Interior fast-tracks Big Solar on public lands

By Chris Clarke | Posted on June 30, 2009

Crossposted from DesertBlog

The Department of the Interior announced Monday that 676,048 acres of public lands — 24 tracts in five Western States — are being fast-tracked for development by the solar electrical generation industry.

The tracts, called Solar Energy Study areas, will be scrutinized to see whether it is feasible to build large-scale power plants of three square miles or more in area on the lands.

In a press release issued by the DoI, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said:

“President Obama’s comprehensive energy strategy calls for rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands. This environmentally sensitive plan will identify appropriate Interior-managed lands that have excellent solar energy potential and limited conflicts with wildlife, other natural resources or land users. The two dozen areas we are evaluating could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity. With coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible solar energy production that will help build a clean energy economy for the 21st century.”

Note the phrasing: “rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands.”

The press release also claims that

Only lands with excellent solar resources, suitable slope, proximity to roads and transmission lines or designated corridors, and containing at least 2,000 acres of BLM-administered public lands were considered for solar energy study areas. Sensitive lands, wilderness and other high-conservation-value lands as well as lands with conflicting uses were excluded.

I took a look at the maps of the Solar Energy Study Areas (available as large PDFs here) and found that the folks at the Interior Department didn’t do a particularly exhaustive job of excluding lands with high conservation values. The PDFs themselves are a bit cryptic if you’re not familiar with the lands at issue, so I took the data in them and laid them over more familiar maps to give a rough idea of the lands being talked about.

There are four tracts in the California desert: the Pisgah between Newberry Springs and Ludlow, the massive East Riverside tract running from Blythe to Desert Center, the Iron Mountain tract near Rice and surrounding Danby Lake, and Imperial, which runs from I-8 to the Mexican border south of Holtville. (Links go to the maps I adapted.) Take a look at this detail of the west end of the East Riverside tract:

The base map, from National Geographic’s TOPO software, pre-dates the 1994 California Desert Protection Act and thus shows a smaller Joshua Tree National Monument. Current boundaries of the National Park are shown as a purple overlay. The Solar Energy Study area is indicated by the red hatching. As you can see, the Interior Department’s notion of excluding sensitive areas apparently doesn’t rule out building industrial facilities abutting National Park boundary lines. The Eagle Mountain area, long beset by destructive projects ranging from hydroelectric power generation to a proposed landfill for Los Angeles’ trash, is some of the “non-sensitive” land being eyed for solar development.

Other lands of environmental importance have been included in the tracts as well.

The Iron Mountain tract overlies the southern part of the Cadiz aquifer, which is critically important to wildlife in the ranges just north of Joshua Tree. It also lies within the southern end of Ward Valley, sacred land to the Mojave people and excellent habitat for the desert tortoise.

The eastern end of the East Riverside tract would seem to include a significant portion of the ironwood bosques near the Palen and McCoy ranges. (Ironwood, Olneya tesota, is of sufficient ecological significance that President Bill Clinton established the Ironwood Forest National Monument to protect an important part of the plant’s range near Tucson.)

The broad sweep of bajada along the southern flank of the Cady Mountains, included in the Pisgah tract, is a remarkably intact creosote “forest” that may seem unassuming to casual passersby on I-40, but which shows its vibrance in “bloom” years: the region’s soils are a significant seed bank for native annuals.

The Interior Department is accepting public comment on the sites until the end of July. They’ve made it easy to submit those comments by offering you a webform. The DPC will be keeping you updated on the process as it moves forward.