After a delay of over a month, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District’s board this week approved a California Environmental Quality Act report for the muni’s “solar highways” project. Despite the vote, the proposal does not have final confirmation. The board originally planned to vote June 2, and then June 16, but both times the item was pulled; once so that staff could do more research and the second time because a mailer on the issue sent to customers wasn’t detailed enough for legal purposes. Eventually the report--which states that the proposed project wouldn’t have a significant adverse impact on the environment and that mitigation measures for potential impacts would be implemented--passed unanimously July 21. If built as planned, the project would line two sections of U.S. Highway 50 in Sacramento County with renewable installations. “This item’s a little different than most CEQA items that come before the board,” SMUD counsel Arlen Orchard explained. “Generally we bring both the approval of the CEQA document and the approval of the project at the same meeting. We’re not doing that here.” One of the proposed areas is in East Sacramento, from 43rd to 59th streets. The other’s six miles away in Rancho Cordova, and includes the open space portion of the Mather Field Road/Highway 50 interchange. Two distinct photovoltaic technologies are proposed for demonstration in the project: traditional flat-plate photovoltaic arrays, which would be placed in the East Sacramento location, and an array of sun-tracking photovoltaic panels at the Mather Field Interchange section. The full project would generate about 1.4 MW. No date yet has been set to bring the matter back to the board. “There are unresolved issues related to the final design of the project,” Orchard said. “Both staff and the board have expressed an interest to bifurcate these things and bring that final design back to the board after having worked with the community to resolve any outstanding issues.” Some, like Rancho Cordova councilmember Linda Budge, are concerned the solar arrays would degrade the physical landscape and cause glint and glare that could affect motorists, local residents, and even pilots flying in and out of the nearby Sacramento International Airport. The board also conducted a public hearing on rates. Rate restructuring, according to the utility, is meant to more equitably distribute its pricing among customers. “There is no increase in revenues to SMUD. It is not intended in any way to be a general rate increase,” Scott Martin, the muni’s manager of resource planning and pricing said. “It is true that some elements of the rates are increasing, but wherever there are elements that are increasing; there are elements that are decreasing to offset those increases. There is no intent to increase revenues for SMUD.” There were no public members who commented specifically on the proposed restructuring, but one man, Jerome Sprague, took the podium during the hearing to complain about SMUD shutting off power to a property he owns. Sprague, who has repeatedly voiced his issues to the board during their business meetings for months, was forcefully dragged away by two armed security guards after loudly disrupting the meeting and refusing to relinquish the podium.
