It was a big year for Nevada on the renewable energy front. The biggest headline was the implementation of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States (PEIS). The Nevada Wilderness Project and other stakeholders worked with the Bureau of Land Management and the departments of Energy and Defense to craft this document, which establishes the program guidelines for solar development on BLM lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

The PEIS identified 17 geographic areas within these states (six in Nevada) that have low cultural and natural resource conflicts and are close enough to electrical grid infrastructure to make them appealing to renewable energy developers. These so-called Solar Energy Zones (SEZs) are where the federal government hopes to concentrate solar development in order to avoid conflicts – such as wildlife habitat encroachment – on other federal lands.

A lot of these same stakeholders and agencies will continue working in 2013 on development of the Dry Lake SEZ Mitigation Project. The Dry Lake SEZ north of Las Vegas at the junction of Interstate 15 and Highway 93 is is America’s first attempt at truly preparing these SEZs for utility-scale power generation.  The goal is to identify how development will affect resources within the SEZ and then then mitigate those impacts, either on the site itself or in the nearby region.  With this work done, developers will find it easier and cheaper to get their projects up and running, and citizens will benefit when clean, endless naturally derived energy replaces dirty fossil fuel-derived electricity.

The PEIS is just one part of the Administration’s effort to create 10,000 megawatts of electricity using renewable energy sources on public lands.  Under President Obama, the Department of Interior has authorized 18 utility-scale solar facilities, seven wind farms and eight geothermal plants.  Interior is also allowing transmission lines to connect the facilities to the electrical grid. At build-out, these projects will supply the electricity to power more than 3.5 million homes. It is estimated that the effort will support 13,000 construction and operations jobs.

In Nevada, several projects went on line in 2012.  The Silver State North photovoltaic solar facility south of Las Vegas and will produce approximately 50 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 15,000 homes, and Nevada’s first wind farm, the Spring Valley wind project east of Ely, now produces up to 152 MW – enough for the electrical demand of 45,000 homes. The McGinness Hills geothermal plant went into service in the summer and produces 30 MW of electricity. The Crescent Dunes solar concentration power facility is under construction and is scheduled to go on line in 2013.

The Interior Department plans to designate 20 solar, wind and geothermal power projects as “priority projects” in 2013. The classification signals that agencies will devote administrative resources to the necessary environmental review. “Priority project” status expedites the granting of the right of way to construct on public lands by year's end.

At the close of the year, as Congress contemplates the Fiscal Cliff within its Lame Duck session, questions about the extension of the production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy development have come into play.  NWP has urged its elected officials to support an extension of the PTC to assure that the same subsidies to support economic development for the petroleum industry and for other renewable energy technologies continue to help the wind industry to become fully established.

Since the Wilderness Act was signed into law in 1964, every Congress but one has added land to the National Wilderness Preservation System.  The 112th Congress still has time to create of legacy of its own, conserving a significant amount of wilderness so that future generations will have more places to hike, hunt, fish, camp and climb. There are a number of wilderness bills, which added together would protect better than 2 million acres of public wild land across the country.

Among these bills is the Pine Forest Recreation Enhancement Act of 2011, which would protect 26,000 acres within the Blue Lakes and Alder Creek wilderness study areas in Humboldt County. Please ask our Nevada Congressional delegates to act now to protect Pine Forest.

The Pine Forest bill was the product of a comprehensive local process that included local landowners, sportsmen, conservationists, former state officials and other interested parties in Humboldt County. We know because we had a seat at the table. It has the backing of the entire Nevada delegation, and the process that created it has been held up as a national model for cooperative on wilderness legislation.

So drop your federal representative or senator a note reminding them that you are eager to see these wilderness bills passed soon – particularly Pine Forest.

This page will give you all the information you need to reach a member of the Nevada delegation in Congress.

Here’s a sample letter you can use

Time is running out to protect Pine Forest in Humboldt County  I'm writing to urge that you work to ensure the Pine Forest Recreation Enhancement Act of 2011 passes Congress before the end of the year. The wonderful landscapes the Pine Forest bill would protect are important  to Nevadans and to all Americans. If Congress doesn’t act, it will be the first Congress since 1966 to fail to add any land to the National Wilderness Preservation System. I hope you can help ensure  the passage of Pine Forest so that Congress adds to our nation’s wilderness legacy for today and future generations.

Congressman Mark Amodei. This is the link. http://amodei.house.gov/

125 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Phone: (202) 225-6155

The state of Nevada has approved the formation of a Sagebrush Ecosystem Council and is spending more than $300,000 to try and keep the Greater Sage-grouse off the Endangered Species List.

The $304,000 allocated by the Legislative Interim Finance Committee will be used to implement key recommendations identified by Gov. Brian Sandoval's Greater Sage-grouse Advisory Committee. In addition to the council, the state is creating a “multidisciplinary, interagency Sagebrush Ecosystem Technical Team” and hiring three regional specialists to coordinate on-the-ground efforts to identify and protect crucial sagebrush habitat for the bird.

The population of sage-grouse has plunged from more than 16 million a hundred years ago to less than 500,000 today. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has concluded that both the Greater Sage-grouse, found in 11 Western states and nine Nevada counties, and the Bistate Sage-grouse, a related bird found in five Nevada counties, warrants protection under the Endangered Species Act. The FWS is going to re-examine the Bistate Sage-grouse’s status in September 2013 and the Greater Sage-grouse in September 2015.

Although some Interim Finance Committee member said they were leery of including the $300,000 in the upcoming 2014-15 biennial budget because the state is short of cash, state officials said a listing would have a powerful impact on the state’s economy by putting huge swaths of rural Northern Nevada off limits to such activities as mining, agriculture and outdoor recreation.

"A council, technical team and regional specialists are essential in identifying, prioritizing and implementing both large and smaller-scale projects that protect and improve the sagebrush ecosystem and conserve the Greater Sage-grouse," said Leo Drozdoff, director of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. "The primary threats to the species were recently clarified by the Governor's Advisory Committee and a coordinated approach — demonstrating the state's leadership, conviction and commitment — is necessary to produce accomplishments that minimize these threats and underscore Nevada's ability to manage the bird to avoid listing."

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service committed $40,000 to fund the council during the remainder of state fiscal year 2013.

Oddly, the announcement from the Governor’s office made no mention of the Bistate Sage-grouse, which occupies a smaller environment along the Nevada-California border and whose listing deadline is less than a year away.

The approved Sagebrush Ecosystem Technical Team will have five members, including a working team coordinator, a wildlife specialist, a wildfire prevention, suppression and rehabilitation specialist, an agriculture and range invasive weed specialist and a state lands' environmental science specialist. The team will be co-located in Carson City and will provide a single point of focus within state government for all stakeholders and members of the public in relation to Greater Sage-grouse issues. The technical team will coordinate closely with the three regional specialists to be located in Winnemucca, Elko and Ely.

After nearly three years in the making, our nation’s solar energy program reached a culminating milestone when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar adopted the final solar plan through a Record of Decision.

This step advances a plan to develop solar energy on many of the nation’s sunniest public lands, a significant achievement in advancing efforts to produce clean, renewable energy, and enable us to put solutions on the table to address the increasing extremities in weather patterns.

Nevada has five of these designated solar zones, and Nevada Wilderness Project has been working with the federal government, utilities and solar energy developers on the plan for about two years. Although the demand for renewable energy has waned in our state, these areas identified by the Interior Department could one day be the focus on utility-scale solar power facilities that will help us combat the impact of climate change.

According to the Center for Climate Change Solutions at UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the federal solar program “offers solutions to address the climate challenge ahead of us in a sensible and economical way. Because climate change is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels, a plan to transform our energy system to rely on clean, renewable sources like the sun is critical.”

The Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement will help us realize our nation’s potential for solar energy development on public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

The solar plan we helped craft reduces unnecessary and time-consuming obstacles by identifying the public lands that are best suited for large-scale development in that they done harm sensitive wildlife or wild lands and provide mitigate for impacts they do have on our unique desert landscapes.

The plan is a good balance between doing something to battle global warming while protecting public lands from harmful development. It’s not an option to do nothing.

According to Dr. Paul Bunje,in an op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune , “Interior’s solar plan will accelerate responsibly sited solar energy development by guiding projects to places where conflicts with wildlife and wild lands are lessened. This plan stands in stark contrast to the shortsighted and contentious approach that has dictated energy development to date.

“We cannot ignore the need for carefully sited solar development to protect America’s precious landscapes. But we also want solar development that will produce jobs and economic growth. Interior’s solar plan aims to balance the two. This represents a unique opportunity for our nation to move closer to meeting our clean energy goals, and that is certainly something to celebrate.”

Our hats go off to a group of Boy Scouts who recently built six ‘elk jumps’ on the Warner Ranch in the Humboldt-Toyaibe National Forest in northern Nye County.

The ranch is owned by the U.S. Forest Service, and the elk jumps will help prevent elk and mule deer from getting tangled in barbed wire. This happened in 2007 to one young bull. Trail cameras have been set up to monitor activity on the elk jumps.

The jumps were installed in a 5.5-mile fence set up to protect a key meadow area utilized by sage grouse, pygmy rabbles, Toiyabe spotted frogs and the Columbia spotted frog, a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

A federal appeals court has ordered the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to go back and reasses the impact of the 700-mile Ruby Pipeline on nine endangered fish species and sensitive sagebrush.The court said the federal agencies violated both the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act in approving the natural gas pipeline from Wyoming to southern Oregon.

The Center, which appealed the decision to approve the pipeline to the 9th Circuit, said that with the court decision, "these rare fish will be better protected, and the public won’t have to bear the whole cost of the pipeline’s destructive impacts.”

The court also decided that Ruby and the Fish and Wildlife Service never fully considered the impacts caused by the developers withdrawing millions of gallons of groundwater along the pipeline route for testing and dust abatement. The pipeline builder promised voluntary mitigations for the damaged fish habitat, but those mitigations were not required and were not fully funded. The court concluded that relying on voluntary measures that may or may not occur is a clear violation of the law.

Nevada Wilderness Project Executive Director Jeneane Harter, praised the court decision, noting that the Ruby gas pipeline damaged hundreds of miles of sagebrush habitats and fragmented wildlife habitats and streams. "We're hoping now that these original federal restoration and mitigation requirements will be strengthened and enforced," she said.

Since 2009, the Department of Interior has authorized 33 renewable energy projects, including 18 utility-scale solar facilities, seven wind farms and eight geothermal plants, along with associated transmission corridors and infrastructure. At build-out, these projects will supply the electricity to power more than 3.5 million homes.  It is estimated that the effort will support 13,000 construction and operations jobs, according to project developer estimates.

The signing ceremony was held in Las Vegas, with Nevada’s Senator Harry Reid and BLM’s Nevada State Director at Secretary Salazar’s side.  This official act culminated the final comment period that was initiated through Interior’s Notice of Intent, published within the Federal Register in July and accompanied by the Secretary’s formal announcement.  During the development of the PEIS, NWP joined many large nationally-based organizations in actively providing comment and other input that was considered and incorporated into the body of the document. Our objective was to ensure that solar energy development in southern Nevada would be properly sited to avoid conflicts with the state’s natural and cultural resources.

A key element of the PEIS was to designate solar energy zones (SEZs).  Five SEZs were identified for Nevada. These and 12 other SEZs combine to total approximately 285,000 acres of public lands managed by BLM that serve as ‘priority’ locales that feature proximity to existing power transmission infrastructure and that have relatively low resource conflicts.  The intent is to attract commercial scale solar projects by ‘streamlining’ the environmental review required of developers by invoking a consistent and efficient approach to permit applications that remains environmentally accountable.

Developers may still apply for permits to build facilities outside of these SEZs.  The document delineates 19 million acres of BLM-administered lands called ‘variance’ areas; however, these would be subject to the full scrutiny of an individual environmental impact study to assure proper siting and mitigation of affected resources.  The SPEIS also identifies exclusion lands – lands having resource characteristics that would be irrevocably impaired by development and thus are excluded from consideration.

The program also establishes a framework for regional mitigation plans. Presently, the BLM is crafting a Pilot Mitigation Plan for the Dry Lake SEZ north of Las Vegas.  NWP is involved in helping to develop the wildlife and habitat database for the area.  This will be instrumental in developing mitigation policies and guidelines to help offset impacts to the existing resources on the site.  We will keep you informed as this develops further.