San Joaquin Valley Least Conflict Solar Project
The San Joaquin Valley Data Basin Gateway was created to support a multi-stakeholder effort to identify least conflict lands for utility scale solar development in the San Joaquin Valley in Central California. Stakeholders represented include the solar industry, farming community, ranching community, and environmental community. Each stakeholder group addressed the least conflict question from their perspectives and generated map-based results. After compiling the results, around 470,000 acres of land was identified as potentially desirable to solar developers and least conflict from the standpoint of the other groups. Phase I is complete with a final report due out in February 2016, but the Gateway persists with an extremely valuable data library (~600 datasets pertinent to the region) and other content, and stakeholders have expressed interest in continuing to use the system to continue refining the work into the future.
