Sacramento County holds scoping meeting for Coyote Creek agrivoltaic ranch solar project

SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Sacramento County planning staff held a public scoping meeting to gather input for the environmental impact report (EIR) for the Coyote Creek Agrivoltaic Ranch Project, a proposed utility-scale solar development located on about 2,555 acres at the area locally known as Barton Ranch, south of U.S. 50 and adjacent southeast to the Prairie City State Vehicular Recreation Area (SVRA). County staff said written comments on the Notice of Preparation are due Feb. 18.

The project team described the proposal as “a 200 megawatt solar facility with on-site substation and storage, meteorological towers, backup generators, access and internal roads, as well as fencing,” said Matthew Gerken, the project director. The plan would include an on-site substation, battery energy storage and an approximately 1.3-mile, off-site transmission line on roughly 150-foot poles to connect to existing Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) facilities west of the site; the line would cross portions of the Prairie City SVRA and may require easements or facility relocations on State Parks land.

Why it matters: County staff and agency representatives said the EIR will need to study a range of resource topics — including biological resources, consistency with the South Sacramento Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), hydrology and floodplain issues, grading and erosion control, cultural and tribal resources, traffic and noise, visual/aesthetics, wildfire, and greenhouse gas/climate effects — because the project’s transmission connection and grading could affect public lands and habitat areas.

Project and schedule details provided by county and the consultant team said the total project area amounts to 2,555 acres though a smaller portion would be physically occupied by arrays and facilities. The developers indicated the project life is expected to be about 35 years with decommissioning and site restoration required at the end of operations; construction was described as roughly 12 months, with up to about 250 workers on site during peak construction and an estimated 5 to 40 truck trips per day during some construction periods. On-site operational staffing would be minimal, county staff said, with routine maintenance and security trips estimated at 4 to 10 per day; panel washing was described as occurring one to four times per year for periods of up to about 14 days with up to 10 people engaged.

County staff said grading would affect a significant portion of the site and that photovoltaic arrays would be mounted on driven piles. The project team said it is trying to minimize grading where possible and to avoid vernal pools and clusters of oak trees: “There’s certainly some drainage that runs through the site...There’s vernal pools in the area that we’re avoiding. We don’t want to have any direct impacts of vernal pools, as well as...clusters of oaks that we would prefer to preserve,” an applicant representative said during the meeting.

Agency coordination and key concerns: State and federal resource agencies asked county staff and the project team to evaluate consistency with the South Sacramento HCP and to coordinate early on habitat avoidance, minimization and mitigation measures. Joelle Inman, the county environmental coordinator, said the county has begun internal conversations and will coordinate as the CEQA analysis proceeds: “we’ve had some initial conversations internally about that...it’s on our radar, and we’ll be coordinating moving forward on that,” Inman said.

California State Parks staff said the transmission line will require easement transactions across parts of the Prairie City SVRA and noted some concession-area facilities likely will need relocation; State Parks asked the project team to include those relocations in the environmental document to the extent the new locations are known. SMUD asked for a follow-up coordination meeting with the county and project team because the utility will own or operate interconnection facilities.

Public-review process and next steps: County staff said they are in the Notice of Preparation stage and will publish a draft EIR (the team said it hoped to publish a draft in summer 2022). The NOP comment period was stated to end on Feb. 18; one agency requested an extension, and county staff said they would consider reasonable extension requests. The county plans at least one public scoping meeting for the public the following evening and will post the slides and project materials on the county’s planning projects viewer.

What was not decided: No formal approvals or votes were taken; the meeting was a scoping and coordination session. Agencies and stakeholders provided preliminary comments and asked for analyses and continued coordination. County staff said specific design details — including the final size and location of a switchyard and some transmission easements — remain to be finalized and will be addressed in the environmental review and subsequent permitting processes.

Additional context: Project objectives listed in the county materials included providing a local source of solar energy, supporting SMUD’s clean-energy targets and the state’s renewable portfolio standards, optimizing use of existing transmission, and providing local employment and training opportunities. The team noted the project would allow continued sheep grazing during operation.

Speakers and affiliations at the meeting included Sacramento County planners and staff, the AECOM project team, representatives of SMUD, California State Parks (including Prairie City SVRA staff), the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the South Sacramento Conservation Agency. County staff asked agencies to submit written comments to Joelle Inman by Feb. 18 and said the draft EIR will include detailed analyses of the topics discussed.