S1: Hey there , San Diego , it's time for KPBS roundtable. I'm Andrew Bracken. A new KPBS investigation looked into the growing license plate surveillance system. We hear about how cameras used by private companies are playing into the wider surveillance efforts of law enforcement. Then requests for shelter have seen a major jump in recent months , leaving many unable to find shelter beds. And despite residents concerns , a solar farm gets ready to break ground in the rural border community of Lakemba. That's ahead on KPBS roundtable. Surveillance cameras are nothing new in modern life. We see them on top of light poles , on our streets , in our stores , maybe even in our own homes. But how they are used can be harder to fully grasp. One example automated license plate readers. About a dozen police agencies in San Diego County use them , and a KPBS investigation found those agencies are also searching license plate cameras owned by private businesses. The mounted cameras capture vehicle information to help address shoplifting , robberies and car theft , but license plate surveillance goes beyond that. It also analyzes movement patterns and associations between drivers , often with limited oversight. Here with more are KPBS investigative reporters Scott Rodd and Gustavo Solis , who both have been working on this reporting. Welcome to the roundtable.
S2: Thanks , Andrew. Hello.
S1: So , Scott , you call this story , you know , a story about surveillance on steroids ? Tell us what you mean.
S3: Well , as you said in the intro , surveillance tools , you know , aren't anything new. They've been proliferating more and more in recent years , but these automated license plate readers are very powerful. These license plate readers capture in a single city , say , hundreds of thousands potentially of of license plate captures , you know , over the course of a month or several months. And these cameras are capturing license plates , car make and model other characteristics about vehicles like if they have a bumper sticker or a trailer on them. And a lot of people don't realize that when a city enters into a contract with a license plate reader company , the one that's been the biggest and most popular in recent years is a company called Flock Safety. They don't just get access to their own license plate readers , they can get access to many , many others , potentially hundreds of others that equal thousands of other license plate reader cameras around the state and around the country.
S1: So it's like a whole wider network. That they can tap into. So , Gustavo , you've worked on previous reporting , you know , involving this technology , this Alper automated license plate reader tech , you know , particularly used by law enforcement in San Diego County. Can you remind us a little bit of what you've covered and what you've found so far ? Yeah.
S4: Well , I predominantly look at this through the immigration lens , right ? I'm the immigration reporter here. But what I found is what Scott described. Right. This sharing allows agencies from all over the county , all over the state , in a rare case all over the country to look at data gathered here in San Diego. Right. So think of , you know , you listener right now , potentially you could be driving while you're listening to this. If you're driving in San Diego County , one of these cameras takes a picture of your car. That means that picture , your location , your direction you're going. It's uploaded in this database that hundreds of people can can look for. right is included in local searches , and in some cases it could be used in nationwide searches. What I have found in the immigration context is that federal immigration agencies have side door access , in some cases to some of this data. And while the general public , they're fine with this being used to find stolen cars , kidnapping victims , Amber alerts , things like that , they're not very comfortable with it being used in the immigration context.
S1: And , Scott , you know , a lot of your reporting here is breaking down that this is not just happening in the law enforcement community , but like in these more public spaces , private companies , malls , things like that. You've both been working on this , an investigation for months. Um , you've sifted through , what , over like 1500 pages of records here. Tell us more about what you found. Yeah.
S3: Yeah. Getting drilling down into trying to figure out what the scope of law enforcement accesses to other license plate readers can be difficult. It's fairly easy to figure out other public agencies or other law enforcement agencies that a police department can access , but trying to figure out private businesses is really hard. Partly that's because a private business they don't have , you know , big open public meetings like , you know , you would in a city with a city council. You also can't send a public records request to a Home Depot or a Lowe's , both of which have license plate readers. We found those out because we had to request a very specific set of documents that is located in the each department's license plate reader system , and in some cases , we even had to give them directions as to how to find these documents. They had to pull them down. In some cases , we had to kind of fight with some of these departments when they said we either don't have them or they're not. We don't have to disclose them , and we had to fight with them and say , yes , these are public records. You have to hand them over. And then came the task of sifting through them , like you said , over 1500 pages , trying to identify there's another private company , there's another private company , and then building out this web to try to see , well , how big is this , sort of this , this interconnected web of license plate readers that virtually has no oversight. You know , this falls out of the jurisdiction of a city council. There are at least once there's one state law that has some impact on this. It requires privacy disclosures. But the ones we found were very light on details provided virtually no insight into how these license plate readers are being used by these companies. And again , law enforcement is searching them. They can find associations between drivers , they can find patterns of movement , they can put in specific geographic locations and figure out who has gone to these places and at what times. And it can give pretty significant , um , insight into where people are going and what they're doing.
S1: Oh , we know just , you know , how much data it kind of runs our world these days. Right. Um , you know , earlier you mentioned the company behind this technology , flock safety.
S3: They were they were founded in 2017. And they they developed surveillance technologies and their license plate readers was , you know , big piece sort of their probably their flagship piece of technology. And they first actually started marketing at two homeowners associations , as homeowners associations bought more and more of them , and law enforcement would respond to crimes and search through this data. Uh , law enforcement started saying , wait a minute , we would like our own license plate readers. So they started buying more and more. There are over 5000 law enforcement agencies across the country , and over 1000 private businesses and organizations that have these flock license plate readers and flocks mission. The CEO. He he has pretty big ambitions. He often says , I want to eliminate crime in America. And there was even one interview where he said he believes in ten years , crime can be virtually eliminated in America. And he said phlox technology would play a big part of that. That's obviously a massive , huge ambition , but they have that kind of scope and approach to this problem , and they believe surveillance technology is a key way to do to to achieve that huge goal.
S1:
S3: We have audits that you can see what is searched. Police are supposed to enter a investigation number. They're supposed to enter a reason for their searches. And they say , we try to make things transparent and we give people tools to be transparent. Now , on the privacy advocate security side of things , you have folks saying , look , this is They say a couple of things. The system as it exists can potentially be abused. And again this is. This can be highly sensitive data. This can be a very powerful surveillance tool that if someone wanted to get a better understanding of a specific person's movements and , you know , perhaps for not the best reasons they could do that. Um , I spoke with Rachel Levenson. Waldman. She's from the Brennan Center for Justice in New York City. Here's what she had to say.
S5: It can give rise to , I think , pretty significant inferences about what you're doing , who you're associating with. It can be used to to create patterns of movement.
S3: In Levenson , Waldman said , look , there is a place for these technologies in policing , but there have to be better guardrails. One example she gave is perhaps you make the data available for police to search for a day , and then after that they can keep it , but they have to get a warrant from a court to go back in time and to build associations and build patterns of movement going back weeks or even a month. That was one example of a guardrail that she suggested police departments should consider.
S1: Adding some limitations there. Gustavo , you know , much of your reporting has been looking into , you know , immigration enforcement , kind of like you talked about.
S4: And I think it speaks more a little bit to what Scott was saying earlier about lack of guardrails in the in the private industry. Right. The guardrails in the public , one aren't really working in the immigration context , right. The Scott mentioned. Right. You need a reason for the search in some cases a case number. Here in California , we have laws that say you're not supposed to use this technology for immigration purposes. But we found through other reporting that the city of El Cajon was sharing or is sharing with outside agencies , and there's police departments. at Houston. Houston will run searches and the reason will be Ice assist immigration. Other ones , the reason is just ambiguous. It's vague. It'll say investigation or suss , and there's no real way to know how that information is being used. Um , but even those guardrails that are kind of flimsy , those don't exist in the private context. And I think that's what this investigation revealed , kind of the blind spot over there and the cause for concern.
S1: Scott , your reporting , you know , makes the case that it's not even just about what this technology can do right now , today , but also what it might be able to do in the future. Right. Why is that important ? And yeah , something we should consider when evaluating this technology.
S3: Well , surveillance technology is often iterative. Things that are that things that are rolled out often build on each other. And so the technologies of today will if you sort of roll them out across a city , Set the foundation for building on top of that and having a compounding , more powerful surveillance system. I mean , imagine a drone that could launch when there's a license plate of interest that's captured on one of these cameras , can fly at 60 miles an hour , can capture other license plates as it's going. Doesn't even need a pilot. Can just launch with the press of a button. Imagine a system where a hit for on a license plate can immediately drop a profile for a police officer that's based on public records , property records that's based on social media accounts , that's based on body worn camera transcripts from previous interactions with police. That's based on jailhouse phone recordings. What I'm describing to you.
S2: Right now is.
S3: Not some far off future. Those two technologies actually exist right now and are being marketed by flock. They're being marketed pretty heavily to these law enforcement agencies that already have flock in there , being marketed as add ons , build ons onto these Alper systems that can move that surveillance technology and boost it even further.
S1: You know , one central question here is obviously around privacy and also just how people feel about it , the public input. And that's part of this , this story and one of your stories. Gustavo , you spoke to several shoppers at Fashion Valley just to get their take on this. Tell us more about what you heard about people's you know , how they felt about this technology being used today. Yeah.
S4: Yeah. Well , to backtrack a little bit , first we asked police about these concerns. Right. What should people who don't want to be surveilled do ? And the response were they were rearrange. Right. Some of them said I don't think people really cared. They got a lot of things going on in their life. Or , you know , if they do care , they can vote with their feet. They can go to a different place , a different mall. What we found out through these interviews was one People do care , but only if they know. And that's what some of these interviews reflect. When we went to Fashion Valley , nobody knew about the surveillance , but when we told them about it , they had questions , they had ideas , they had some concerns , and some were all for it. We have a little montage here that you'll hear from them directly , but they run from support to concern to a little bit in between.
S6: I appreciate what they're doing. Why ? Because it's safety and it's good for the for the city. The state.
S7: If we're not really doing anything wrong here , do they really need to have all of our information.
S8: Here in the United States ? We want as privacy as much as possible and transparency. It seems like people , you know , companies or corporations are going out of their way to just validate not , you know , not give us that privacy.
S4: And that last point , I think is very important that that people want transparency , right. Because I understand the idea that you can vote with your feet , but you can only really do that if you have the information available. So how you know these cameras are in Fashion Valley in Las Americas. If you don't want to be included in this surveillance network , just don't go there.
S1: It kind of reminds me of the early days of social media , too , when , you know , we didn't have any sort of data protection. Yeah.
S3: Yeah.
S1: And it means gone again.
S3: We we spent weeks and months searching through records over , you know , 1500 pages of records , like , the average person doesn't have time to do that. We do that because , you know , that's our job. We're investigative reporters. But , I mean , if you have a family and a job and plenty of other life responsibilities like , geez , that's a big , uh , that's a big ask to put on an average person to say , yeah , just go request these records , sift through them , and maybe you'll figure out where these cameras are. Right.
S1: Right. And but that's one really cool thing about your reporting here is , you know , you actually provide an interactive map. You kind of break down where this camera network can be found in San Diego. Tell us more about the process behind that. And yeah , where people can find it.
S3: Well , we wanted to provide a visual for people to understand what these networks look like , how wide the web is , or in some cases , maybe how small it is , because some police departments only have one or maybe several private businesses that they access. Others , like San Diego Sheriff , El Cajon PD , CHP , the California Highway Patrol. If you go to our website , you can look at this map and see one where all the private businesses are that we found that have these license plate reader networks , and these are the ones that share their access with police. But you can also click on police departments and see where are they searching , where , where do they have access to. And you can see the kind of overlapping web that this surveillance network has created. And credit goes to KPBS. Michael Wayne , he is our data and In visualization wiz , and he just put together an incredible map and I encourage people to go check it out. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. That's available. We'll have a link to that up on our website at KPBS. Org. I've been speaking with Scott Rod , investigative reporter with KPBS , and also Gustavo Solis. He's investigative reporter here at KPBS. Thanks to you both.
S3: Thank you. Thank you.
S1: Coming up , requests for shelter have jumped since San Diego began clearing homeless encampments along freeways this summer , leaving many unable to find beds. Will heal more next on roundtable. Welcome back to KPBS roundtable. I'm Andrew Bracken. San Diego has seen a major jump in the number of shelter requests in recent months. That rise has come as San Diego's began to clear encampments along freeways after an agreement with the state was reached this past summer. And while requests for shelter have spiked , bed availability is dwindled. Blake Nelson joins me now to talk more about what's happening. He covers homelessness for the San Diego Union Tribune. Blake , welcome back to roundtable.
S9: Hey , thanks for having me.
S1: Great to have you here. So , Blake , you report on a pretty big increase here in requests for shelter happening in San Diego. Break that down for us. What's behind the surge ? Yes.
S9: So if you are homeless in San Diego and you need a bed , you generally cannot just knock on the door of a shelter. You have to call two on one , or you have to find a police officer , outreach worker and say , I need a bed. And then that person makes what's called a referral. And in the last couple months , shelter referrals have been going up and up and up and up and up throughout the city of San Diego , hitting a pretty astonishing 2940 referrals just in October. So just for the month of October , we're at nearly 3000 requests for shelter.
S1: And so these referrals you're speaking about , I mean , the flip side of it is the city's success rate as you write about them. And connecting people with beds has fallen quite a bit. Yes.
S9: So again , in the month of October , just In six of those , nearly 3000 referrals led to someone actually getting a bed or a spot in a shelter. So that's a 7% success rate. Which said another way that means 93% of all of those requests are failing.
S1: They can't get a bed. Yeah. So in your story , you introduce us to one of those and that's Andrew Shields , who's , you know , trying to find a shelter bed. Tell me about him and what he's been going through. Yeah.
S9: Yeah. When I went out and started walking around encampments the other day , I had told the photographer I was with , I was like , I based on these numbers , I said , I do not think it is going to be that hard to find someone who's struggling to find a spot. And literally the first person we walked up to said , I have been trying for six weeks to get a spot in a shelter here in San Diego and I cannot get one. Also , he is looking for a more private area. This has been a common request for homeless folks for years , if at all possible. He does not want to be in a giant room with a hundred other people for understandable reasons. Um , he talked very openly about his mental health struggles , about his drug addiction. He wants to to kick both of those , or at least find treatment for both of those. And he knows the odds of him getting help outside are very , very low. But every time he asks , he is just told that there is no room.
S1: Well , and you report that the lack of available beds not only leaves , you know , more people sleeping outside , but also the potential that they may ultimately refuse services in the future for people like Andrew. Right. Why is that such a concern ? Yeah.
S9: At some point Andrew is just going to give up asking for help. He talked about a friend. He told us about a friend of his who's in a wheelchair , who is in a very similar situation , asking , asking , asking. Nothing was suitable , nothing was available. She finally just gave up. And I think that's an important point to make , because sure , there are people living outside who , for whatever reason , you know , want to be there in this moment , or at least think they want to be there and are refusing all offers for help. But sometimes when people are approached by an aid worker police officer and just tell them to go away. It's it's not so much that they don't want to be where they are , it's that they have been asking for shelter for six weeks and they were told there is no availability for six weeks. And they finally just gave up and said , we're not. I don't trust that there's anything that can help me right now. I'm done with participating in this process.
S1: Tell us about the change on freeways. I mean , San Diego passed its camping enforcement ban back in 2023 , but there was the stipulation of state land right on on freeways , you know , kind of remind us the the journey there and what changed this summer.
S9: So several things have been putting more and more pressure on San Diego's shelter system for years now. So back in 2023 , the San Diego City Council passed a camping ban. It's called the Unsafe Camping Ordinance that increased penalties for sleeping on local sidewalks. Unsurprisingly , requests for shelter spiked then , too , and at that point , the success rate. During some periods around that time , the success rate hovered around 20% , which basically meant only about one out of every five requests actually led to someone getting a bed. And I should also add , one person can make multiple requests , so seven requests can be made by the same person. It doesn't necessarily. And that's duplicated. Yeah. So in October we're not necessarily looking at 3000 separate people asking for a bed just just FYI. So but whatever. Camping band 2023 success rate drops 20% a lot of people not wanting to get tickets for violating San Diego's camping ban move near freeways. And this is anecdotally been very obvious. Just driving around highways in the city of San Diego , you can see more and more tents by freeway on and off ramps , which is terrifying for everybody. For the people sleeping there , it's it's terrifying for me as a driver , I'm constantly worried about hitting someone. And the reason some people did that was because land right next to freeways is generally owned and overseen by the state by the California Department of Transportation. And so because of weird jurisdictional rules that we don't need to totally unpack here. San Diego outreach workers , San Diego police officers have much , uh , are much more restricted going to those areas. So Caltrans itself would have to coordinate with the California Highway Patrol. It was this whole complicated thing to try to address any of those encampments. In July , the city of San Diego finally signed this agreement with Caltrans. And I should note that other cities around California are doing this , too. But they signed this agreement that said , look , if you'll reimburse us for a lot of the cleanup and outreach work , we will just go onto state land and clean up these encampments and offer shelter ourselves. So that has started , uh , a lot of work along freeways in the city of San Diego. Um , the last time I checked , nearly 200 encampments had already been cleared and more than 50 people had had accepted some form of shelter. So , you know , great. But the downside there is they're generally very often there's just not space for people who are willing to accept shelter. So if you look at shelter referrals , shelter requests in July , which is the same month that the city of San Diego got access to Caltrans land shelter , referrals went up , and then it went up again , and then it went up again. And this whole time , the city's success rate at actually getting people into spots is dropping. Dropping. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And let's let's dive into that because there have been changes with the city's shelters. Some have closed. Other new ones have opened. You know , paint the picture of of what the shelter system looks like in the city today and how that's kind of playing into the story.
S9: So there has been a lot of movement in sort of the shelter world in the city of San Diego. Um , the city has certainly opened new facilities. There's a new facility for women and children in downtown San Diego. I think they're still expanding that there's a new one for young adults , however , some other facilities have closed. Golden Hall. The Civic Center shut down. Permit was over. The , a large shelter run by Father Joe's villages , is still aiding homeless people , but it stopped being a city funded shelter. It turned into a sober living program. You also had the Rosecrans shelter in the Midway district shut down , after the city and county couldn't agree on who should pay for what. That was a whole mess. And then you also had this proposal from the mayor's office to convert an empty warehouse just north of the airport into this massive , a thousand bed shelter that crumbled over concerns about costs and legal risks. So at the moment , the city of San Diego has about 1600 shelter spots in traditional facilities and around 760 tents at these two designated camping areas by Balboa , by Balboa Park. And that , as far as we can tell , is sort of going to be the shelter capacity for the foreseeable future. We're seeing tons of budget cuts. Cuts at all levels of government , seemingly. And so at the moment at least , it seems like we're stuck with with those numbers.
S1:
S9: They and Housing Commission leaders have declined to comment on why shelter referrals are going up and up and up , although again , it has corresponded fairly well with with the city getting access to state land and clearing all these encampments by freeways. So there's certainly a correlation there. Um , the city has also pointed out other areas of homelessness aid that it's investing in , including prevention , um , which generally takes the form of rental aid , helping people on the edge of homelessness stay housed. There's also been a lot of promise shown by a form of aid called diversion funding , which is where you offer these one time emergency payments to help with a car repair or an apartment Deposit , and a surprising number of people just need a couple thousand dollars and then they are good to go and need no more aid. Um , but again , at a time of budget cuts , uh , at a time of the social , the social safety net , uh , seemingly shrinking all over the place. Uh , neither of those areas of aid are getting huge boosts of funding. It seems like , at least in the foreseeable future. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Could you talk more about how these budget constraints. Because the city , the county have faced budget shortfalls , we hear more and more about , you know , the federal government , the state.
S9: I would say a lot of the cuts proposed in being pushed at the federal level are still coming down the pipeline. A lot of that hasn't really hit us yet. Uh , what is hitting us is the deficits at the city level , the county level , the state level , and that has restricted or at least limited the growth of of some of these programs , which audit after audit has shown that a lot of money has been thrown at homelessness aid without a lot of corresponding follow up to how well was this spent ? So no question was , I am not advocating for like , let's just keep throwing money at this thing. Um , but I would say based on the best data we have from the regional Task Force on Homelessness just about every month this year , and really just about every month for the past several years , more people continue to become homeless for the very first time in the county of San Diego , then the number of homeless people who get housing. So the problem is growing by this one specific metric from the task force. The problem is growing almost every single month. So , you know , I would say there is a a great month. Uh , great. Might be an overstatement. We had a good month in October , where the number of homeless people housed exceeded the number of people who became homeless for the first time. Which is great , but I would point out that the number of people who became homeless for the first time in San Diego County was 1079. We started October , those 1079. As best we can tell , we're not homeless. And now we've got a whole new new chunk of folks who are desperate for aid. So until we can stop that , that sort of flow into the system. It's not I mean , it's limited to what we can do with with just getting people into shelter with , you know. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. We talked about some of the changes with city shelters , and there have been changes at the city's H barracks involving , you know , folks and vehicles. Tell us about that. And you know , how you think that's kind of plays a role into the story too.
S9: So another factor that may be pushing up requests for shelter , specifically requests for shelter beds are. San Diego police have resumed ticketing people who are sleeping in their vehicles. Little bit of history here without boring everybody who's listening to this right now. There is a court settlement that says cops can't punish people for sleeping in their cars if they have nowhere else to go. And until fairly recently , until a couple of months ago , all of what are called safe parking lots in the city of San Diego , where homeless folks can park their cars , sleep in the back seat , whatever. Most of those places were full. A couple months ago , the city opened up a place called H barracks , which is this massive safe parking lot right between like Liberty Station and the airport. And because there's a ton of spots there , and specifically because there's a ton of spots for RVs that has now given police the ability to resume ticketing oversized vehicles , especially we're thinking like RVs. So one of my colleagues at the UT , Kristen Takada , just got this data. So from early July through like mid-October. San Diego police issued 1136 citations just for oversized vehicles , which are fine , and there is a place to offer them. However , H barracks especially is only open overnight. And what a lot of those people who are living out of there , who are living out of their RVs , have told my colleagues , is that they just simply cannot afford the gas money to move in and out , in and out , in and out of that place every single night. But another theory , and again , this is hard to prove , but there is a correlation. It is possible that some of those folks are trying to get beds in traditional shelters , because they don't want to get ticketed in their RV , they don't want to move in and out of a safe lot. So that may be putting some additional pressure on the shelter system.
S1: Got it. Understood. So you know , we're kind of getting towards the holiday season the end of 2025. And I'm just curious if you have any thoughts of like looking back on this year. You know what ? The state of homelessness is how it's compared in recent years. As you mentioned , the encampment ban went into effect 2023. It's a couple of years now. Um , yeah.
S9: Um , the city has opened several different affordable housing complexes all over , all over the region. Um , those have led to some extraordinary success stories. Uh , a lot of people's homelessness has been ended because of the housing that has opened up there. So that is worth celebrating. Um , the investments in diversion , the one time emergency aid has also helped some people in really , really fabulous ways. Uh , I am absolutely wanting to watch weather investments in that area of homelessness. Aid goes up because I think there's a lot of promise there. But on the flip side , I'd some to go back to the federal government. Some of the proposals to dramatically shrink federal support for long term housing , for permanent housing , for permanent supportive housing. Some of those proposals could gut support for a lot of programs that have people housed right now. And if that if that money gets yanked out and if those programs implode , you're looking at hundreds , perhaps thousands of people in San Diego County who currently have housing , who may be back on the streets. So that , I think , is if there is one thing that is keeping me up right now at night , that is probably the biggest thing.
S1: Blake Nelson covers homelessness for the San Diego Union Tribune. Blake , thanks so much for joining us and sharing more about your reporting today.
S9: Thanks for having me.
S1: Up next , a new solar farm is ready to break ground in rural Lakemba Hot Springs , but many residents there have concerns about what it means for the town's future. You're listening to KPBS roundtable. You're listening to KPBS roundtable. I'm Andrew Bracken. Residents in Hakuba Hot Springs are pushing back on a 600 acre solar energy project that would surround the town on one side. While they agree that producing renewable energy is a priority. Residents there say they'll shoulder most of that burden. Joining me to talk about her latest reporting on the story is Elaine Alfaro. She covers San Diego's East County for KPBS. Elaine , welcome. Hi.
S10: Hi. Thanks for having me.
S1: Great to have you here. So , you know , set the scene for us. Tell us more about the community of Macumba. Sure.
S10: Sure. Lakemba has about 500 to 600 residents living in the area. And the area is really known for its it's its nature. Um , the town has new hotel ownership that came in about maybe five years ago now , and they really have just revitalized sort of the area and has brought all this tourism. The hotel , one of the hotel owners let me know , you know , they have about 120 people coming into the hotel a day there to check out the mineral pools. And also around the area there's hiking and , um , it's just a small town with this kind of peaceful , quiet space. Um , I think Tanya Wilkins , who's one of the people I spoke with , could probably speak to it best if you want to hear from her.
S11: I just feel like this long , like whispers and voices and calm and together , um , like a soft swirl of creation and life. Everything. Everything old up to now. Because it's all still here. All of that old energy is still still out here. Wow.
S1: Wow. Everything old up until now. It's really. It really captures this kind of spirit. There's a natural beauty there. It's right along the border. You can kind of see the border there.
S10: I think there's a lot of people there who take pride in the town. I mean , a separate story I worked on , I spoke with this man named named Danny , Danny Leone , and he owns the deli shop in town. And he just one of the things he immediately told me when I first met him was , you know , my , my , my restaurant. It has this rating on on Google reviews and like that , like I'm proud of this. I'm proud of my business and I'm proud of my town. And so I think there's a sense of that in the community. But , you know , you also mentioned it's a border town and there's definitely some history around that. And the town has come across the borderline. And , you know , there's this rich history of people coming back and forth between those , those spaces before the border wall went in. And what the impact of that border wall has on those two communities. I mean , it does have its lasting impacts today too.
S1: Well , and that kind of got a lot of news in recent years , too , as it was kind of an increase in migration in that area in that community kind of responded to it , too. But let's talk. You know , at the center of this story is this tension between the solar project and really the character of a community that you've been talking about.
S10: And this , this , this project that the developer is working on is more than 600 acres. And so when you think of kind of comparing those numbers , you know , that's a that's a significant difference in size. And so this 600 , more than 600 acre solar project would basically surround the town on one side. And so , um , you know , the community is a pretty small town , maybe only a few blocks large. And so kind of basically right in their backyards. That's where that project would be.
S1:
S10: Yeah. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. So , you know , um , this project has kind of been in the works for for years. Right. And residents filed a lawsuit back in 2021 against this project. What what came of that ultimately.
S10: So the lawsuit focused on a few different things. Residents were questioning sort of the zoning and the planning around the project. And the main thing focused on Ceqa , which is kind of the environmental review. But basically the lawsuit was arguing , you know , this this project is too big for our community. And so we want to block it for that , for that reason. And so , um , you know , they filed the lawsuit , um , you know , it didn't really work out the way they planned. They appealed. And that also didn't work out. So the lawsuit , you know , failed. Basically those community efforts didn't work out. But I will say in recent years , the county also required the developer to increase the setbacks between the town and the project. So the distance between the , the , the , you know , the project and the town is increased. And also the developer is setting aside a $4 million community benefit fund that will go back into the community. So those are some of the the benefits of the county , you know , tried to compromise between the developer and the community to get them resourced , but residents still are pretty frustrated about this project. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. So but the project is moving forward. Then , you know , they had these changes from the lawsuit. Right. But it's so what's the status now ? I mean , are they ready to break ground ? Right.
S10: The county approved the grading permit for the project earlier this month. And so basically from the last conversations I had with the with the developer , they've started grading the field , um , where the project is going in. And there's still some permitting that needs to be done , but they'll be moving forward with construction with the hopes of , you know , it going online end of next year.
S1: At the core of these concerns. Elaine. Ah , you know , basically the community being concerned about being forced to shoulder more of the burden from this project , but without getting all the benefits. Can you talk more about those concerns and how residents are feeling as this project gets underway ? Definitely.
S10: So Kemba you know is part of their their leadership comes from the county. And so the county gets the unincorporated areas like Kemba get their energy from San Diego Community Power which is a regional energy provider. They also do work for you know Encinitas la mesa Imperial Beach a few other different cities. And so the energy generated from the Hakuba Solar project , all of that energy is actually going to go to San Diego Community Power for a contract of 20 years , if I remember correctly. And so all that energy for the next 20 years is going to go to all of these different communities that San Diego Community Power provides energy for. And so some of that energy will go back into Kumba , like , like you mentioned. But um , residents are , you know , questioning , you know , how much of that energy actually will come back to us or how much of it is going to go to these coastal cities or cities ? 150 to 100 miles away from our town. And so that's one of the questions that that people have about this project. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And I think some of the people you spoke to , they said , you know , we're not against the project , but it was like the size , the size and scope or ultimately kind of what was at issue here.
S10: Right , right , right.
S1: So I want to kind of zoom out a little bit more into you have a new role here at KPBS , and you're covering East County. And I think it's interesting. I mean , you you are you grew up in East County. This is not a new , you know , community for you. But I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what you're most excited about exploring in , you know , in our East County and the types of stories you're looking to do , for sure.
S10: You mentioned I'm from East County. I'm from la mesa. So people are always like.
S12: Know.
S10: Know. It's definitely part of East County. But you know , each community in East County is so different. And so , you know , in thinking of that question and what I'm most excited about covering , it's it's hard to wrap my mind around because the county is this part of the county is so big and so diverse and so different , even within , you know , the geographical confines of this one area compared to the rest of the county. Um , but , you know , I've been doing a lot of reporting on education in East County. I think also , you know , historically East County has , you know , gotten this stereotype of being maybe more conservative or right leaning in its politics. And I think just with what I've been covering in education and in other areas , I'm seeing kind of that , um , duking it out of politics in , um , in East County. I'm seeing that in my reporting and in the conversations I'm having. And so just seeing the trickle down even of some national politics in East County conversations and in community meetings is really interesting because there is , you know , in looking at those politics , there's also a strong community of people who maybe are left leaning or liberal. And so seeing these communities come together and figure out how to walk these issues out , um , amid national politics has been really interesting.
S1: It's really interesting. And these communities are changing too. In some cases , like , as you said , there's such a range here. So I mean , what's kind of next on your mind for the beat ? Hmm.
S12:
S10: So many things I want to keep looking at. But , um , renewable energy is definitely one thing I want to keep looking into. I'm kind of following this project out in a combi. There's other renewable energy source projects on on the horizon. In my story , I had mentioned Borrego Springs is another area that has historically been navigating energy projects. And so looking out there , I'm also wanting to continue to keep on the education beat in East County. And then , you know , there's actually some really strong refugee populations out in East County that I'm wanting to connect with and learn more about experiences out there , especially given the current climate we're in right now. So cooking on a lot of different things. But those are some of the things. And , you know , outside of that as well , there's really amazing business communities in East County that I'm wanting to , well , look into.
S1: Have you on more ? You know , in the coming year ? I've been speaking with Elaine Alfaro. She covers Sandhills , East County for KPBS. Elaine. Thank you.
S10: Thank you for having me.
S1: And thank you for joining us today. You can listen to the show anytime as a podcast roundtables technical producer this week was Brandon Truffaut. Ashley Rush was the producer. Brooke Ruth is roundtable senior producer. And I'm your host , Andrew Bracken. Thanks again for listening. Have a great weekend.
