I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
SANTA FE — Expect a sunny future for the town of Belen — literally.
Gov. Bill Richardson and officials from two California-based companies announced Tuesday that the small town south of Albuquerque will be home to a proposed $800 million solar plant. The facility, said Fred Mondragon, the state’s economic development secretary, will create 600 new jobs over the next few years, paying wages that range from $39,000 for production-line workers to $100,000 for managers.
“This is our Merry Christmas,” said Belen Mayor Ronnie Torres during a press conference at the state Capitol in the governor’s fourth-floor cabinet room.
The governor sounded similarly enthused at the news.
“At a time of economic uncertainty, this project will create hundreds of jobs and reaffirm New Mexico as a clean energy state and major player in our nation’s effort to build a new clean energy economy,” Richardson said.
Dr. Rajeeva Larhi, the president of Malibu-based Signet Solar, which will build and operate the solar plant, said Belen won out because of its proximity to a skilled work force and its access to research institutions, such as the Sandia National Laboratories and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“This is a truly historic day for us,” Larhi said. “Under Gov. Richardson, New Mexico offers precisely the kind of supportive pro-business policies and incentives that the solar industry needs to grow rapidly.”
The state is offering an estimated $30 million in credits, incentives and money for brick-and-mortar construction in Belen, Mondragon said.
That figure includes $8 million in brick-and-mortar costs the governor plans to ask the Legislature to approve during the 2009 legislative session, as well as about $15 million the state will spend over four to six years in granting high wage tax credits. In addition, the state will spend an estimated $7.7 million over several years in the the state’s Job Training Incentive Program, Mondragon said.
The solar plant, which will generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes, is the first tenant in a sprawling mixed-used development in Belen called Rancho Cielo. The development is the brainchild of Coast Range Investments.
Coast Range’s president, Jim Foster, said the solar plant hinges on the construction of a freeway exchange off I-25, which should get under way in May 2009.
Bids go out on the project in February, added James Woods, also of Coast Range.
“That is the gateway to this project,” Foster said of the freeway exchange, adding that although Rancho Cielo is near I-25, it has no ready access. The exchange will remedy that, Foster said.
Foster and Coast Range Investments are well known around the state Capitol.
Foster contributed $75,000 to Richardson’s re-election campaign in 2006 when Coast Range Investments was still named RS Investments. Foster donated use of his personal jet to the governor for two campaign trips to California that same year.
Coast Range Investments, meanwhile, has sought state help for the I-25 interchange for years. And the governor has been helpful in setting aside money for it. The firm’s officials met with administration officials in early 2005 to talk about the exchange, and the $75,000 contribution came about a month later.
The administration earmarked $4 million in state money for the highway interchange in 2007.
Eventually, after the solar plant is up and running, Coast Range envisions building a solar farm on several hundred acres that will utilize solar panels produced at Signet’s solar plant. The developer also has plans in coming years to build 1,100 homes.
Under a plan outlined Tuesday, the solar plant would sell Coast Range thousands of panels for its solar farm, each one weighing approximately 250 pounds and measuring 6 feet by 8 feet, Foster said.
The power company, likely the Public Service Company of New Mexico, would buy the electricity from the solar farm. And the hope is that homeowners in Rancho Cielo would get a break on their monthly utility bills, Foster said. That’s because as Foster envisions it the homeowners would be share owners of the community solar farm and would get dividends from the power company for their share of the solar farm.
In effect, the dividend would act as a credit against expenses a homeowner owes the power company.
