Williamson Act – Enviro Updates

Solar makes sense to farmers as water supplies dry up

July 20, 2026

Blanca Begert and Ian James, LOS ANGELES TIMES

“Growers are feeling pinched,” Caitlin Peterson, associate director of the PPIC Water Policy Center, said. “Solar is one of the potential options for folks that are having to take land out of production that has the potential to be fairly lucrative.”

California’s Central Valley is one of the country’s richest farming regions, blessed with fertile soils, sunny days and a massive man-made system of irrigation canals and reservoirs.

But as climate change intensifies, droughts deepen and water restrictions kick in, growers in much of the valley are getting less water for their fields. They also face new limits on how much they can pump from underground, forcing them to leave hundreds of thousands of acres dry in the coming years. Some are turning to an answer they never thought they’d embrace: solar.

“We still want to farm, but taking the chance that water will be here was too risky,” said Todd Tracy, a fifth-generation farmer, as he drove through his groves of green pistachio trees about a half-hour west of Bakersfield.

In 2021, he optioned about a third of his family’s 8,600 acres to a solar developer, Avantus. The company is planning the largest solar-plus-storage project in the country, called Buttonbush. Its panels will eventually cover almost 12,000 acres and link up to a substation near the tiny town of Buttonwillow, before sending two gigawatts of electricity, enough to power 1 million homes, across the state.

Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Land Useag water use, Central Valley, groundwater, large-scale solar, SGMA, solar, water scarcity, Williamson Act

Close to Home: Supervisors double down on ‘inebriation tourism’

Judith Olney, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Once again, the Board of Supervisors is ready to throw Sonoma County taxpayers under the proverbial bus — and then back over us.

On Oct. 28, the board will discuss a cannabis ordinance that would reduce permit fees for cannabis cultivation on properties of 10 acres or more with agricultural or rural resource zoning, with operations only 100 feet from neighboring residences. In addition, the ordinance would allow events with cannabis consumption and sales.

After lowering fees for cannabis growers, the county still must pay for infrastructure and other public services, which means increasing the burden on other taxpayers.

It was bad enough when the supervisors granted the cannabis industry significant tax breaks, leaving residential taxpayers and businesses to cover the shortfall in revenue. Now, contrary to state regulations, the proposed ordinance includes unmitigated rights to host cannabis events, even on parcels that don’t have permits for cannabis cultivation, which require safety measures and qualified on-site security personnel.

With up to 104 event days per venue, plus large-scale cannabis events under zoning permits, the cannabis industry is securing more rights than the wine industry.