Park Service warns of solar projects' impacts to Mojave Desert

By SCOTT STREATER, Greenwire
New York Times

A National Park Service official has warned the Bureau of Land Management that approving dozens of solar power plants in southern Nevada could dramatically impact water supplies across the arid region.

An estimated 63 large-scale solar projects are proposed for BLM lands in the region, and the plants are expected to use a large amount of groundwater to cool and wash solar panels, according to the Feb. 5 memorandum sent by Jon Jarvis, director of the Park Service's Pacific West Region, to BLM's associate state director in Nevada.

Jarvis also wrote that the Park Service is concerned that the projects could produce air and light pollution, generate noise and destroy wildlife habitat near three NPS properties: the Devils Hole section of Death Valley National Park, the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and the Mojave National Preserve.

"In cases where plans of development have been submitted, the vast majority of these projects propose to use utility-scale, concentrating solar power technologies" that "can be expected to consume larger amounts of water" for cooling than other technologies, Jarvis wrote.

"In arid settings, the increased water demand from concentrating solar energy systems employing water-cooled technology could strain limited water resources already under development pressure from urbanization, irrigation expansion, commercial interests and mining," he wrote.

As such, the proposed solar plants "potentially face several water-rights related obstacles in obtaining the necessary water for their projects."

BLM officials did not publicly respond to the issues raised in the memo, although Linda Resseguie, a BLM project manager in Washington, said there is "great sensitivity" within the agency to concerns over solar power plant siting.

The bureau is conducting a programmatic environmental impact statement to be released this fall that will gauge the effects of proposed solar power development on Nevada and five other Western states, and discuss management strategies for how best to address the issue.

Avoiding sensitive lands

Environmental groups welcomed the Jarvis memo, which was disseminated this week by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Critics say they hope the memo will prompt the Interior Department to develop an overarching plan for siting renewable energy projects like solar arrays, wind farms and geothermal plants in environmentally sensitive areas.

"We think the greater significance has to do with the fact that the Interior Department has no plan for solar energy development on public lands," said Jeff Ruch, PEER's executive director.

The Nevada controversy highlights the emerging conflict between the Obama administration's plans to greatly expand the use of renewable energy and the concerns of those who fear solar arrays, wind farms and geothermal plants could disrupt or destroy wildlife habitat and soak up precious water supplies in the arid West.

While environmentalists say they support the expansion of alternative energy, some groups have raised objections to large solar arrays and wind farms that would displace endangered animals and plants and damage their habitats. They also have raised concerns about environmental damage caused by the expected build out of thousands of miles of new transmission lines necessary to bring the electricity from remote regions to power-hungry customers.

The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes massive federal incentives and tax breaks to encourage the build out of a new power grid and associated infrastructure for renewable energy development.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that developers will build dozens of wind farms, solar arrays and geothermal plants over the next four years with an estimated 7,574 megawatts of electricity generation capacity -- enough to power roughly 6 million homes for a year.

Many of the projects will be built on public land in the West.

Kim Delfino, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, said her group welcomes the renewable energy investment as long as projects are sited in areas that have already been disturbed. Suitable sites could include the more than 250,000 abandoned mines on public lands across the West, she said

BLM, the Forest Service and other agencies have indicated they are studying such proposals, including locating renewable energy projects on EPA-designated brownfields.

"The degraded places are probably just as hot, and probably get just as much sunlight, as the pristine places," PEER's Ruch said. "As long as you're in the region the exact locations should not matter much."

Targeting the West

Federal lands currently support an estimated 20 wind farms, solar arrays and geothermal energy plants across 5,000 acres managed by BLM and the Forest Service. An additional three renewable energy plants have been approved for 3,000 acres of public land in Arizona, California, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. In total, the existing and approved renewable energy projects promise 577 megawatts of capacity -- enough to power 460,000 homes (Land Letter, Feb. 5, 2009).

But that number could swell dramatically over the next few years, as BLM and the Forest Service work through an estimated 400 applications for new wind and solar projects for federal land. If approved, those projects would cover 2.3 million acres in seven Western states and generate an estimated 70,000 megawatts of electricity -- enough to power more than 50 million homes.

"I think like many others, the BLM has been caught off guard by the sheer volume and intensity of what's happening," Delfino said.

Meanwhile, energy companies have targeted the expansive Mojave Desert on the Nevada-California border as an emerging hub of solar energy development.

The area includes millions of acres of undeveloped, federally managed land that receives high solar intensity year-round. But the Mojave Desert is also home to a wide array of wildlife, including desert tortoises and rare plants like the Rusby's desert-mallow, the cave evening primrose and the Mojave milkweed, said Sid Silliman, energy chairman for the Sierra Club's San Gorgonio Chapter based in Riverside, Calif.

"I think sometimes the perception is the desert is barren, and that's just not true," Silliman said. "It's a very fragile environment, very diverse."

The potential loss of such habitat is driving new concerns about a proposed solar array for San Bernardino County near the Mojave National Preserve -- one of the three NPS sites Jarvis said could be at risk from large-scale solar projects.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project, as proposed by Oakland, Calif.-based BrightSource Energy Inc., would cover 4,065 acres and produce enough electricity to power nearly 200,000 homes.

The plant would use an air-cooled system that requires less water, according to officials familiar with the proposal. But it is one of more than 100 energy projects proposed for the Mojave region, most of them solar projects. Just east of the Ivanpah site is another proposed 4,000-acre solar plant, Delfino said.

"It's great there's interest in developing renewable energy," she said. "We just need to take a deep breath and think more about what we're doing and how best to do it."

From vacant to Vegas-area airport

Profound solitude pierced by the roar of jetliners will signal a dramatic change

Andrew Silva, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

Looking north from Nipton Road in the Mojave National Preserve, the expansive, dusty valley below is dotted only by a new power plant along with the two western-themed casinos that greet tourists, truckers and gamblers as they cross north into Nevada.

In the distance, traffic glides along Interstate 15, bisecting the tan landscape as motorists head to Las Vegas or head back to Southern California.

That part of the vast harsh desert separating the megalopolis of greater Los Angeles from the glitzy neon-splashed mecca of Vegas is slated to change dramatically in the next decade.

Instead of the gentle rustle of wind, broken now and then by the lonely horn of a freight train or the distant staccato growl of a tractor-trailer's Jake brake, the profound solitude will be pierced by the roar of jetliners taking off from a huge new airport just north of Primm, Nev., sometimes called Stateline.

"We live in this highly urbanized society, and it's hard to get away from it," said James Woolsey, chief of interpretation for the Mojave National Preserve. "It's deafening, it's so quiet."

Although the Mojave National Preserve was created as a national-park unit in 1994, it remains unknown, even though more than 14 million vehicles per year pass by it on I-15 and another 4.7 million on Interstate 40.

But more and more visitors have been discovering the remote 1.6 million-acre preserve, especially with the recent opening of the restored Kelso Depot in the middle of the park, but it still draws only about half a million people per year.

"We're not like Yosemite where we can feed people pizza and stack 70,000 people in the valley," said Larry Whalon, chief of resources management for the preserve.

The proposed Ivanpah Valley airport will sit on Roach Dry Lake between Primm and Jean, Nev., north of the more pleasingly named Ivanpah dry lake bed, which is mostly on the California side and stretches between Primm and the foothills of the New York Mountains to the south.

The airport could be open by 2017.

Park officials and Clark County, Nev., planners are working together to minimize the effect of the airport on the preserve, but there's no way to completely isolate the impacts, especially noise and light.

A three- or four-year environmental review is scheduled to get under way in the next month or so with scoping meetings to get public input on what issues should be covered in a document that is expected to cost $15 million.

Las Vegas' explosive growth, both in population and tourists, has made the new airport a necessity.

Traffic at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas jumped 22 percent in two years, from nearly 36.3 million passengers in 2003 to 44.3 million last year, making it the fifth busiest in the country.

That means McCarran International is only a few years away from hitting its capacity of 53 million passengers per year.

And along with the new billion-dollar casinos, Las Vegas' vigorous growth has become part of its legend.

"There are a million people who weren't here when I moved here," said Dennis Mewshaw,, assistant director of aviation at McCarran International, which is owned by Clark County.

Indeed, Clark County had 741,459 residents in 1990, and last year, its population had leapt to 1.71 million.

Locals are fond of saying, with an incongruous mix of pride and dread, that 5,000 people per month move into the Las Vegas Valley. Actually, do the arithmetic and it's closer to 5,500, making Las Vegas the poster child for suburban sprawl.

Tract homes and shopping centers are spreading across the Southern Nevada desert faster than dice across a craps table.

All those new houses and businesses have squeezed in around McCarran International, making it impossible for the airport to expand.

With 30,000 new hotel rooms in the pipeline, the traffic at McCarran International will go up by another 10 million passengers.

A third terminal is under construction, and other improvements are planned, but that's about all the current facility can do, unless it were to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy up land around the airport, land already occupied by countless residents and businesses.

Roughly a decade ago, the search was launched for some place to put a second airport.

"It's a busy operation because our job is to bring people to the entertainment industry," Mewshaw said. "We have an obligation not to allow a lack of capacity impede economic growth."

A quick spin around the compass shows why officials settled on the Ivanpah Valley.

To the west are mountains, to the northwest is the Nevada Test Site, where hundreds of nuclear bombs were set off. To the northeast is the restricted air space of Nellis Air Force Base, where fighter pilots hone their skills in realistic mock battles, and to the east are Lake Mead and the finicky folks of "clean and green" Boulder City, Nev., who wouldn't tolerate an airport.

That left Ivanpah to the south.

It will be the first major U.S. airport since Denver International was completed a little more than a decade ago.

On the plus side, there's good infrastructure already there, including fiber optic lines, a natural-gas pipeline, a power plant, and even a jet-fuel pipeline.

The one thing missing is easy access to water, which will have to be imported.

And there are environmental concerns and serious engineering challenges.

That it's a dry lake bed is a hint that storm water will be a problem.

Three hundred square miles drain into the valley.

"If we had a 100-year storm on two days in a row, the lake would be covered in 2 to 3 feet of water," Mewshaw said.

Engineers will have to figure out what to do with all that water.

The two planned runways will have to be elevated, and that's going to require a lot of rock and soil.

And the often bumper-to-bumper I-15 will not be the route for travelers from the airport to Las Vegas.

Officials plan a separate dedicated road parallel to I-15 to carry the estimated 20 million passengers the 25 miles to the city.

"There'll be times it'll be quicker to fly to Ivanpah and get a car or bus to The Strip than it will be to go to McCarran," Mewshaw said.

Southern Californians would most likely continue to fly into McCarran. Ivanpah would be the destination for travelers from other parts of the country as well as from other countries.

There is a rail line right there, but trains to the city are not part of the plan. That's despite the nearly two-decade-old fantasy officials have had about a high-speed Maglev train running between Anaheim and Las Vegas, or at least from Primm to The Strip.

For lovers of the desert, though, it's the noise and lights that remain the biggest worry.

Flight paths will be laid out to keep planes from flying right over the preserve.

Microphones have been placed throughout the park as researchers measure the existing levels of sound.

Preserve Superintendent Dennis Schramm said he's seen noise models that are disturbing.

"Even though they can't fly over the preserve, Clark Mountain will still have a fair amount of impact," he said. "Once they turn to the east and point their engines back toward the valley, it's pretty loud."

The New York Mountains immediately to the west could act like the bowl of an amphitheater, said Whalon, the preserve's resources manager.

A healthy population of desert bighorn sheep on Clark Mountain, north of I-15 and part of the preserve, move down to the east, toward Ivanpah, for lambing in the spring.

That population had been in decline before a surprising rebound in a survey last fall, said John Wehausen, a researcher who studies bighorn sheep.

Bighorn tend to adapt well to human activity, he said, and he guessed the airport might not have a big effect on the sheep unless jets were flying right over the mountain.

A significant population of threatened desert tortoises thrives on the northwest side of the freeway, but the lake beds themselves on the other side are not great habitat for the slow-moving reptiles.

Light is another concern.

Some research has also been done to measure the effect on the night sky.

"Las Vegas and Primm are already impacting our northern skies," Schramm said. "You're losing stars on the low part of the horizon."

It's possible an airport and surrounding development could blot out the brilliant stars and that most rare experience: seeing the Milky Way, which is invisible to urban dwellers.

"It's a pretty unique experience to see how dark it is, and all the stars," Schramm said.

Those are all issues that will be analyzed in the environmental-impact statement, expected to be finished around 2010.

And if the analysis reveals any insurmountable problems, it's possible the project won't go forward. Clark County officials already expect a lawsuit by environmentalists once the document is adopted.
"I have strong feelings against the airport," said Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club's California-Nevada desert committee. "Ivanpah airport will impact the Mojave National Preserve terribly."

In 2000, federal legislation authorized Clark County to buy the nearly 6,000 acres of land from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for $20.4 million.

If the airport isn't built, the money will be returned.

Much of that money is earmarked to buy private land remaining inside the Mojave National Preserve.

Schramm said there are thousands of parcels in the preserve still in private hands.

San Bernardino County officials worry about the loss of tax revenue when private lands go into federal ownership. And they have other concerns about a huge airport just over the county line in Nevada.

Nevada and San Bernardino County officials met in February to discuss some of the issues raised by the proposed airport.

Bill Postmus, chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, who represents the sprawling 18,000-square-mile-desert 1st District, worries that payments by the federal government for lost property-tax revenue don't come close to making up the loss.

Another issue was how to coordinate emergency response. I-15 through the desert is often the scene of grisly car accidents.

Officials and environmentalists also worry about development that might follow the planned airport.

Whalon, of the preserve, said Clark County officials have been open and cooperative as they try to work through the issues to protect the area.

But if the airport is built, that patch of desert will be changed forever.

"Out here you can see for 20 miles," Whalon said. "People get pretty picky about what's pristine."