L.A. sued by two companies over rejection of solar array plan

Two out-of-state companies are suing Los Angeles after their plan to install an array of 3,500 solar cells on the northeast edge of the San Fernando Valley was thwarted by a local commission.

The proposed project in Lake View Terrace worried neighbors, who thought that the expanse of solar cells slated for a vacant lot off Foothill Boulevard would clash with a tranquil, rural area speckled with horse stables and homes. The dispute represents an unexpected collision between the city’s push to ramp up renewable power and its desire to preserve open space.

Los Angeles is the largest municipality in the nation with a Feed-in Tariff program, which allows people to install solar cells and sell all the energy back to the city.

The program applies to solar installations that are much larger than what a typical L.A. homeowner would install. It has been in high demand, with a long waiting list of solar projects.

Advocates such as the Los Angeles Business Council praise the program as a way to create jobs and boost renewable energy, calling it “an unqualified success for Los Angeles.” It is one of several programs that have been rolled out by the Department of Water and Power in its quest to get 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

But some residents complain that communities have too little power to stop expansive solar installations unsuited to their neighborhoods. Under state law, local jurisdictions are generally supposed to allow private solar installations unless they harm public health or safety, city officials said earlier this year.

The rules were designed to protect homeowners who put solar cells on their rooftops, said Board of Water and Power President Mel Levine, who authored the law decades ago as a state assemblyman.

As solar has become less costly, however, commercial installers have found it cheaper and easier to mount photovoltaic cells on the ground, a development that has raised new questions about land use. Los Angeles now has nine proposals for ground-mounted Feed-in Tariff projects that are being studied or on their way to being approved, according to the utility.

If cities have little power to restrict where photovoltaic arrays are installed, that would mean “the decimation of open space as we know it,” said Nancy Woodruff, vice president of the Foothill Trails District Neighborhood Council. “In agricultural-zoned land, you’d lose the whole community character. It wouldn’t be ranches and horses and roosters. It would be these electrical panels.”

The companies filing the suit, PLH LLC and Foothill Solar LLC, want to overturn a decision by the North Valley Area Planning Commission, which concluded in May that the project application was incomplete because it lacked a certain kind of city permit. In the suit, PLH and Foothill Solar counter that state law exempted them from having to get that permit, which requires neighbors to be notified about a public hearing on such projects.

California lawmakers put the rules in place to remove local barriers to installing solar panels, since producing more renewable energy is “not a municipal affair ... but is instead a matter of statewide concern,” attorneys for the two companies wrote, quoting a section of California government code. They argued that the commission decision had “no rational basis.”

Planning officials had vetted and approved the proposed solar array in February before a Lake View Terrace resident lodged an appeal against it. The companies argue that the local planning commission violated state and city laws by overturning that approval, and that the court should reverse the “arbitrary and capricious” commission action and allow the project to move forward.

As the debate over the Foothill Boulevard project plays out in court, the city has set out new guidelines for future solar projects like it, which generate energy mainly for use or sale somewhere else. A Los Angeles zoning official recently decided such solar projects require the kind of city permits that Lake View Terrace residents wanted.

“In the future, it will prevent the unintended consequence of not having any community input and impacting neighborhoods like Lake View Terrace.... This gives the community the ability to weigh in,” Councilman Felipe Fuentes said. However, he said the decision was unlikely to affect the fate of the Foothill Boulevard project, since it had been reviewed before the recent decision was issued.

In reaction to community concerns, the DWP is also weighing whether it could offer to pay different prices for energy generated by solar cells mounted on the ground and those on rooftops. The utility is paying the latest round of Feed-in Tariff applicants 14 or 15 cents per kilowatt hour — enough to potentially pull in more than $120,000 annually for a two-and-a-half-acre array, according to DWP estimates.

emily.alpert@latimes.com

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