When it comes to energy, she's against it

STEVE WILLIAMS Opinion Page Editor
Victor Valley Daily Press

I don't know what they have to say, It makes no difference anyway, Whatever it is, I'm against it. No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it.

—Groucho Marx in ‘Horsefeathers’ (1932)

That would be California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s stand on developing energy, of all sorts and types. She’s against it.

Her latest “I’m against it” gig occurred last week when she came out against using Mojave Desert land for solar and wind power projects.

The senator introduced legislation Dec. 21 to establish two national monuments on roughly 1 million acres of Mojave Desert land, one called Mojave Trails National Monument. The legislation would prohibit development on 941,000 acres of federal land and former railroad company property along a 105-mile-long stretch of old Route 66, between Ludlow and Needles.

Her proposal, of course, is aimed at wind and solar — mostly solar — projects.

Several energy companies involved in wind and solar-produced electricity have been looking at the Mojave for years as a perfect place for renewable energy projects. But recently, apparently in the face of Feinstein’s opposition, two of them, BrightSource Energy Inc. and Stirling Energy Systems, scrapped plans to build solar and wind farms on a stretch of the proposed Mojave Trails monument.

But that’s only the senator’s latest attack on energy development and production in this country. Back in 2003, when George W. Bush was proposing federal subsidies for construction of new nuclear plants in the United States, Feinstein said in a Senate speech that, “I strongly believe it is not in the public interest for our nation to subsidize costly nuclear plants. Instead we should devote more resources to the development of renewable energy.” Um, would that include wind and solar? Apparently not.

And then there’s oil exploration and production off the California coast. In 2008, in response to $4.50 a gallon gasoline, Bush lifted the executive order banning such drilling. Lady Di’s response? “This would be a terrible mistake. It would put our nation’s (read: California’s) precious coastlines in jeopardy and wouldn’t begin to fix the underlying energy-supply problem.” But what would?

This is all so typical, and reflects the not-in-my-back-yard stand on energy development taken by liberals, captives of the enviro-activists. Remember the Cape Wind controversy? Cape Wind, an energy development firm, spent millions of dollars in litigation costs, delays and regulatory hurdles in attempting to build a 130-turbine offshore project in Nantucket Sound. That was Ted Kennedy and John Kerry country, so they nixed the project even though the turbines would have been barely visible on the horizon from the shores of the Sound.

Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that a Korean-led consortium has won a landmark contract, valued at about $20.4 billion, to build four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates. U.A.E., remember, is awash in oil, yet has opted to build the reactors. Why? U.A.E.’s leaders are not fools. It’s cheaper (and ultimately safer if one considers that nuclear reactors do not emit any of those pollutants enviros consider unsafe to human health and the planet, such as CO2) to build the plants so the oil saved can be sold elsewhere.

Remember too that U.A.E. is pretty much all desert, a perfect place for solar generation. But then remember that solar requires huge swaths of land, whereas nukes do not. Gwyneth Cravens, author of the book, "Power to Save the World. The truth about Nuclear Energy,” points out that “A nuclear power plant producing 1,000 megawatts takes up a third of a square mile. A wind farm would have to cover over 200 square miles to obtain the same result, and a solar array over 50 square miles.”

Fat chance we’ll build any new nukes in California anytime soon, though. Or wind farms or solar plants either. Di’s against it.

Senate Bill Could Block Solar and Wind Projects in California

RenewableEnergyWorld.com

Washington, D.C. -- U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) last week introduced a bill that she says will improve the federal permitting process to advance large-scale wind and solar development on suitable lands. But opponents argue that it will simply block renewable energy development on some federal lands in California.

The pending introduction of the legislation has already prompted a number of companies, including BrightSource Energy, to cancel or change development plans for projects slated for that area of California.

The legislation, titled the California Desert Protection Act of 2010, would require the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to establish offices specifically focused on renewable energy development in each state with significant wind and solar resources on public land.

These offices would be funded from the existing BLM permit improvement fund – a fund which is currently only available to supervise the permitting for oil and natural gas development. It would also establish a pilot mitigation bank program to ensure that it takes no longer to review an application to develop private lands than it does to develop public lands, without infringing upon important environmental regulations.

Under the bill, federal land managers will be required to identify renewable energy development areas where the project is in the public interest through the programmatic EIS process. This will help avoid the sort of site-specific environmental conflicts that can delay projects for years.

It will also result in a formal evaluation of whether public land currently managed by the military will also be considered for solar development, instead of concentrating this development only on BLM land. There are currently approximately 3 million acres of California desert that are managed by the military, and some of this land could be developed for renewable energy consistent with the military mission.

“I strongly believe that conservation, renewable energy development and recreation can and must co-exist in the California Desert,” Senator Feinstein said. “This legislation strikes a careful balance between these sometimes competing concerns."

While all of that sounds good on paper, some in the renewable energy industry see the other provisions of the bill, which include setting aside more than 1 million acres of federal lands in California as "monuments," as an attempt to block renewable energy installations in areas where the best resources exist.

The pending introduction of the legislation has already prompted a number of companies, including BrightSource Energy, to cancel or change development plans for projects slated for that area of California.

Green talk vs. green action / Feinstein’s scuttling of solar, wind projects a baffling mistake

Editorial
San Diego Union-Tribune

Every week seems to bring a new development that underscores the incoherence of the environmental movement, which believes global warming is the world’s most pressing problem yet is often the biggest roadblock to efforts to address the problem by developing cleaner sources of energy.

The latest example: Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s push to protect 1 million acres of the Mojave Desert, which inevitably will kill 13 major solar power and wind power projects planned for the area.

Feinstein offered some plausible explanations for her stand, starting with the fact that a quarter of the acreage was donated to the federal government with the expectation it would be preserved. She also noted the availability of other areas for the solar and wind projects and introduced a bill with a tax credit meant to encourage solar plants on private land.

Nevertheless, any veneer of reasonableness disappears when one takes into account that California’s utilities face hard deadlines to provide one-third of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Feinstein has unilaterally complicated efforts to comply with this deadline by scuttling projects with completed development plans and billions of dollars in established financing. She also may have set a disastrous precedent under which individual lawmakers, if the land were in their districts, would have de facto veto power over solar and wind power projects on prime sites among the 1 million square miles of land owned by the federal government.

President George W. Bush in 2005 ordered efforts to make it easier to develop renewable energy projects on this land, an effort supported by his successor, Barack Obama.

Yet the Obama administration also seems more open to letting environmentalists block projects – even as it seeks a federal law mandating much higher use of renewable energy, as California has done. This doesn’t add up.

This president already has had one Nixon-goes-to-China moment on a major public policy issue, telling a key Democratic constituency – teacher unions – that weeding out poor teachers is crucial to improving schools.

Now he needs to have another such moment. Obama should tell environmentalists that they need to reconcile their macro view – we must save the world by shifting to cleaner energy – with their micro record of making this shift much more difficult. It’s time for green action to match green talk.

This certainly holds true for California’s senior senator. Incoherent is not normally an adjective applied to Dianne Feinstein, but in this case, it fits.

Solar Shutdown: Feinstein to Block Energy Projects

The Foundary
The Heritage Foundation

We need to transform to a new, clean energy economy but we can’t build solar panels in the Mojave Desert if California Senator Diane Feinstein has anything to say about it:

Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation in Congress on Monday to protect a million acres of the Mojave Desert in California by scuttling some 13 big solar plants and wind farms planned for the region.

But before the bill to create two new Mojave national monuments has even had its first hearing, the California Democrat has largely achieved her aim. Regardless of the legislation’s fate, her opposition means that few if any power plants are likely to be built in the monument area, a complication in California’s effort to achieve its aggressive goals for renewable energy.

Developers of the projects have already postponed several proposals or abandoned them entirely. The California agency charged with planning a renewable energy transmission grid has rerouted proposed power lines to avoid the monument.”

Years of subsidies and tax credits haven’t helped wind and solar projects compete with more reliable sources of energy. Solar power supplies less than one percent of the country’s electricity demand; wind does slightly better. That’s not necessarily a red flag to stop building more, but it is indicative of how far we have to go and how costly it would be “transform to a clean energy economy” as President Obama said in his remarks to the delegation at the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen.

If the private businesses deem it in their interest to pursue renewable energy projects (without federal help), they should be able to do so. But where these projects may be the most economically viable, such as the Mojave Desert, the government is shutting them down.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., environmentalist and a partner with a venture capital firm invested in solar, told the New York Times, “This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn’t be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review.”

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, the renewable projects have either been thwarted or put on hold because of self-interested in politicians. Cape Wind spent millions in litigation costs, delays and regulatory hurdles in attempting to build a 130-turbine offshore project in the Nantucket Sound that Senator Ted Kennedy long opposed despite the turbines being barely visible from the horizon.

The Mojave Desert situation is slightly different because Sen. Feinstein says, “the lands were purchased with nearly $45 million in private funds and $18 million in federal funds and donated to the federal government for the purpose of conservation, and that commitment must be upheld. Period.” But if an environmental group wants to preserve these lands, they shouldn’t rely on the taxpayer to fund the purchase nor fund the conservation of the land. In fact, many environmental groups do just that. Private property rights make it possible for the Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited to protect habitat by purchasing land and establishing wildlife preserves.’

Nantucket and the Mojave Desert aren’t unique. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Project No Project shows that the “Not in My Back Yard” crowd is everywhere. It’s not just anti-oil and anti-coal, it’s anti-energy and anti-development.

Even with subsidies, tax breaks and mandates, shifting our energy away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy will be a prohibitively costly and difficult task. Senator Feinstein is about to make it that much more difficult.

BLM approves Nevada wild horse roundup

Wild horses after a roundup at the Caliente Complex near Panaca, Nev. on October 5, 2009. The BLM says as many as 25,000 of the horses need to be removed from public lands because of suffering due to a lack of forage. (AP Photo/Bureau of Land Management, Ben Noyes, File)

By SANDRA CHEREB
Associated Press

CARSON CITY, Nev. — The Bureau of Land Management approved the removal of 2,500 wild horses from the range near Reno on Monday as opposition grows to what would be one of the largest mustang roundups in Nevada in recent years.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., is to hear arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed to block the roundup planned for later this month.

The gather is part of the BLM's overall strategy to remove thousands of mustangs from public lands around the West and ship them to greener pastures in the East. The BLM estimates about half of the 36,600 wild mustangs live in Nevada. It wants to reduce the overall population to what it considers an "appropriate management level" of 26,600.

In its decision involving the 2,500 Nevada horses, the BLM said removal of the mustangs is needed to bring population numbers down in the Calico Mountains Complex to prevent habitat deterioration.

The agency estimates that more than 3,000 mustangs roam the five herd management areas near the Black Rock Desert that make up the complex. It wants to reduce the population to about 570 by removing horses and treating others with birth control.

BLM spokeswoman JoLynn Worley said the agency in 2000 set what it deemed to be appropriate horse populations for areas in Nevada, and has been working since to achieve those goals. In 2002, about 2,200 horses were taken each from the Calico area and another area near Elko. Smaller gathers have been ongoing.

Horses taken from the range would be placed for adoption or sent to long-term holding corrals, which now hold about as many wild horses as left in the wild.

Mustang advocates counter the planned gather using helicopters is illegal because some of the animals are traumatized, injured or killed.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., is scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday on a motion to stop the gather. The suit was filed in November by California-based In Defense of Animals and wildlife biologist Craig Downer. Terri Farley, a Nevada author whose books about wild horses target young readers, joined the lawsuit Monday.

"If we allow the BLM to continue to ignore the will of Congress and the America people, then soon there will be no horses left to preserve," Farley said in a written statement.

Horse advocates said the roundup violates the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act, which Congress passed in 1971 to protect wild horses and burros as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West."

In 2008, the BLM said it would have to consider euthanizing wild horses because of escalating numbers and the cost of caring for them in long-term holding facilities. But earlier this year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the agency instead would pursue shipping horses to pastures and holding corrals in the Midwest and East.

Horse advocates call that proposal unnecessary and inhumane. During a hearing last week, they urged the BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Board to press for a moratorium on roundups until an independent audit of mustang numbers can be conducted.

Lawsuits triggers delay of BLM wild horse roundup

Carrol Abel
Examiner.com







Calico Mountains wild horse band, June 2009. (BLM)


In response to a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court on Monday, the Bureau of Land Management has postponed a controversial roundup and removal of almost 3,000 wild horses from five Nevada herd management areas. The US Department of Justice announced the delay Tuesday night.

A Preliminary Environmental Assessment for the roundup brought a huge public outcry in the form of 10,000 responses into BLM's Winnemucca office. The now infamous roundup of wild horses from the Calico Complex, originally scheduled to begin December 1, would remove 80-90% of the population estimated at 3,095 horses. The document states that the range cannot support that many horses but also admits to 2,500 cattle that will remain.

William Spriggs, Esq. of Buchanan, Ingersol and Rooney, pro bono attorney for plaintiffs In Defense of Animals (IDA) and wildlife ecologist, Craig Downer, said in response to the announcement, " We welcome this moratorium on the capture and inhumane treatment of the Calico horses. The BLM plan for a massive helicopter roundup of these horses is entirely illegal."

Though the roundup is now delayed until December 28, IDA and Mr. Downer plan to file a motion today for a permanent injunction to prevent the roundup entirely. "We are confident that the court will agree that America's wild horses are protected by law from BLM's plan to indescriminately chase and stampede them into corrals for indeterminate warehousing away from their established habitat." said Spriggs.

JoLynn Worley, BLM representative, says the agency still intends to issue it's formal decision regarding the Preliminary Environmental Assessment some time on Tuesday.

Momentum is growing in the public sector for a moratorium on all roundups. Almost 200 animal rights and wild horse advocate groups have united in the call to stop the roundups and are pressing for a Congressional investigation. Of the many issues in question is the inequitable use of public lands under a multiple use policy. A habitat summary done in July of 2008 by the Animal Welfare Institue shows that the BLM administers over nineteen million acres of public lands..... lands set aside by law for wild horses and burros..... lands that are no longer used for that purpose.

Ariz. governor opposes halt on new mining claims

Associated Press



PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer objects to a ban on filing new mining claims on nearly 1 million acres of federal land in northern Arizona for two years while a permanent prohibition is under study.

Most of the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest land covered by a July order is in the Arizona Strip located north of Grand Canyon National Park. The rest is located south of the canyon.

There's been a flurry of new mining claims, including for uranium.

Brewer sent Salazar a letter Friday saying adequate environmental protections are in place and that modern-day mining exploration creates "minimal impact to the land."

She also says economic impacts, energy independence and national security considerations support continued exploration.

Please, don't feed the burros

Too many treats harm animals, official says


By HEATHER SMATHERS
Mohave Daily News





LOVED TO DEATH? Oatman's burros have long been a draw for visitors, but now the BLM is asking people to stop feeding them because it is affecting the animals' health. (HEATHER SMATHERS/The Daily News)

OATMAN - Give burros care, not carrots.

That's one of many draft slogans the Bureau of Land Management has issued, asking people to stop feeding the Oatman burros.

“The Oatman burros have been fed so much they are sick and fat,” said BLM Public Affairs Officer Mike Brown. “They're being loved to death.”

The BLM is asking Oatman shopkeepers, residents and tourists to stop feeding the wild burros carrots, hay pellets, salt cubes and even water.

“Frankly, the wild burros that live around Oatman are far healthier than the burros that come to town,” Brown said.

Burros can get all the nutrients and sustenance they need from the vegetation in the desert areas around Oatman, Brown added.

With thousands of tourists buying bags of carrots and hay pellets to feed to the burros, Brown said the burros are sick from hoof disease, behavior problems and are extremely overweight.

“One carrot won't harm the burros,” Brown said. “But it's the 10,000 more they are being fed every year that will kill them.”

Judy Love, who owns and operates the Classy Ass, said the health of the burros is her main concern.

“I love Oatman and I love the burros, but their health is the most important thing,” Love said. “I'm glad they (BLM) are taking a stand.”

The Oatman burros are more likely to become ill and to die early than the 300 or so wild burros that stay out of town, Brown said.

Brown said the burros will not suffer from any kind of delirium or other illness if they can not have carrots and hay pellets.

“We've seen this before where we cut off the burros and the only side effect is that they get healthier,” Brown said.

But some Oatman shopkeepers dispute that.

“They are getting aggressive because they are not being fed like they used to,” said John Nowak, owner of the Oatman General Store.

Shopkeeper Jolene Brown, who owns Amargosa Toads, agreed, saying that the burros have practically been “kicking her door in” to get food.

All of the burros are managed by the BLM's Wildhorse and Burro Program, legislation that passed Congress in 1971. All wild horses and burros are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior and the BLM is responsible for keeping statistics on their numbers, health and safety.

Brown said the BLM has held several town-hall style meetings with the residents and shopkeepers of Oatman. BLM suggested a committee be formed to examine the way the town and the federal government could work together for the well-being of the burros.

“What came out of those meetings is that the townspeople asked the BLM to take the lead and give them guidelines,” Brown said.

What the BLM came up with was an indefinite moratorium on feeding the burros. Shopkeepers have been asked to stop selling carrots and pellets in their stores and to post signs asking tourists not to feed the burros any carrots or other treats they may have brought with them.

Brown said he would not speculate on any possible sanctions shopownwers or tourists would face if they don't comply with the request.

“First, we want to work with people and see what happens. Again, everyone has the same love of the burros and we all have their health in mind,” he said.

Nowak said just because shops will no longer sell carrots doesn't mean people will stop feeding the burros other types of food.

“Part of my shop is a grocery store and I see people buying cookies and potato chips for the burros,” he said. “Is the BLM going to ticket people for feeding them other foods, or food they brought to town?”

He also wondered if the BLM or another agency had the authority to tell stores that they couldn't sell carrots.

“I don't think there is any way to limit our sales of carrots,” he opined.

Jolene Brown said she believes not being able to sell carrots will have an impact on some businesses and the Oatman economy in general.

“I think some businesses, who do a lot of carrot sales, will have to close,” she said.

Changing a culture of many generations of tourists to Oatman won't be easy, Mike Brown acknowledged.

“Think about when the National Park Service asked people to stop feeding the bears at Yellowstone,” he said. “It didn't happen overnight, but people eventually stopped doing it.”

Love said she does not believe the burros will stop coming to town.

“I've been here 21 years, and burros wandered through town before we started feeding them carrots,” she said. “They are wild animals and they will continue to go where they please.”

The BLM's Brown agreed that the burros will still come to town to greet visitors.

“This will not affect Oatman,” Brown said. “People will still come to Oatman to see the burros, just not to feed the burros. People can still come and take pictures, go to the gunfights and shop in the stores.”

But Jolene Brown said she thinks the moratorium will affect Oatman merchants in a negative way.

“The burros are the only reason people come to Oatman,” she said. “Without the burros it's just an old town that sells a bunch of items people can get anywhere.”

Highway 95 solar projects on hold

Studies will be conducted prior to any development


By MARK WAITE
Pahrump Valley Times



A map of the solar energy projects filed for Southern Nye County. The checkerboards indicate overlapping applications for the same land.

There's been an almost daily spiel of propaganda about the need for renewable energy and reducing our dependence of foreign oil emanating from politicians ranging from U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to Gov. Jim Gibbons.

But it may be a few years yet before projects actually start being developed in Southern Nevada, at least on public land.

That was the verdict after a field tour by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Resource Advisory Council last Thursday of solar energy sites in Amargosa Valley.

BLM Pahrump Field Office Manager Patrick Putnam said there have been approximately 35 applications for solar energy projects comprising 250,000 acres just in the southern BLM district.

BLM Realty Specialist Wendy Seley said of 21 to 24 applications for land just in the Amargosa Valley, about 14 applicants have started the initial process, paying the BLM for the cost recovery process, which pays for all the consultants and is a first step for requesting BLM right-of-way.

The BLM decided against issuing a moratorium on applications for solar energy projects throughout the western states last summer, while a programmatic environmental impact statement is prepared. Work on the statement began last May, a draft is expected this summer, and a final EIS by summer 2010.

After the moratorium was lifted, numerous companies submitted applications for solar energy projects, some competing for the same piece of land, Seley said.

Some applications are being withdrawn as companies learn about the costs and requirements, she said, There were 71 applications submitted for solar projects statewide, which has since dropped to 68, she said.

The right-of-way application includes stipulations on road construction, removal of vegetation, disturbing biological and cultural resources, as well as site reclamation. A plan of development for construction and operation of a solar facility must be completed within 90 days of receiving the cost recovery application, Seley said.

Right now, six plans of development have been forwarded to the state BLM office in Reno for an engineering review.

The BLM is asking for a rental fee for the public lands calculating the highest and best use of the land. Seley said they're using the agricultural value of the acreage as a guide.

A bond will be required, similar to what's required for mining companies, for land reclamation once the project is over. It will include removing solar collectors as well as reclaiming access roads.

"A lot of companies are asking for a lot of acreage. This is something new to the BLM," Seley said.

The right-of-way is only going to be issued for the footprint of the actual solar facilities, she said.

"If they want 30,000 acres, one thing they've got to remember -- they're going to be paying rent on those 30,000 acres," Seley said.

BLM Natural Resource Specialist Jayson Barangan said companies will also be paying desert tortoise mitigation fees of $753 per acre.

Realty specialist Mark Chandler said a company like Cogentrix Solar Services, which had requested 30,000 acres of right-of-way, has scaled back that request to 3,000 acres due to the cost. Chandler said companies like to locate a site next to existing infrastructure like gas lines, power lines and telephone lines.

"You can't just hold 30,000 acres in reserve. You have to develop it," Chandler said.

Seley said companies will also have to apply for an interconnection agreement to sell power on the market and a power purchase agreement with companies like NV Energy and Valley Electric Association. Seley said from discussions she had with the power industry on the California side, it could take two to five years to execute those power purchase agreements.

Those agreements are also not cheap. Chandler said an interconnection agreement can cost a company $250,000 all by itself.

An application to install a 500-kilovolt power line 347 miles long that will connect Northern and Southern Nevada from Yerington to Jean is being protested in court by environmental groups, BLM's Resource Advisory Council was told. That power line could be tapped into for solar energy projects in the Amargosa Valley area.

Putnam said the majority of solar projects up for engineering review now use wet-cooled technology, which uses more water to cool the turbines. The use of wet-cooled technology could be a limiting factor to how many projects get off the ground, he said.

The more water efficient process, the dry cooling technology, requires a larger footprint, Chandler said.

Seley said companies would have to show they have water rights, and will drill a well or pipe the water to the site.

"With 250,000 acres, how are you going to deal with cumulative impacts?" RAC Chairman John Hiatt asked.

"I think that is going to be a crucial issue," Putnam replied. He referred to all the applications filed in a row along Highway 95 from Lathrop Wells to Beatty, except for the US Ecology site.

Seley said the BLM can issue a right-of-way for up to 30 years.

Archeologist Kathleen Sprowl said the BLM hasn't conducted many archeological surveys in Nye County except for proposed power lines and off-road races.

"The solar projects are covering massive acres in Amargosa Valley, and up to this point in time not much has been done in the Pahrump district culturally because there haven't been many developments out here," Sprowl said. "We will have a large area inventoried to know what kind of historic or prehistoric activities were happening out here. For each solar project, we are going to be requiring that the entire area they ask to be leased is inventoried."

Sprowl said there are two historic railroad systems that may go through some lease sites, like the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad and the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. Most stagecoach roads have already lost their integrity, she said.

BLM natural resource specialist Jayson Barangan outlined the unique situation at Big Dune, in the western Amargosa Valley, which is surrounded by applications for solar power. An area of critical environmental concern has been designated for 2,000 acres around Big Dune, mostly targeting the periphery around the dune which is home to four species of beetle found nowhere else, he said.

Barangan said the BLM is developing a resource recreation area management plan to address the environmental concerns and the popular off-highway use around the dune.

Barangan said the EIS will have to examine whether solar energy projects planned around Big Dune will affect the biological resources.

So how come Acciona Energy was able to build a solar power plant so quickly in El Dorado Canyon near Boulder City and another system went up already on Nellis Air Force Base?

Hiatt said Acciona Energy is using property belonging to the town of Boulder City. The Nellis project was built on military land.

Sun shines on solar again

Caving to public, political pressure, BLM lifts moratorium

By Lisa Mascaro, Phoebe Sweet
Las Vegas Sun

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looks over a mirror Monday during the grand opening of Ausra’s plant in Las Vegas. The company manufactures components for solar thermal power plants. Reid opposed a moratorium on new solar applications, which was rescinded Wednesday.

The Bureau of Land Management clearly had no idea what kind of blowback it would receive when, a month ago, it closed the door on applications to build solar plants on federal land in Nevada and five other Southwest states to buy time to study their environmental consequences.

On Wednesday, BLM officials collected themselves, gamely thanked the public for its concerns and reversed its moratorium.

The agency suggested its change of course is an example of its ability to nimbly respond to public outcry.

“We heard the concerns expressed during the (public meetings) about waiting to consider new applications and we are taking action,” BLM Director James Caswell said in a statement Wednesday.

But the more complete back story is that the agency — operating under an administration focused on the pursuit of oil and gas — did not consider that the nascent solar industry had friends in high places, including Congress, and bowed to external political pressure.

The reversal came two weeks after Sen. Harry Reid learned from a Las Vegas Sun article that the BLM was implementing a 22-month freeze on solar projects. He immediately vowed to fight it, referring to it only as a “proposed delay.”

The onslaught of media and political attention that followed made the moratorium all but unsustainable.

After the Sun story, growing criticism of the moratorium stretched as far as the Daily Telegraph of London and the Economist, which headlined an article “Freezing the Sun.” When The New York Times picked it up Friday, the end was near.

The story line that emerged was politically poisonous in an election year.

With $4-a-gallon-and-rising gas prices the No. 1 issue on voters’ minds, the country faces general anxiety over energy supplies. Stopping solar now seemed to be the wrong approach.

And on Monday, while attending the opening of a solar mirror manufacturing plant in Las Vegas, Reid said the moratorium was the wrong move, “especially when you consider that as we speak tens of millions of acres are leased to oil companies for drilling. It’s the most oil-friendly administration in the history of our country. Bush and Cheney made their fortunes in oil and this is another indication they are turning their backs on anything other than oil.”

But he — and several solar industry insiders at the opening of solar developer Ausra’s plant — said they hadn’t expected the BLM to hold out against that political pressure for long.

After all, over the past two weeks the agency has been lobbied by scores of solar companies at meetings across the Southwest and by industry groups in Washington. The Solar Energy Industries Association met with BLM executives several times after the freeze was imposed.

Reid’s staff engaged in informal inquiries with the BLM and reached out to others who were concerned about the solar shutdown to determine their next steps.

Even Gov. Jim Gibbons got in on the act, sending a letter opposing the freeze to Caswell and Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on June 25.

Celia Boddington, a spokeswoman for BLM, said the bureau was well aware that Capitol Hill was now engaged. “Clearly there was interest from Congress on this issue,” she said. “We anticipated continued congressional interest.”

Still, she insisted it was a “high level of public interest” that in the end swayed Caswell. The agency, after all, is used to public outrage on issues from wild horse euthanasia to coal-fired power plants to the aforementioned oil and gas drilling in prized wilderness.

But even as the solar industry protested, insiders said they doubted the freeze would last beyond the Bush administration, if that long.

Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said this week that “regardless of who’s elected (president), he will realize how important it is for the federal government to provide a pathway for carbon-free energy technology to be built in this country.”

Still, Resch also let on that the industry wasn’t done flexing its newfound political muscle.

BLM has “only fixed part of the problem,” he said.

The agency, which manages 67 percent of Nevada land, has yet to approve a single one of the approximately 130 applications to use federal land for solar farms that it’s received in the past three years.

BLM has received 23 Nevada applications, including 11 in Nye County and 12 in Clark County, that would involve 211,000 acres of federal land and could produce 15,000 megawatts of electricity, more than twice the peak summer load in Southern Nevada. Most of the Nevada applications were filed in 2007.

The 130 applications nationwide, if approved, would power 20 million American homes, according to the BLM.

“We now need BLM to start ... issuing permits to build these plants,” Resch said. “The longer they wait the more the public is going to suffer from escalating fuel costs.”

But BLM officials have said a study to determine the environmental consequences of solar projects is necessary to streamline the individual reviews of each project.

The industry has been careful not to oppose the environmental study itself. Resch and other insiders have said it was the freeze, not the study, that they found unfair. During a similar 2006 federal study of wind power on federal land, BLM did not invoke a moratorium.

“What they should be doing is staffing up to process the applications (they have) in a prompt way so we can move forward,” said Robert Fishman, chief executive of Ausra.

Representatives of local environmental groups said Wednesday that they had not lobbied Caswell to rescind the freeze, but that they, too, opposed it. Charles Benjamin, director of the Nevada office of Western Resource Advocates, said the environmental review, however, is necessary.

“I think it’s a good move on the part of BLM to lift the moratorium while continuing the assessment, because we are at a critical point with ... solar power,” he said. Solar “has the potential to replace coal and natural gas plants, and even nuclear plants, as baseload energy. To put a moratorium on applications would actually impair the development of technology, which is at a critical juncture.”

Feds backtrack on solar energy moratorium

Margot Roosevelt
Los Angeles Times




Solar plant in the Mojave Desert.
Credit: PBS

Solar companies went ballistic last month when the federal Bureau of Land Management slapped a moratorium on new applications to build solar energy plants on the 258 million acres that the bureau manages, mostly in California and 11 other Western states.

Wednesday, the bureau reversed itself -- lifting the moratorium."We heard the concerns," said BLM director James Caswell. "We will aggressively help meet growing interest in renewable energy sources, while ensuring environmental protections."

Already, the BLM has 125 applications in hand to build solar plants, mostly in isolated desert areas. But those deserts can host fragile wildlife and transmission lines must cross vast acreage to reach power-hungry cities. The BLM has been hearing public comments on a draft Environmental Impact Statement for large solar plants. Three public hearings remain, including July 8 in Tucson, July 9 in San Luis Obispo, and July 10 in El Centro, Calif.

California's investor-owned utilities are moving rapidly into solar and wind energy, driven by a state regulation requiring that 20% of their electricity be generated by renewable sources by 2010. Last week, the California Air Resources Board issued a draft plan to require all the state's utilities to rely on renewables for a third of their power by 2020.

No Sun Intended

Alternative Energy: Washington has placed a moratorium on solar power projects on federal land.
Is this the work of evil oil companies?
No, it's the fault of environmentalists.

EDITORIALS & OPINION
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The Bureau of Land Management quietly decided in May that the development of solar plants in 119 million sun-soaked, federally owned acres in the western states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah would have to wait at least two years while bureaucrats sorted out their environmental impact.

For decades environmental groups have been pushing the government and private sector to develop more alternative sources of energy. But that campaign is beginning to look like a sham to cover the groups' BANANA — Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything — activism.

To be fair, it appears the BLM acted without being forced by an environmentalist-filed lawsuit or activist pressure. And so far, the media are reporting that only a single group — the Wilderness Society — has expressed support for the moratorium.

Make no mistake, though. The environmental groups are the reason the BLM made its decision. Had they not spent the past 30 years rabidly crusading against development, reflexively defending wildlife habitats from minor and imaginary threats and demonizing economic progress, the solar projects would not have been interrupted.

Washington has become so overly sensitive to the possibility of vocal opposition on anything that has an environmental impact that it feels it must inoculate itself from the radicals — even when the project is one they should support without reservation.

Environmental groups at one time served a noble purpose. We are a cleaner nation and world now than we were in the groups' formative years because they helped the West understand that it needed to clean up the mess from the Industrial Revolution.

But now they have become BANANA's and CAVE — Citizens Against Virtually Everything — people. They are more interested in choking capitalism and imposing on the world a future without energy than they are with a clean planet.

Though a great deal of land has been set aside, it would take only about 1% of the total area now off-limits to generate through solar plants enough energy to power more than 20 million homes.

We have no particular affinity for solar power, but blocking an energy source for 20 million homes seems significant to us, especially when the price of our primary source continues to climb.

What's more, we don't like to see business opportunities shut down by government decree. There are companies that have sunk capital into solar power projects on federal land that will now have to wait at least two years, perhaps more, before they can begin to recoup their investments. Turning a profit will take even longer.

The moratorium conceivably could kill businesses and the jobs that go with them. It will have the same economic effect as the Kyoto Treaty on global warming but on a smaller scale.

Some on the left, Democratic Rep. John Hall being a prominent example, are attacking the moratorium as the Bush administration's favoritism toward the president's oil buddies. This sort of obfuscation is to be expected. The environmentalists' political partners can't afford to let the groups' real objective — wounding our free market system — be revealed.

U.S. halts uranium mining near Grand Canyon

Reporting by Bernard Woodall
Reuters UK



South Rim from the Bright Angel trail in the Grand Canyon in this photo taken January 3, 2008.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Uranium mining near the rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona was halted for three years by a 20-2 vote on Wednesday in a U.S. House of Representatives committee.

A recent surge in mining claims within five miles of Grand Canyon National Park sparked the action. The number of claims close to the park increased to more than 1,100 by January 2008 from only 10 in January 2003, according to government figures.

Almost all those claims are to mine uranium. Uranium prices have increased in recent years as demand has spiked to feed an increasing number of nuclear power plants across the globe, as well as potential new U.S. plants.

"This emergency action will help prevent uranium mining from harming the Grand Canyon and polluting drinking water for millions," said Dusty Horwitt, public lands analyst at Environmental Working Group, which spearheaded the effort to block mining.

Horwitt said mining could pollute the Colorado River, source of drinking water for millions throughout the Southwest, including the Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas areas.

The world consumes about 180 million pounds (50 million to 55 million pounds in the United States) of raw uranium a year.

Solar plant builders decry freeze

Federal study of environmental effects comes with a moratorium on new project applications

Phoebe Sweet
Las Vegas Sun

The federal government will do a sweeping study of the environmental effects of solar power plant development on public land in the Southwest, in part to speed up approval of solar projects.

But for developers, the study may be a fast track to the slow lane. While the Bureau of Land Management, which controls 67 percent of Nevada land, including many rural areas where solar arrays would be located, completes a lengthy study, the agency will impose a moratorium on new applications to put solar panels on federal land. Developers will have to wait at least 22 months - until at least spring 2010 - for the results of the study.

The BLM says the moratorium is needed because it has a backlog of pending applications and many of the requests are highly complicated.

Solar developers say the lag of nearly two years will hurt.

"That immediately is going to slow the momentum of a growing economy of solar business in the state of Nevada," said Chris Brooks, director of the renewable energy division of Bombard Electric, which installed solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base. "Twenty-two months will drive businesses out of existence."

Those in Nevada could be particularly hard-hit because 87 percent of its land is federally controlled, including the 67 percent that is BLM land; the other 20 percent is managed by other federal agencies such as the Air Force, the Energy Department and the National Park Service.

Brooks and other solar energy insiders said the moratorium, especially coupled with uncertainty in Congress over long-term tax credits for solar development, would discourage solar manufacturers from locating in the Southwest.

"If you delay the process much ... industry might go to another nation," Brooks said. "If you're going to make the process more cumbersome in all six states where solar is most viable, there is absolutely no sense in locating manufacturing" in Nevada.

And that means lost potential jobs, according to a solar industry insider who asked to remain anonymous because he must work with the BLM on future projects.

"It's really bad for the solar industry and it's really bad for Nevada," he aid. "It means delays in jobs, delays in economic development, increased reliance on natural gas, electric power. What's the upside?"

The BLM has received 125 applications - including 23 in Nevada - to use federal land for solar plants.

The oldest of the 125 was filed more than three years ago, according to Katherine Gensler, manager of regulatory and legislative affairs with the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Gensler and Linda Resseguie of the BLM said delays on some of those applications are due to developers new to the solar industry not meeting BLM deadlines.

Gensler said BLM is so backed up with pending applications that the agency couldn't have begun analyzing new requests before the study is completed anyway. Still, the moratorium has the industry buzzing.

The Nevada applications, 11 in Nye County and 12 in Clark County, would involve 211,000 acres of federal land and could produce 15,000 megawatts, more than twice the peak summer load in Southern Nevada. The 125 applications nationwide, if approved, would power 20 million American homes, according to the BLM.

Gensler said most of the Nevada applications were filed in 2007.

Resseguie said many developers expressed concern over the moratorium at a meeting Monday in Riverside, Calif., where the BLM took public comment on the scope of the study. Another meeting was scheduled for Tuesday night in Barstow, Calif.

The Las Vegas meeting is at 6 p.m. today at the Clarion Hotel and Suites, 325 E. Flamingo Road. For information, visit www.solareis.anl.gov/.

"Obviously it (the moratorium) took some companies by surprise and is going to affect their business plans," Resseguie said. "Some of the companies ... are more affected by our decision than others."

Gilbert Cohen, vice president of engineering and operations for Acciona Solar Power, the company that built a large solar plant in Boulder City, said his company is one of those hurt by the moratorium. It could keep Acciona from filing applications for at least two large-scale solar projects in Southern Nevada, although he couldn't estimate how much that might cost the company.

"It's the cost of not doing business," he said.

The BLM in 2006 completed a similar study of the effects of wind farm development in the Midwest. The agency did not, however, halt applications during that process, which began in 2003. Resseguie said that was because wind resources were geographically dispersed and there were no multiple applications for any single location, as there are in California for solar plants.

She said the BLM may in the future hold competitive auctions for parcels with multiple solar applications.

But in the meantime, the freeze could place a dollar value on applications filed, which may drive partnerships and deal-making in the industry, Resseguie said.

And the limited number of active applications moving through the BLM queue could drive up prices, said Tom Fair, renewable energy executive for Sierra Pacific Resources, Nevada Power's parent company. He called the 125 existing applications "a bit of a land rush."

Another concern is that over the course of the 22-month moratorium, the fast-moving solar industry may develop new technologies that won't be analyzed by the BLM in its study, he said.