By Mark Cowling | Pinal Central
Silver King Energy Center — a 6,671-acre solar farm included on 8,122 acres of industrial and business uses northeast of Florence — was unanimously rejected by the Pinal County Board of Supervisors.
“This is the worst project that I’ve encountered in 20 years of public office,” Vice Chairman Jeff Serdy, R-Apache Junction, told his colleagues at the board’s Feb. 18 meeting. Pinal already has 40,000 acres approved for solar fields and the county should instead be looking toward micro-nuclear energy, he said.
The development, which would have leased state land, would have carved off a piece of Superstition Vistas, a model community being planned on the vast vacant desert between Florence and Apache Junction. “It would be the end of Superstition Vistas as envisioned,” Serdy said.
