SHARE:  
Basin and Range Watch
Defending the Desert


June 5th, 2022
Oppose the Golden Currant Solar Project!
Sample Letter to Send Below
The sample letter is at the bottom of this page. The Bureau of Land Management is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement and asking for public scoping comments for the Golden Currant Solar Project proposed for 4,456 acres of BLM-managed public land located in Clark County, Nevada, approximately five miles southeast of Pahrump and 26 miles west of Las Vegas. State Route 160 is less than two miles northeast of the site. The public scoping period will close June 9th, 2023.

Nobel Solar, LLC has applied to the BLM Las Vegas Field Office for a right-of-way grant for the construction of a proposed solar facility and interconnection to the transmission system. Nobel Solar is proposing the construction and operation of the Golden Currant Solar Project, a photovoltaic solar power project with battery storage on BLM-land designated as a solar variance area in Clark County. The project was formerly called Sagittarius Solar.

If fully built out, the project would impact nearly 7 square miles of Mojave Desert public lands and habitat.

The project will be built less than1 mile from the Old Spanish National Historic Trial. Nearly 50 percent of the project would be built on rugged badlands topography cut by deep canyons. Industrial construction will pulverize badlands into bad fugitive dust. The project would be built adjacent to the Stump Spring Area of Critical Environmental Concern - set aside to protect wetlands and cultural sites. There are mesquite woodlands on the project site and associated wildlife. The project would impair access to the Front Site Road and Cathedral Canyon. The project would cut through the Salt Song Trail and important cultural landscape for Native Americans. The project would create unmitigable impacts to the viewshed and is being reviewed through an outdated BLM Resource Management Plan that provides no protection to visual resources. 

The BLM is updating a Nevada-wide Resource Management Plan that could consider conservation alternatives for the project. The project review should be paused until this is complete. 

BLM is also revising the Western Solar Plan in several western states and can designate the entire area as a Solar Exclusion Zone.

Finally, BLM is updating management and considering "conservation" as a new rule for more balanced management.

This environmental review should be paused until all of these plans are complete.

The BLM has already approved the 3,000 acre Yellow Pine Solar Project with grave impacts to the desert tortoise and is reviewing the 2,400 acre Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project in the same region. In total, there are 7 large-scale solar projects under review or being built in the South Pahrump Valley on 22,000 acres of BLM land. (see map below)


^The above map shows the desert tortoise burrows found during desert tortoise surveys in Spring of 2022. A past drought caused a die off of tortoises and 18 live ones were found during the surveys. This population is recovering from this mortality. The worst thing to do now is dig them out of their burrows and move them so the habitat can be converted to solar panels.
^The map showing the fossil finds located near the project site. They have found mammoth and camel fossils less than one mile from the project site on the same geologic formation. The BLM originally said the project site has a "low potential fossil yield classification" but would later admit the site is "unknown" for fossil resources. Because Plio-Pleistocene megafauna fossils (mammoth camel) have been found less than a mile from the project on the same geologic formation, the site needs to be surveyed before being converted to solar panels.
Map above showing the close distance of the project site to the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. The BLM and National Park Service are required to protect a 5 mile buffer around the trail to preserve the historic landscape of the area.
^ Badlands topography on nearly 50 percent of the project site. BLM has said this will be "cut and filled" to make way for millions of solar panels.
Sample Letter to Send to BLM


Comments due June 9th, 2023. Below is a sample letter with the main issues listed. You can copy and send to BLM. Please personalize the message to give them a diverse selection of comments. Your own ideas will make a difference to them when considering comments.

Comments can be emailed to: BLM_NV_SND_EnergyProjects@blm.gov or mailed to: BLM Las Vegas Field Office
Attn: Golden Currant Solar Project
4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive
Las Vegas, NV, 89130

To Whom it May Concern,

"Please reject the application for the Golden Currant Solar Project.

The Bureau of Land Management should not even consider reviewing this application until the Southern Nevada Resource Management Plan can be updated. The plan is outdated by 25 years. Visitor use to the Tecopa Road has increased in this time and the visual resources along with other resources need to have better protection. Pausing this project for a better review could protect visual, paleontological, visual and hydrological resources.

The project site is located on badlands that have the same geological formations found in the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. Pleistocene megafauna fossils of mammoths and camels have been found less than one mile away from the project site. BLM should require the solar company to conduct a full paleontological survey before even considering this project. 

Approval of the project would result in the removal of tens of thousands of Mojave yuccas and cacti. Many of the plants are hundreds of years old and provide habitat and food to the wildlife of the area.

The project site is located in an important desert tortoise habitat. When desert tortoises were moved off the Yellow Pine site in May, 2021, just to the east of the proposed Golden Currant project site, nearly 3 times more tortoises than predicted were found and 30 of the 139 moved were killed by hungry badgers in drought conditionsH. Please do not allow a repeat of the recent desert tortoise disaster that took place on the Yellow Pine Solar site. Desert tortoises are protected under the Endangered Species Act and are seeing sharp declines throughout their range.

Nearly 50 percent of the project site is made up of badlands eroded by canyons and over a 5 percent slope. This topography would need to be leveled or cut and filled to accommodate solar panels.

The project site contains old biological soil crusts and desert pavement that is about 100,000 years old. Removal of the desert surface and clay-based badlands topography will result in uncontrollable fugitive dust. This will impact public health in nearby Pahrump, Nevada and Charleston View, California.

The project site contains hundreds of rare Parish Club Cholla, mesquite, kit fox, desert iguana, burrowing owl, coyote and several other species. Millions of living organisms would be killed in the construction of the project.

The project will require up to 1,000 acre-feet of water for construction and 29 acre-feet each year for operation. The Pahrump Valley Basin is over-drafted by 12,000 acre-feet. This could impact Stump Spring and nearby wells. Other solar projects in the area could use up to a total of 10,000 acre feet.

The project will destroy habitat for mesquite and associated species, a unique groundwater dependent habitat.

Solar projects can mimic lakes and will often kill a number of bird species. The project would be in the vicinity of Stump Spring and the Amargosa River which attract several birds.

The project would be located less than 1 mile from the Old Spanish National Historic Trail. Developing an industrial eyesore so close to the trail will destroy the historic character of the region. The BLM should propose an alternative that prohibits any solar development within the 5 mile buffer of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail.

The project will cut off access to over 7 square miles of public land and be visible from recreation trails, Highway 160, Mt. Charleston, the Kingston Range Wilderness in California and the South Nopah Range Wilderness also in California. Public access would be impacted on the Front Site Road and to Cathedral Canyon.

To preserve diverse Mojave Desert habitat on public lands and the quality of life in Pahrump, Nevada, BLM should reject the application for the Solar Project. Solar panels do a fine job located on rooftops, over parking lots and on brownfield sites. There is no need to waste important resources like this. "

(Your name and address here)
        
^Columbian mammoths and sabertooth cat in a wetland. Badlands in the desert represent paleowetlands, and need to be preserved. Illustration by Laura Cunningham.
Basin & Range Watch
PO Box 70, Beatty 
NV 89003