year. The amount is less than half the amount of water allocated to the same parcel under residential area plan designations.
According to earlier reports, HVS anticipated creating infrastructure that would carry the effluent water 20 miles from Kingman’s Hilltop Wastewater Treatment Plant, located near the airport, to the proposed plant’s site. Based on statistics from the existing water treatment plants, current output of water would sustain 80 percent of the plant’s water-cooling needs. In three years time, HVS expected the new treatment plan could fully support the water needs to cool the plant, according to earlier reports.
ACC chairman Kris Mayes said Arizonans should expect to see more of the commission’s groundwater-conscious protocol when it comes to these types of projects.
“I think the commission believed it was important to protect the groundwater supplies in the area by requiring dry cooling and I think you will continue to see cases like this that the commission approves that are conservation oriented,” Mayes said. “It is pretty clear that our surrounding states are requiring dry cooling for similar projects.”
ACC has approved two wet-cooled solar projects in the past, on in Gila Bend and one in Yuma. The difference between those and the HVS project is agricultural land versus raw desert, respectively, Mayes explained.
“This is a very different situation,” Mayes said.
Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson said Friday the decision presents the potential risk of forcing the project from Mohave County’s boundaries or even the state’s boundaries.
“This requirement could cause this project to fold, costing Mohave County and the state of Arizona millions of dollars in tax revenues,” Johnson said in a prepared statement. “The estimate of property tax liability (for the HVS project) was $20 million annually.”
By comparison, the county currently collects about $34 million, according to Johnson.
“When our state is projecting a $1.2 billion shortfall, the idea that we would not welcome and encourage a company that would pay over $20 million a year in taxes and put to people to work, in Mike Tyson’s word, is ‘ludicrous’,” Johnson said.
HVS will move forward and try to find additional resources of effluent water or consider other options.
“Ideas that seemed outrageously expensive before we may have to consider,” Bartlett said. “We will be redoubling efforts with the city (of Kingman) and the county to find other sources to make up the difference.”
HVS is facing looming utility and federal financing deadlines for rebates that need to be in order by the end of the year to secure the success of the project, he said.
Obtaining the CEC is the final state approval developers needed to begin construction, according to a press release issued Friday by HVS.
According to the HVS website, the project’s construction is expected to begin in November 2010, with plant operations by June 2013. The construction phase is expected to employ 1,500 people and once completed will support about 100 permanent positions.
For more information, visit www.hualapaivalleysolar.com.
You may contact the reporter at jhanson@havasunews.com.
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