Letter to the Editor
As a resident who lives adjacent to where the proposed Janus Solar Facility is being considered, I’ve been following this project and researching it since 2020 when RWE and JANUS first applied for their permit with the Colusa County Planning Department. I’ve read the DEIR, have had numerous conversations with Mr. Plucker from the Planning Department and have attended all the Planning Commission meetings. I’d like to commend our planning commission board for unanimously denying the EIR and the conditional use permit for this commercial industrial solar facility. Because of the denial, RWE and Janus have appealed the decision to our Board of Supervisors. There have been a lot of inflated numbers and misinformation being suggested by the proponents of this project, that our county is somehow going to benefit. I urge our community to read our county’s general plan. Let’s not forget agriculture is the backbone of our county. Taking 1,000 acres of farmland and replacing it with 196,000 solar panels, 5 acres (4 football fields) of containers filled with hazardous batteries, connected to a substation and new transmission line that will run down Spring Valley Road and Walnut Drive to the PG&E substation and then sold to the highest bidder outside of our county, doesn’t seem to be consistent with anything I read in our general plan or our land use element policies. I’d suggest to anyone questioning this project, drive out to Spring Valley, to the proposed site and decide for yourself. Does Colusa County want to continue its long history and tradition of being an agriculturally based county as written in our General Plan, or are we willing to allow a commercial solar company to come in and use our farmland to build a solar facility bigger than the city limits of Colusa?
Matt Ferrini,
Williams