Another large solar facility has been approved to go up in Yuma County. Yuma County supervisors have unanimously approved the project near Dateland.
The special use permit allows the company Viktoria Solar, agent for an Arizona-based business, to create a solar power generating facility with battery energy storage.
The solar facility will be able to use 2,000 acres of former farmland. Yuma and the surrounding area grows most of the country’s winter greens.
But the approved 2,000 acres is no longer good ag land, and that was an important distinction for Yuma County Supervisor Russell McCloud.
“These projects, they like to take ag land. It would be good for the public to understand that they’re not just the end-all, be-all," McCloud said. "You would think the projects would go out in the desert, but that’s not their preferred location.”
McCloud said that’s because ag land has already been disturbed and leveled.
Viktoria Solar is managed by a company based out of North Carolina.