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A plan for the country's biggest solar project is moving ahead in California. If built, it'll power entire cities and millions of homes. Dan Charles reports on the farmers behind the project.
DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: A few years ago, a company called Golden State Clean Energy got in touch with a group of farmers in the San Joaquin Valley in the heart of California. The company said, we have a plan for gigantic solar projects on your land. And Ross Franson, one of the farmers, thought it sounded great.
ROSS FRANSON: I think the first time I heard it, at least from my perspective, it was like, yes, we need to do this.
CHARLES: Because these farmers have a problem. They farm land on the west side of the valley - the dry side. They grow their almonds and pistachios and tomatoes with water that they pump from aquifers a thousand feet underground, also from a giant canal that the federal government built to bring in water from far away in northern California. But the canal is delivering less water now because of droughts and competing claims on that water, and a new state law has banned overpumping from the aquifer. So the farmers have been leaving a quarter or more of their land unplanted every year.
FRANSON: We're farmers and we would rather farm the ground. If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is you don't, and you have to deal with the cards you're dealt.
CHARLES: The farmers have a central organization that manages their irrigation water - the Westlands Water District. It also owns a lot of land that can't be farmed. In December, the Westlands board adopted the solar plan. It is so big, it's mind-boggling.
(SOUNDBITE OF VEHICLES DRIVING BY)
CHARLES: We are at American, in Highway 33.
It's a foggy winter morning in the Central Valley, but Jose Gutierrez, the assistant general manager of Westlands Water District, can see the future.
JOSE GUTIERREZ: The vision down the road is that this land at some point will have solar panels for miles in each direction.
CHARLES: It'll be solar for 10 miles to the north, 20 or so miles to the south. The project will cover 200 square miles. On a sunny day at noon, it'll produce 20,000 megawatts of electricity - as much as a dozen or more big power plants burning coal or gas. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it's needed most. Gutierrez says it's exactly what farmers here need.
GUTIERREZ: Because of this solar, we can continue farming in Westlands.
CHARLES: The extra income farmers get for leasing unused land to solar companies will let them keep growing crops on the rest of their land.
GUTIERREZ: It'll keep the farming community alive.
CHARLES: Patrick Mealoy, a partner at Golden State Clean Energy, says the project has to be big to justify new multibillion-dollar power lines to carry electricity from here to Los Angeles or Silicon Valley. That cost will end up in people's electric bills eventually, but Mealoy says the benefits will be even bigger.
PATRICK MEALOY: The state needs it. It's permitted. It's the right place for it. I'm excited about this.
CHARLES: But there's some distrust in the small towns nearby where farmworkers live, like the city of Huron - 6,000 or so people, one main street. Rey Leon is the mayor here. He's irrepressible, loves giving people little tours.
REY LEON: That's my neighborhood right there. That's where I grew up.
CHARLES: Leon says this solar deal seems great for the landowners of Westlands, but less farming means fewer jobs for workers here in Huron. Leon wants some of the solar revenue to flow to this community for education, training for jobs in this new solar industry.
LEON: We are shareholders. We've kept these communities alive. The economy is robust. There's no excuse to leave us out.
CHARLES: Westlands and Golden State Clean Energy have been discussing what they call a community benefits package, but they haven't released any details. Caity Peterson at the Public Policy Institute of California says other farming communities in California may try to imitate what Westlands is doing because they, too, will have to stop pumping so much water from the ground.
CAITY PETERSON: There's going to be some kind of rightsizing of agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley.
CHARLES: She says farmers will have to stop growing crops on at least half a million acres, maybe a million acres. So there will be a lot of dry, sunny land just waiting for a solar developer.
For NPR News, I'm Dan Charles in the San Joaquin Valley.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE WESTERLIES' "DO YOU LOVE THIS WORLD?") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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