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SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

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The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

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Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

CA Group: Skip the Courtroom Drama and Let’s Talk Solar

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Wednesday, February 9, 2011   

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Let's talk, not sue. A California group says it wants to skip the courtroom drama and reform the approval process for solar energy facilities – by simply talking.

That's what the California Desert and Renewable Energy Working Group has been doing as the state moves forward with clean energy production. The coalition of environmental groups and solar developers has come up with a list of recommendations it hopes will be adopted by the U.S. Interior Department.

Kim Delfino, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, is a member of the group. She calls the initial recommendations "a kind of compromise document."

"It's not everything that the environmental community wanted, and it's not everything that the solar industry wanted, but it is a good middle ground for which we can build and move forward on."

Delfino says the group's main goal is not to repeat mistakes made last year when some solar companies rushed to beat a year-end deadline for federal stimulus dollars. What resulted was a number of lawsuits from environmental groups, claiming that the environmental impacts of the projects hasd been overlooked.

Some of the new recommendations focus on guiding companies to put their projects in areas that are considered lower-conflict areas, says Delfino.

"In areas that are already degraded, in areas that would have less high flashpoint conflicts over desert tortoise, over cultural sites, some of those mistakes we've seen being made in the 2010 projects."

Another goal is to improve communication with the public. Delfino says the solar companies need to produce documents that the public will easily understand so they can accurately weigh in on the impacts.

The Interior Department meets today and tomorrow in Washington, D.C., and will consider the recommendations. More information is online at www.drecp.org.




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