{"id":86513,"date":"2024-09-24T04:55:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T08:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/?p=86513"},"modified":"2024-09-23T20:07:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T00:07:33","slug":"blm-public-lands-solar-plan-in-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insideclimatenews.org\/news\/24092024\/blm-public-lands-solar-plan-in-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"BLM Plan for Solar on Public Lands Sparks Enthusiasm and Misgivings in Different Corners of the West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a remote stretch of Nevada\u2019s Great Basin Desert lies the site where white settlers and the U.S. government massacred the Newe people 11 times during the 19th century. Three of the slaughters are among the largest recorded massacres of Native Americans in U.S. history, with the worst killing an estimated 525 to 700 men, women and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Native peoples continue to fight there today to protect the area itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For centuries, thousands made the pilgrimage to the site, Bahsahwahbee, to gather food, hunt and celebrate each year. Today, it remains a sacred space for local tribes and a graveyard where swamp cedars grow out at elevations far below where they typically are found, a sign their ancestors\u2019 spirits remain in the trees, tribal elders say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delaine Spilsbury and her son Rick, both elders of the Ely Shoshone Tribe, have advocated for Bahsahwahbee\u2019s protection for decades as the area was proposed for development as part of a missile transportation tract, for an oil and gas development and with a controversial water pipeline to Las Vegas<\/a>. This year, it seemed the area was on the verge of finally being protected, after years of work from the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe, the Ely Shoshone Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute. Their efforts to turn the area into a national monument garnered wide support across Nevada, leading Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto to introduce legislation<\/a> this year to protect the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But on Aug. 29, the Bureau of Land Management published the final draft of its updated Western Solar Plan, a federal assessment of the suitability of 11 Western states\u2019 lands for utility-scale solar development. In it, 7,000 acres of the proposed monument\u2019s boundaries would be made available for solar farms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really disappointing that [the BLM would] rather give the property to a corporation than show some respect for the people who died there,\u201d Rick Spilsbury said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rick
Rick Spilsbury (left) and his mother Delaine recount the history of their family and the Ely Shoshone Tribe in Ely, Nevada, on Oct. 5, 2023. Credit: Alex Gould\/Inside Climate News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the West, the BLM plans to make available to solar developers almost 32 million acres, a total area about the size of Mississippi, which would be a big boost to the nation’s clean energy transition. Climate and clean energy groups at the national level largely praised the decision, but environmental groups and tribes at the state level see it as far too deferential to industry. The goal of the updated plan\u2014which was first implemented in 2012<\/a> to create \u201csolar energy zones\u201d across just 285,000 acres in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah\u2014is to drive \u201cdevelopment closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands\u201d in order to streamline solar projects across the vast federal lands found in the West, according to a press release accompanying the updated plan. But the plan also commits to \u201cavoiding protected lands, sensitive cultural resources and important wildlife habitat\u201d in the lands it opens to harvest energy from the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public lands have long been embroiled in bitter disputes over development plans, historically from mines, the oil and gas industry, logging and ranching, and increasingly from the presence of large wind or solar farms. In its final draft, which covers Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, the BLM designated 130.3 million acres of land as untouchable by the solar industry, given the presence of big game, poor access to transmission lines or other local environmental concerns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even as the agency prepares to make vast swaths of Western public lands unavailable for solar development, other portions of those spaces are increasingly key cogs in the nation\u2019s clean energy buildout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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