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September 3rd, 2010 admin No comments

Bowls Blue

Curing Dust-Bowl Blues With Solar

In Los Angeles, California, the city’s Department of Water and Power (DWP) is eyeing flat, dusty, arid Owens Lake as the potential site for a future mega-solar farm, but the initiative is focused less on clean, renewable solar energy than on preventing the interminable dust storms generated by the dry lake bed.

Owens Lake started to run dry when, in 1913, the city began diverting water from the Owens River. By 1926, the former lake was a shallow hardpan. Today, it ranks as the largest single source of PM10 dust (windborn dust particles smaller than 10 microns) in the United States. In fact, one estimate suggests the lake produces up to 8 million metric tons per year.

The DWP thinks that covering 616 acres of the lake bed with solar panels could cut down on dust storms, which threaten the health of nearby Keeler and Ridgecrest residents by delivering up to 23 times the amount of airborne particulate matter federal levels suggest as safe.

The plan may be a good one, since attempts to achieve dust control by flooding the lake bed have met with limited success, and flooding – at least this year – may be further hampered by a cutback to California’s 2010 water delivery, limiting the state to 5 percent of the water it has normally been allotted over the past 40-some years.

The solar project is backed by $500 million in funding, which buys a lot of solar panels, but the proposal still has to win the approval of the California State Lands Commission, largely because the DWP wants the commission to waive an environmental impact review.

Another project deterrent may be the designation, by Audubon California this year, of Owens Lake as one of the 17 most important avian sanctuaries in the state, and an emerging “wetland in the making” as bird watchers record the return of record numbers of migrating waterfowl to the partially flooded lake basin.

The DWP has promised to continue flooding at least a portion of Owens Lake to appease these environmentalists, and is in meetings with Inyo County officials, ranchers and residents to win regional support for their proposal.

The response of the former is likely to be guarded; the response of the latter looks largely promising as the state eyes renewable energy resources like solar not only as power sources but badly needed boosts to a failing economy. California is in such dire financial straits that Los Angeles recently raided its recycling initiative fund to balance the budget.

Another plus on the project side is that flooding Owens Lake sufficiently to reduce dust uses enough water to supply 60,000 households. If the DWP plan, which proposes to flood a smaller area than normal for dust control, can salvage even a third of that water, it looks like an environmental win-win.

The DWP proposes starting the solar array with a small test plot, to see if solar panels and migratory waterfowl can coexist, and if a field of solar panels can actually help prevent dust storms.

This pilot project would generate about 50 megawatts by 2012, and save 2,460 acre feet of water per year, or enough to provide for about 4,000 households practicing water conservation measures.
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