A Green Idea for Brown Farm Fields in California

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/business/energy-environment/11solar.html

Thousands of acres of once fertile farmland here in the San Joaquin Valley have been removed from agricultural production, largely because it is contaminated by salt buildup from years of irrigation.

But large swaths of those dry fields could have a valuable new use in their future — making electricity. Farmers and officials at Westlands Water District, a public agency that supplies water to farms in the valley, have agreed to provide land for what would be one of the world’s largest solar energy complexes, to be built on 30,000 acres.

At peak output, the proposed Westlands Solar Park would generate as much electricity as several big nuclear power plants.
Unlike some renewable energy projects blocked by objections that they would despoil the landscape, this one has the support of environmentalists.

The San Joaquin initiative is in the vanguard of a new approach to locating renewable energy projects: putting them on polluted or previously used land. The Westlands project has won the backing of groups that have opposed building big solar projects in the Mojave Desert and have fought Westlands for decades over the district’s water use. Landowners and regulators are on board, too.

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Selenium *may* be from mining operations upstream.

Usually, a farmer with salty soil will put in perforated "drains" and flush the salt out of the soil by over-irrigating the fields. That would send the salt and the selenium into the wetlands downstream. Regulations probably prevent the farmers from doing that.

Great soil, great sun, but a colossal long-term metals problem. Way bad