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By Miriam Raftery
Photo: proposed Starlight Solar site, via County of San Diego
April 4, 2026 (Boulevard) – Should a 588-acre solar project with one of the state’s largest battery energy storage sites be built near rural Boulevard, a small town located in a very high fire hazard zone? The County Planning Commission may vote May 8 on the Starlight Solar project, which supporters say is needed to help meet state and county green energy mandates.
Opponents have launched a No Starlight Solar website. They’re urging concerned residents to contact county supervisors, as well as attend an April 15 town hall meeting at 6 p.m. at the Boulevard Resource Center (39919 Ribbonwood Road) with Andrew Hayes, a representative from Supervisor Joel Anderson’s office.
“Boulevard's dark skies, safety, and desert quiet are under threat,” the No Starlight Solar site states. “We support clean energy — but not projects that put rural communities at risk or concentrate industrial energy infrastructure in one small town.”
The site adds, “We are not anti-solar. Renewable energy is essential. What residents are questioning is the pattern: Boulevard, Jacumba, and Campo have increasingly become the de facto dumping grounds for regional energy infrastructure. Projects like the nearby JVR Energy Park in Jacumba show how rural East County is being rapidly industrialized while most of the region's energy demand lies elsewhere... Residents deserve the same level of safety, transparency, and environmental protection that would be expected anywhere else in San Diego County,” the No Starlight Solar site asserts.
The project’s photovoltaic solar arrays could generate up to 100 megawatts (MW) of electricity. It would also include inverters, transformers, an onsite substation, gen-tie line connecting to Boulevard’s substation, and most controversially, a 217.4 MW battery energy storage system (BESS). Similar battery energy storage systems have caused numerous fires, sometimes burning for days and forcing evacuations of nearby residents and businesses, also potentially leaking toxic materials. The project’s own safety documents acknowledge major uncertainties regarding lithium battery fire response.
The site, situated south of Old Highway 80 and north of the international border, is less than a mile from Clover Flat Elementary School, near key evacuation routes, and encompasses land that is home to sensitive species. The land is owned by the Haagen Company.
In a March 2026 KPBS article, San Diego City College assistant professor John Bathkey coined the term “green colonialism” to describe the foisting of industrial-scale renewable energy projects on disadvantaged communities and Native American tribes.
The fears are not unjustified. Some green energy projects already built in East County and adjacent Imperial County have posed threats to residents, including wind turbines bursting into flames and sparking fires, multi-ton blades hurled off, chemical leaks, stray voltage, noise and visual blight.
Former Boulevard Community Planning Group Chair Donna Tisdale described the region as an “energy sacrifice zone” after the county approved numerous massive wind and solar projects across the rural southeastern part of the county. Tisdale recently moved out of state, after unsuccessfully fighting to oppose projects approved by the County, including a huge wind project adjoining her own ranch. Community concerns over noise, fire danger, visual blight, and potential depletion of ground water among others were largely ignored.
The Boulevard Planning Group, now under leadership of Earl Goodnight, has since approved the Starlight Solar project, but with conditions. The group has asked for a $7 million community benefit fund and increased setbacks from homes and roads. But their vote is purely advisory, not binding on county planners or ultimately, supervisors if the planning commission’s decision is appealed.
Goodnight has said the community planners believed the county would likely approve the project, so opted to try and get as many benefits for the county as possible, noting, “When a project gets to this point, then there’s little that can be done,” KPBS reported.
But Jim Whalen, the land use consultant hired to lobby for the project, says Starlight Solar’s proposal does not include a community benefit fund for Boulevard, though he adds that Haagen would refurbish Boulevard’s Backcountry Resource Center.
The project, which would create glare off a sea of solar panels, also threatens Boulevard’s efforts to pursue International Dark Sky Community designation, which Borrego Springs and Julian have already attained. It also raises concerns over Native American cultural resources and whether adequate tribal consultation has occurred.
Perhaps most significantly, the concentration of multiple massive industrial-scale energy projects is changing the region’s rural character—the quiet, opens spaces, natural landscaping and starry night skies that attracted residents to the area, some of whom have lived here for generations.
Why the push for the project
California has enacted a mandate to produce 100% of the state’s power from renewable resources by 2045. San Diego County has a similar goal to attain zero carbon emissions by 2045. The City of San Diego and San Diego Community Power, which provides much of the region’s energy, have an even more ambitious goal of producing all of its electricity from clean, renewable sources a decade sooner, by 2035.
Those mandates and goals are driven by climate change, which is rapidly heating the planet, fueling record-breaking heat worldwide as well as unprecedented severe storms, dry conditions across the Southwest and increasingly severe wildfires.
What opponents want
Residents opposed to the project are urging people to come show solidarity at the April 15 meeting.
They’re also urging the public to contact County Supervisors and ask each Supervisor to oppose the project or, if the project is approved, to assure that battery storage is moved away from Jewel Valley Road, a key evacuation route. Opponents also want a second evacuation route added, an alarm system to warn residents of a BESS fire, a fire truck dedicat4ed to the Starlight Solar project, expanded on-site water storage, as well as limits on construction hours, expanded setbacks from homes, roads and property lines, and a $7 million community investment benefits package, among other things.
In the Pine Valley Neighbors forum on Facebook, Minty Stars urged area residents to attend the April 15 meeting in support of neighboring Boulevard’s residents. Of the solar project’s owners, she wrote, “they are trying to make as much money as possible and hurt anyone/any land and any resources in the process.”
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