'Destroying this place': Residents despair over massive project in tiny California town with no stoplights, 2000 people [View all]

this is the best photo I could find for the project.


There are no stoplights in Boron. There’s no youth center either, though much of the town’s daily life revolves around its children. There are still Joshua trees, only a few thousand less now. Carless residents, of which there are many in the Mojave Desert town of about 2,000, walk and bike atop cracked, damaged pavement on Boron Avenue to the town’s only market.

For months now, their treks have been accompanied by a daily parade of work trucks hauling water and construction materials to the site of one of California’s largest new solar projects, an endeavor that Boron residents fear is poisoning their town.

Left in the dust
On a warm October night last fall, I sat near a taxidermied bobcat and a trove of other historical Mojave memorabilia inside Boron’s treasured Twenty Mule Team Museum. A group of locals gathered there to discuss the Aratina Solar Project, which was just starting to make headway less than a mile from the town’s southern boundary.

The destruction of Joshua trees and other facets of the area’s fragile desert ecosystem has been a main point of contention regarding the 2,300-acre project which, when completed, is slated to transport solar energy to cities in Silicon Valley and along the Central Coast. But many residents are worried about a different problem: a deadly fungal disease that wreaks havoc on Kern County, without fail, year after year.

“I know all the talk’s been about Joshua trees, but the real concern is valley fever,” resident Roy Richards said. “I’ve seen sand and dust blowing off the project, and it’ll go 4 or 5 miles. And this is less than half a mile from an elementary school.”

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/boron-aratina-solar-fight-20152346.php