The owner of a Jacumba hotel has sued the San Diego County Board of Supervisors after it approved a 604-acre solar utility farm that allegedly misrepresented engineering calculations in order to get a bigger footprint.
“They essentially tried to hide these engineering efficiencies with false documents and we ended up catching them,” said Jeffrey Osborne, who co-owns the San Diego-adjacent Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel. “We hired our own engineering firm to find out where they hid those big figures that they calculated from.”
Osborne filed the 42-page complaint in San Diego Superior Court on Monday, Sept. 20 concerning BayWa, a Germany-based renewable energy developer, according to media reports.
“They broke a lot of county ordinance zoning laws and they also hoodwinked the county into approving a larger project than actually necessary to produce the power that they claimed,” Osborne told the Southern California Record.
Osborne said he asked to cut the size of the solar farm in half but BayWa allegedly refused to do so.
“They want to produce 90 megawatts is what they said but that's just what their goal is,” he said. “To produce 90 megawatts, they only need about 400 acres. It just makes the entire area less desirable as a tourist destination.”
Other plaintiffs are members of a neighborhood group who also oppose the solar farm.
“We live in a rural area that's just unbelievably special and beautiful,” Osborne said. “People come to visit because of the beauty, the mountain ranges and the solar farm is by definition a utility. This is an industrial utility and I think even the word ‘farm’ is a fun play on words that the solar industry created. It's not a farm. It’s an industrial power plant.”
The plot of land is located on a flood plain, according to Osborne.
“The developer is required to build them up to five feet, which is a total of 11 to 15 feet above the ground because of the flood plain,” he said. “So, these things actually tower over the fencing and everything. Most solar projects are not this tall. It’s actually extra tall. It overwhelms the countryside.”
At one point, Osborne said unions came out in support of the project.
“The unions have shown their support for large-scale solar because they get these big contracts that only last a year but they get the jobs for a year even though it's going to destroy our little town for generations,” he said. “They don't care. They want their jobs.”
The case is currently pending with San Diego Superior Court Judge Timothy Taylor.
"The ultimate outcome would be that this project is altogether stopped and then we could potentially work with another developer that is interested in doing solar in an honest and transparent way and that would respect us, knowing that this is a big deal to put this next to a small community," Osborne said.