Creating a New Corridor

The City of Lancaster is seeking to annex more than 7,000 acres north of its borders to create an alternative energy corridor. If approved by the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission, much of the land added to the city would be zoned for light industrial uses that allow for solar energy farms. The annexation is another move by the Lancaster city government to do all it can to make the Antelope Valley a center of alternative energy in California if not the country. Within the city’s boundaries is a 5-megawatt solar demonstration site built by Pasadena-based eSolar that goes online this month. In the unincorporated land now under the jurisdiction of Los Angeles County, eSolar is proposing more solar plants, and Irvine-based BlueFire Ethanol Fuels Inc. has received the necessary permits and approval from the county to construct a plant to make biofuels out of green waste. The additional land also figures into a joint partnership Lancaster has with DayStar Farms Inc. to develop a solar park to encourage research and development of solar-driven electricity production. The close proximity to ample sunshine, the Antelope Valley (14) Freeway and a major consumer of electricity in the Los Angeles basin are all pluses that Lancaster will play up to get energy companies to locate there. “We are appropriately located for a significant investment in solar energy,” said Deputy City Manager Jason Caudle. The area the city is looking to annex is bounded by Avenue E on the north; Avenue H on the south; 40th street east on the west; and 25th Street on the east. The property includes some residences, primarily mobile homes, and a landfill and interchanges with the freeway at Avenues F and G. In June, the Lancaster City County pre-zoned the land from county designations to those of the city. The next step for the city is to file an application with LAFCO, the quasi-public body responsible for coordinating changes in local governmental boundaries, including annexations, incorporations of cities, and the formation, consolidation and dissolution of special districts. The commission is made up of elected and non-elected officials from throughout L.A. County. There are 18 requirements that must be met for the annexation to go through, including access to water, sanitation and sewage. “It is simple process, but once you get into researching the needs of any given annexation it can be simple or complex,” said Sandor Winger, the executive director of the commission. Typically, the annexation process can take four to eight months, Winger added. Lancaster is content with the commission taking its time to make a final decision. “This is an item that will create long, long, long term benefits so speed is not necessarily a priority,” Caudle said. As much of the land in the proposed annexation is open desert with a minimal number of residences, few changes will come as a result of becoming part of the city. Zoning the land for industrial uses will not have much of an impact on city and school district services as compared to, say, zoning the land for housing. BlueFire has spent $6 million alone to receive the permitting to build on a 10-acre site for its ethanol plant with a planned capacity of 3.2 million gallons per year and doesn’t want to have the annexation put any roadblocks to the plant’s construction. The company is waiting for word from the U.S. Department of Energy on a grant to fund 40 percent of the $110 million price tag County land was selected for the plant because it met the requirement of being close to a landfill as a supply of green waste that can be converted into fuel, said Bill Davis, project manager with Blue Fire. “Corn ethanol will always have a place but the non-starch based activities are where we need to go,” Davis said. When completed, the ethanol plant will create 30 on-site jobs with an equal number of off-site jobs. Byproducts from the manufacturing process are cattle feed, pet food and gypsum for agrarian uses. The eSolar projects under the county’s jurisdiction are still in the early planning stages. A 245-megawatt solar plant to produce energy for Southern California Edison will begin production in 2011. A second project uses solar thermal power for distribution by Pacific Gas and Electricity Co. Attempts to reach a representative of eSolar were not successful.