After listening to hundreds of speakers during a five-hour marathon meeting yesterday, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to send the county’s renewable energy development guidelines back to the Planning Commission for further review. Once approved by the board of supervisors, the guidelines will be included in the county’s general plan and will determine where solar farms can be developed in the county. Large-scale solar developers were unhappy that that the proposed plan required that new solar farms be built on already disturbed land or in remote areas of the county like Amboy, or that they would be prohibited from building solar farms in rural living areas or in areas that would have a negative impact on surrounding local communities. Conservationists were unhappy that the county’s plan didn’t protect communities from solar development and that they would have to fight solar projects on their own.
