As Solar Booms in the California Desert, Locals Feel ‘Overburdened’

RIVERSIDE, Calif.—For four hours, Mark Carrington sat quietly with his neighbors at the front of his county’s supervisors’ late August board meeting, waiting for his chance to speak. 

They were there for the final agenda item: a vote from the county board of supervisors to approve Intersect Power’s Easley Solar Project, which would span 3,600 acres of private and public lands and generate up to 400 megawatts of solar energy and have 650 megawatts of battery storage capacity, enough energy for 253,000 California homes. 

To attend the meeting, Carrington and his neighbors had driven more than two hours from their homes in Desert Center and Lake Tamarisk, unincorporated communities of Riverside County not far from Palm Springs, where solar farms stretch for miles along Interstate 10 in one of the densest areas of photovoltaic panel development in North America.