ANAHOLA — Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is finalizing plans to construct a solar facility in Anahola after an assessment found the proposal poses no adverse environmental or cultural impacts. The 588-page environmental assessment released today was compiled by the Honolulu-based
ANAHOLA — Kauai Island Utility Cooperative is finalizing plans to construct a solar facility in Anahola after an assessment found the proposal poses no adverse environmental or cultural impacts.
The 588-page environmental assessment released today was compiled by the Honolulu-based planning company Planning Solutions. It found the site lies within the culturally important Kamalomaloo ahupuaa but is not likely to significantly affect practices or traditions.
“The lands on which the Anahola Solar Project would be situated have been significantly altered from their original condition by industrial-scale agriculture,” the assessment reads.
The completion of the assessment, KIUC spokesman Jim Kelly said, is one of the few state and federal hurdles left before construction begins on the nearly $55 million project along Kuhio Highway.
KIUC intends to seek financing from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service for the proposed project.
“It’s a great time because interest rates are low, so the money that we will borrow to finance the projects are at historic levels,” Kelly said Wednesday. “That’ll translate into cheaper overall costs for building a project and that will translate into savings for our members.”
He said cooperative officials are negotiating a 25-year lease agreement with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which owns the entire 422-acre parcel in Anahola that the 60-acre facility will be built on.
Construction could begin as early as the third quarter of this year.
Some Anahola residents, however, said the proposed facility’s land should be used to develop more housing for homesteaders, who in some cases, have waited decades to obtain a DHHL homestead land lease.
“This area that the solar farm is going to be built, it’s flat land,” Anahola Village resident Diane Lovell O’Reilly said in interview that accompanied the report. “It’s more suitable and greater to put up at least 10 families.”
Other residents support the plan and say that the proposal will benefit the community in the long run.
“This is great for Hawaiians to be put back on to the lands,” Anahola Village resident Chono Fernandez said in the report. “ However, as the population grows and more infrastructure is need to support that population, it is absolutely necessary to already have in place plans to activate sustainable projects within the homestead community. This should be done by dedicating land for agricultural use to plant and grow food; vegetables, raise livestock such as cattle, pigs, poultry, etc.”
The project, first conceived in 2005, calls for the construction, operation and maintenance of a 12-megawatt photovoltaic facility, substation and customer service center to address long-standing service issues.
A majority of the land will house a 53-acre photovoltaic facility, including solar panels, inverters and transformers, that will provide up to 12 megawatts of electrical energy to KIUC’s electrical grid.
Current plans also call for the construction of an adjacent 2-acre electrical substation and Battery Energy Storage System that will be used to deliver power from the station to KIUC’s electrical transmission system.
The proposed facility, according to the environmental assessment, is expected to generate 23,525 megawatt-hours of electricity per year — an amount equal to 5.2 percent of the total electricity generated in 2010 — and save cooperative customers an estimated $250,000 per month in costs.
What’s more, the assessment noted, the power production site would reduce power outages and service disruptions in an area that is currently served by the cooperative’s two facilities in Kapaa and Princeville.
The proposed Anahola facility will also house a 5-acre service center with an access drive, parking lot, five truck bays and a storage yard to address several customer service issues found at the cooperative’s Eleele and Kapaa service center locations.
The environmental assessment will be available for 30 days for public review and comment, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service’s website.
For more information and to view the assessment, visit: www.rurdev.usda.gov/UWP-EA-AnaholaSolar.html.
To obtain additional information or provide comments, contact Emily Orler, Environmental Protection Specialist at emily.orler@wdc.usda.gov or Rural Utilities Service, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Mail Stop 1571, Washington, DC 20250.
The State Office of Environmental Quality Control’s deadline for comments is June 24.
