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CALICO SOLAR POWER PROJECT Supplemental Staff Assessment, Part II AUGUST 2010 CEC-700-2010-009-SSA-2 CALIFORNIA ENERGY COMMISSION Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor DOCKET NUMBER 08-AFC-13 CALIFORNIA ENERGY COMMISSION 1516 Ninth Street Sacramento, CA 95814 http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/calicosolar/index.html Christopher Meyer Project Manager ROGER JOHNSON Siting Office Manager TERRENCE O’BRIEN Deputy Director Siting, Transmission and Environmental Protection Division MELISSA JONES Executive Director DISCLAIMER Staff members of the California Energy Commission prepared this report. As such, it does not necessarily represent the views of the Energy Commission, its employees, or the State of California. The Energy Commission, the State of California, its employees, contractors and subcontractors make no warrant, express or implied, and assume no legal liability for the information in this report; nor does any part represent that the uses of this information will not infringe upon privately owned rights. This report has not been approved or disapproved by the Energy Commission nor has the Commission passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the information in this report. CALICO SOLAR PROJECT (08-AFC-13) SUPPLEMENTAL STAFF ASSESSMENT, PART II EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................... ES-1 ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT Cultural Resources and Native American Values ............................................... C.3-1 Traffic and Transportation ..................................................................................C.11-1 LIST OF PREPARERS ................................................................................................ F-1 WITNESS QUALIFICATIONS AND DECLARATIONS .............................................. G-1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Christopher Meyer INTRODUCTION Calico Solar, LLC (applicant) is seeking approval to construct and operate the Calico Solar Project (formerly the Stirling Energy Systems Solar One Project) and its ancillary facilities (Calico Solar Project). The applicant is a private party that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tessera Solar. The main objective of the Calico Solar Project is to provide clean, renewable, solar-powered electricity to the State of California. The electricity from the Calico Solar Project will assist the State in meeting its objectives as mandated by the California Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) Program and the California Global Warming Solutions Act. The Calico Solar Project will also address other state and local mandates adopted by California’s electric utilities for the provision of renewable energy. The applicant submitted an Application for Certification (AFC) to the California Energy Commission (Energy Commission) for the proposed project on December 2, 2008. (The application was originally submitted by SES Solar One, LLC, SES Solar Three, LLC and SES Solar Six, LLC for the SES Solar One Project. In January 2010, the above entities merged into Calico Solar, LLC, and the name of the SES Solar One Project was changed to the Calico Solar Project. The Energy Commission is the lead State agency responsible for evaluating the environmental effects of project and for complying with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The project proposes the use of land managed by the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM); therefore the applicant has submitted a request for a right-of-way grant to the BLM. The BLM is the federal lead agency for the evaluation of project effects and compliance of the proposed project with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) related to possible BLM discretionary actions related to the right-of-way grant request. The BLM and the Energy Commission prepared separate final documents for compliance with NEPA and CEQA, respectively. Specifically, the Energy Commission published Part I of the Supplemental Staff Assessment (SSA) on July 21, 2010 and the BLM published the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on August 6, 2010. Additional time was necessary for the completion of the Cultural Resources and Traffic and Transportation sections of the SSA, which are being published here as the SSA, Part II. This document is only the Cultural Resources and Traffic and Transportation sections of the SSA. All other technical areas and summaries of Energy Commission staff’s analysis can be found in the July 21, 2010 Supplemental Staff Assessment. August 2010 ES-1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SUMMARY OF PROJECT RELATED IMPACTS Executive Summary Table 1 (comparable to Executive Summary Table 4 in the SSA Part I) summarizes the potential short- term, long-term and cumulative adverse impacts of the proposed Calico Project, the anticipated mitigation and conditions of certification, and the level of significance of the impacts after mitigation, under CEQA. Executive Summary Table 1 Summary of Potential Short-Term, Long-Term, and Cumulative Adverse Impacts Complies with Cumulative Mitigation and CEQA Level of Environmental Applicable Short and Long Term Adverse Conditions of Significance Parameter LORS Adverse Impacts Impacts Certification After Mitigation Cultural Yes Significant short term or Cumulative CUL-1 through Significant and Resources long term adverse impacts adverse impacts CUL-10 unavoidable with mitigation/ Conditions of Certification incorporated Traffic and Yes No significant short term or No cumulative TRANS-1 through Less than significant Transportation long term adverse impacts adverse impacts TRANS-7 with mitigation/Conditions of Certification incorporated EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ES-2 August 2010 C. ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS C.3 - CULTURAL RESOURCES AND NATIVE AMERICAN VALUES Testimony of Sarah Allred, Michael McGuirt, and Kathleen Forrest1 C.3.1 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS The proposed Calico Solar Project would entail the construction of one of the world’s largest solar power facilities within a 6,215-acre project site in the Central Mojave Desert in eastern San Bernadino County. The project, which would be constructed in two separate phases, would consist of approximately 34,000 solar dish systems (SunCatchersTM), a new substation, an electrical transmission line, an administration building and maintenance complex, and other associated facilities, with a generating capacity of up to 850 mega watts (MW). A total of 119 archaeological sites and ten built-environment (architectural) resources were identified within the Calico Solar project’s cultural resources area of analysis. The applicant has recommended, and the BLM has made the determination, that three (3) archaeological sites and five (5) built-environment properties within the project area are eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and the California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR). The BLM further appears to have found, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that the proposed action would not have a significant impact on the environment, as that action relates to cultural resources, and that, under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), the proposed action, or undertaking, would not adversely affect significant cultural resources, or historic properties. Energy Commission staff, by contrast, believes that the data on which the applicant’s and the BLM’s conclusions are based are not adequate to definitively draw conclusions regarding resource eligibility. Energy Commission staff, therefore, believes that an as yet unquantified number of individual archaeological sites are potentially eligible for listing in the California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR), that three archaeological districts and landscapes have the potential to be eligible, that the effects of the proposed action on any of these resources that are conclusively recommended to be eligible would be significant, and that the Commission’s adoption of proposed conditions of certification CUL–1 through CUL–5 and CUL–7 through CUL–10 would reduce these effects to a less than significant level. Energy Commission staff more definitively recommends that four built-environment resources are eligible for listing in the CRHR; however, notwithstanding the Commission’s adoption of condition of certification CUL–6 to reduce significant visual effects to one of those built-environment resources (a segment of historic U.S. Route 66), the effects are unmitigable and would not be reduced to a less than significant level. 1 Sarah Allred and Michael McGuirt are responsible for all testimony pertaining to the archaeological resources, and Kathleen Forrest is responsible for all testimony pertaining to built environment resources. July 2010 C.2-1 CULTURAL RESOURCES C.3.2 INTRODUCTION In an effort to provide an efficient joint NEPA and CEQA review for the innundation of solar projects in this region, the BLM and the CEC entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in August 2007 (http://www.energy.ca.gov/siting/solar/BLM_CEC_MOU.PDF). As parties to the MOU, the BLM and the CEC committed to sharing in the preparation of an environmental analysis in a public process to avoid duplication of staff efforts, to share staff expertise and information, to promote intergovernmental coordination at the local, state, and federal levels, and to facilitate public review. Regarding the sharing of information, as it pertains to cultural resources, the National Historic Preservation Act (Section 304) and the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (Section 9) mandate that