SMUD signed on to buy power from a massive solar project after being told by the developer the site was “bare, rocky ground,” according to an environmental advocate. But project documents show it would instead remove thousands of oak trees and disrupt one of the county’s last intact oak woodlands.

Proposed and being developed by New York-based D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, the Coyote Creek Agrivoltaic Ranch Project is a large-scale solar and battery storage facility in southeastern Sacramento County near Rancho Murieta and Prairie City State Vehicular Recreation Area, intended to supply clean energy to more than 44,000 homes within SMUD’s service territory.

Strong opposition

The project, though, has met with strong pushback from environmental groups like Environmental Council of Sacramento, also known as ECOS, which argues that it would erase some of the last intact oak woodlands and seasonal wetlands left in the county. Sean Wirth, co-chair of the ECOS Habitat Committee, noted that throughout his career as conservation chair for the Sierra Club’s Mother Lode Chapter, which oversees 24 Northern California counties, “this is the only solar project we have ever opposed.”

“When SMUD was first approached in 2021 about this project and asked to sign a power purchase agreement, they were told that this project was going to be built on bare, rocky ground … This is not bare rocky ground,” said Wirth, during a Sacramento County Planning Commission meeting in October.

According to Wirth, Sacramento Municipal Utility District did not conduct site visits or ecological screenings, nor did it reach out to the environmental community regarding the project.

Matt Vespa, a senior attorney with Earthjustice’s clean-energy program, said while it’s standard practice for utilities to sign power purchase agreements before environmental reviews are finished, it would be “a serious issue” if the developer misrepresented the project site’s condition to SMUD as Wirth claimed.

“We met with SMUD almost immediately, and SMUD staff told us this would never happen again, because no longer would they allow for third-party projects to not be screened in the same way they screen their own projects,” Wirth continued, adding that SMUD officials also said they couldn’t discuss the project further because of contractual obligations.

During an interview with The Sacramento Bee on Monday, Wirth also noted the utility was “very careful not to say or do anything that will result in them having a liability with the contract, quite clear that they had made a rather substantial mistake.”

In response to Wirth’s claim, SMUD’s public information specialist, Gamaliel Ortiz, noted in an email to The Bee that the Coyote Creek project is not being developed by SMUD, and that SMUD’s role “is limited and distinct from the project developer, who is responsible for site selection, environmental studies, securing county permits and project development.”

The County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Nov. 18 to consider approval of the Coyote Creek Agrivoltaic Ranch Project and certification of its Final Environmental Impact Report.

Proposal blasted by opponents

Opponents have called the Coyote Creek project one of the worst-sited renewable energy proposals in California, citing the developer’s plans to remove thousands of mature oak trees and permanently convert sensitive habitat, including grasslands, wetlands and oak woodlands, fragmenting key wildlife corridors that species depend on as they adapt to a shifting climate.

In May, in joint comments, a coalition of environmental and conservation groups urged Sacramento County to revise and recirculate the draft environmental report or reject the project, warning the review falls short in examining how the project would affect local wildlife, water systems and fragile habitats protected under CEQA.

According to the project’s Environmental Impact Report draft, about 54 acres of native oak canopy would be permanently lost.

And while the developer, DESRI, pointed out that the company has reduced the project’s tree removal quantity by about 30% since earlier designs, a state agency letter stated that the project would still involve cutting down about 3,700 blue and native oak trees.

DESRI emphasized the economic benefits of the project, claiming $67 million in property tax contributions to Sacramento County over the first 20 years and generating approximately 350 construction jobs.

And when it comes to the public concerns for the environment, the company says it is going “above and beyond” to reduce harm, cutting the number of oak trees planned for removal and limiting permanent wetland loss to less than half an acre.

As part of its mitigation plan, DESRI also said that it will plant one oak tree for each one removed and monitor the new plantings for seven years.

However, Todd Dawson, an integrative biology professor at UC Berkeley, said such a mitigation being proposed not only is “severely misaligned with the timescale to reestablish ‘mature’ trees and the woodlands they would compose,” but also carries “the high risk that planted trees would survive in sufficient numbers to eventually reestablish the ecosystem.”

Dawson noted that, in the case of blue oaks, replanting them could be especially difficult because their acorns are hard to grow successfully, and young trees often die from heat, drought or being eaten by wildlife.

“Finally, if the tree removal disrupts the soils and watershed, too, then this means there is no way to determine if the ‘ecosystem’ that reestablishes would be anything close to what it was before,” Dawson said in an email.

“It may simply fail or become a site for invasive species to get hold unless it is stewarded for many years with an eye on constant replanting of dead oaks and removal or invasive species to keep it on the path to what the ecosystem was before tree removal.”

Replanting ripped

Adina Merenlender, a professor of conservation science at UC Berkeley, agreed, and said that replanting seedlings and seven years of monitoring are not effective solutions to address the environmental impacts of large-scale oak tree removal.

The already high mortality rate for seedlings to survive long enough to become 150-year-old trees has, according to Merenlender, become even worse over time as invasive annual grasses compete for water, and hotter, drier conditions and increased grazing make it harder for young oaks to survive.

“They’re not going to get much ecological value out of those seedlings … you can’t replace the carbon storage (and) the canopy cover (and) the structure of a 100-year-old tree with a seedling,” Merenlender said, adding that the loss of mature oaks means the loss of ecological systems that depend on them.

“Older trees have that big structure, or birds and animals are living in cavities … it’s a complex home for many creatures, as compared to little seedlings,” she continued.

When asked whether any studies had been conducted to estimate the environmental impact of the time gap between the removal of 3,700 mature oak trees and the maturity of their replacements, DESRI did not address the question directly, instead reiterating the project’s potential benefits and its mitigation plan.

Behind the promises, who benefits?

DESRI said it has partnered with the Sacramento Tree Foundation to collect and replant acorns from the project site, with the California Rangeland Trust to implement on-site conservation easements, and with California State Parks as part of a broader coalition supporting the project’s preservation efforts.

But Wirth asserted those groups are not true environmental organizations and stand to gain financially from the project.

In an email to The Bee, Alyssa Rolen, communications director for the California Rangeland Trust, acknowledged it will receive compensation for transaction services and ongoing monitoring of the conservation easement, describing the payments as “standard in any conservation easement transaction.”

California State Parks information officer Kevin Murphy said no agreement has been finalized but confirmed it is working with the developer to “identify park improvements that would benefit both visitors to Prairie City State Vehicular Recreation Area and those supporting alternative energy development.”

Sacramento Tree Foundation did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment.

“In these times when federal regulations are so strict and especially placing roadblocks on our climate goals, what we really need is for our local governments and our local organizations to be developing responsibly,” said Luz Lim, a policy analyst for ECOS.