Sage and Sand: We've Got to Get This Right

The public lands solar rush has only just begun, and decisions we make today will affect the roll out of clean energy for decades to come.

Greetings, friends. Too much hard-nosed policy in this newsletter edition to comment much on the rain, but my god the rain! We got 2.5” here on the edge of Death Valley, some 70% of our average annual total. We’re standing at roughly 300% of normal precip on the water year. You know me, I’ve got flowers on the brain, and every night the past week I’ve been going to bed dreaming of the spring to come.

But of course there won’t be any flowers left if we don’t get our clean energy transition right so today we’re dialing in on that. Onward…

Photo by Tom Brewster Photography/Bureau of Land Management

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We’ve Got to Get This Right

BLM recently released its Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (DPEIS) proposed update for the Western Solar Plan, and boy is there a lot to unpack. This is sort of a watershed moment for me because I really cut my teeth with NEPA on the original Western Solar Plan PEIS back in 2010-2011, and have been dealing with desert solar since Ivanpah first surfaced in 2007. The existing plan badly needed an update, so in general I see this as cause for optimism. The worst that can happen is, it’s about the same as now. The best that can happen is, a revolution in solar siting.

We’re Stuck With This

I discussed the Western Solar Plan (WSP) revision with Sammy Roth for a recent column he wrote in the LA Times. In it, I agreed with Mr. Roth that some amount of development of solar energy on public lands is warranted, and we need to site it in such a way as to minimize environmental conflicts. Mr. Roth agreed but also said we need to move forward with as much development as possible on public lands. I see our view as on a spectrum, and I generally agree with much of what he says, even if I don’t take quite as expansive a view of how lenient the regulatory framework around this development should be.

The column caused quite a stir, with some on the left side of the spectrum accusing Mr. Roth of being a “shill for utilities,” a pretty outrageous claim if one looks at the totality of Mr. Roth’s career. But what this righteous indignation indicates is a real divide not just in approach but in values.

We are fundamentally locked in to a certain political economy of energy. Remote production of energy at large production facilities in the hinterland, shipped on large transmission lines to urban consumption centers. All owned by enormous investor owned utilities (IOUs), which in turn are usually part of large conglomerate portfolio investment companies, all geared at maximizing shareholder return. That’s just the way it is! I realize it could change if the proletariat broke its chains and rose up and overthrew the IOUs and tarred and feathered Warren Buffet. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.

It's true, we could, if we so chose, do our renewable energy transition exclusively using rooftops and parking lots for solar. However the IOUs won’t make any money on that, and the whole point of our energy system isn’t to save the climate or even to provide everyone reliable energy. It’s to generate profits for shareholders.

And meanwhile, the climate is changing so rapidly that we hardly have hope of keeping up and transitioning off of fossil fuels fast enough to save our own hides. And the only chance of doing so is to build out carbon-free energy sources really, really rapidly.

So I don’t know what everyone’s plan is for overthrowing our current political economic system and finding the trillions of dollars to subsidize putting solar on every roof but in the meantime, we need to decarbonize like right now. So unfortunately, the question needs to be not, should we build solar on public lands. That question has already been answered for us with a definitive yes. Like it or not, that’s the way this will play out. The question is – where and how? That’s the question this WSP revision hopes to answer for the next few decades of development.

What’s In the Draft Programmatic EIS?

One of the primary things the new WSP will do is mostly clear the map on zoning for solar and create new land allocations. There are five alternatives given in the DPEIS based on five different criteria as to which places will allow solar development. There are also a set of solar exclusion zones that are common across all five alternatives. The amount of land available for solar in each alternative is truly staggering: Alternative 1- 55 million acres; Alternative 2- 36 million acres; Alternative 3- 22 million acres; Alternative 4- 11 million acres; Alternative 5- 8 million acres. (Side note: the WSP revision does not apply to the DRECP planning area in the California desert, which completed a similar process to this in 2016.)

Alternative 3, BLM’s preferred alternative, would leave 22 million acres of public land open for solar energy development, the vast majority of which is in Nevada and Utah. Green areas depicted here would be open for solar development.

Notably much of this land is in Nevada and the West Desert of Utah. Unfortunately the Great Basin is where much of this development will occur, since solar development in the Mojave has proven vexing due to the presence of the federally protected Mojave desert tortoise. Enormous swaths of land surrounding Tonopah and radiating outward from there in all directions would be on the chopping block under Alternatives 1, 2, & 3. Also the entirety of Delamar and Dry Lake and Cave Valleys in Eastern Nevada. Enormous areas along Highway 50 in the West Desert of Utah would be made available, including much of Snake Valley and the Sevier Desert.

The headline among these varied proposals is that Alternatives 4 & 5 would do what we’ve been requesting for almost two decades: that BLM focus solar development on previously disturbed or degraded lands. These alternatives use a landscape-intactness model to locate parcels that qualify as disturbed and then focus development there. It’s a testament to how far the movement for responsible solar development on public lands has come that BLM has finally included this as an alternative. And while these alternatives feature significantly less acreage available than some of the others, it is still more than 10x the acreage of solar build out that is needed to meet renewable energy goals (By BLM’s estimate, some ~700,000 acres [outside of the DRECP planning area]).

Alternative 1 is clearly unacceptable, because it does not have a slope exclusion. The steeper the slopes one builds solar on, the more earth moving required, and thus erosion and other harmful impacts. Currently, there is a 5% slope limit. The new WSP would increase that to 10% across Alternatives 2-5. We are concerned about this increase and how it will impact soils and hydrology.

Alternatives 3 and 5 have one important point in common: they exclude lands that are more than 10 miles away from existing and proposed transmission lines. This would have the effect of reducing the need for long gen-tie lines from every project, as well as containing, to some degree, the extent of projects sprawling outward from transmission, creating de facto solar zones in places we may or may not want them.

Exclusion Zones

The biggest source of concern and likely contention is the exclusion zones. The exclusion zones are the same across all five alternatives – meaning we have no choice for greater or lesser conservation based on exclusion. This is potentially a fatal flaw with this NEPA document, but more on that some other time. The exclusion zones they delineate in the DPEIS are largely based on pre-existing land designations and allocations. Most of these proposed exclusion zones are already excluded from solar, meaning by and large we aren’t seeing any appreciable  increase in conservation in public lands from the DPEIS. These exclusion zones include:

• Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs); by-and-large already excluded.

• All designated and proposed critical habitat for ESA-listed species; also there’s squishy language about occupied habitat.

• Lands with Wilderness Characteristics (LWCs).

• Developed recreation areas and Special Recreation Management Areas (SRMAs).

• Greater sage-grouse Priority and General Habitat Management Areas; already excluded.

• Desert tortoise translocation areas.

• National Conservation Lands; already mostly excluded.

You can see this isn’t a blockbuster list, it’s mostly just cobbling together existing management and regulations. Meanwhile, because it has no provision to exclude sensitive lands that do not have pre-existing designations, it leaves open some truly outrageous places for solar development. To wit:

• Lands in the Amargosa Desert surrounding Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a place BLM has already deprioritized solar projects [PDF] due to potential impacts to the refuge.

• Lands in the remote Arizona Strip adjacent to numerous National Monuments and the Grand Canyon.

• Lands on the shores of Great Salt Lake, Utah and Malheur Lake, Oregon, in important migratory bird habitat.

• Lands within critical big game migration corridors on the Pinedale Anticline, Wyoming.

This is just a sampling of some of the totally inappropriate places BLM wants to leave open to solar energy development because of their extremely limited vision for the exclusion zones. We are going to be pushing back hard on this front, and proposing additional exclusion criteria to keep the most sensitive places off the table for solar energy development.

This Is a Crucial Moment

The comment deadline is 90 days, so April 18^th. We plan on submitting extensive comments of course. You can peruse the various alternatives on BLM’s web mapper, which is very handy for seeing how this might affect the landscapes you love the most. You can learn so much by listening to Chris Clarke’s podcast on this topic, which is basically a graduate-level seminar in the NEPA framework for solar development on BLM lands.

We need to tell BLM loud and clear that some places are too special to destroy with energy development, and that the exclusion zone criteria need to be expanded. We support Alternative 5, limiting solar development to previously disturbed lands within 10 miles of existing or planned transmission. This greatly limits the negative impacts this massive energy build out will have on our public lands.

We will continue to advocate for rooftop solar and other distributed energy resources to be developed as a part of the mix for our energy transition. We’re pursuing a pro-rooftop agenda doggedly in multiple states [PDF] across the country.

But as for large-scale solar in the desert, this is a crucial moment. This WSP revision will set the stage for the next few decades of solar development on public lands. By the time they revise it again, the build out will have happened already. So this is our chance to get it right. Let’s not screw it up. The future of public lands in the West depends on it.

Read more: BLM ePlanning, BLM DPEIS web mapping tool, Los Angeles Times, The Nevada Independent, Nevada Current, 90 Miles from Needles podcast, High Country News.

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A Toad and a Flower Walk Into a Bar

No, not THAT toad and THAT flower!

We were pleased to get the news in January that two of our Endangered Species Act petitions have advanced to the next stage. Petitions for the white-margined penstemon (Penstemon albomarginatus, or as we call it, PEAL [“pe-al”]) and the Railroad Valley toad (Anaxyrus nevadensis) were found to “present substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted.” This is known as a positive 90-day finding, because theoretically under the time frames established by the Act, the Service is supposed to make this initial determination within 90 days of receiving the petition. It almost always takes more than a year, however. We submitted the Railroad Valley toad petition in April of 2022; and PEAL in March of 2023. So it took almost two years for the toad and a little under a year for PEAL.

PEAL in its full glory in spring of 2019. Photo: P. Donnelly.

Now we advance to the 12-month finding stage. Jumping over the 90-day finding hurdle is entirely based on the quality and veracity of the information presented in the petition. The 12-month finding is sort of a reset. The Service will assess all of the available scientific information for a species, or if necessary, commission new science. Then they will complete an “SSA” (species status assessment), which is used to render a decision in the 12-month finding about whether or not the species qualifies for Endangered Species Act listing. This takes a long time. As its name implies, the 12-month finding is supposed to be done in 12 months. HAH! It takes years and years. Tiehm’s buckwheat got a 12-month finding in 2.5 years after the petition, and that’s only because half the species mysteriously disappeared overnight and we sued the Service to light a fire under the asses. Normally it’s 5 years? More? The wheels of justice are slow for endangered species.

Meanwhile, the threats are unabated. PEAL is threatened with extinction by urban sprawl due to the Clark County lands bill and supplemental airport; due to the build-out of clean energy infrastructure like transmission and solar within its habitat in Nye County; due to OHVs, invasive species, and climate change at its small population in the California desert; and due to exurban ranchette development fragmenting its habitat on the southwest slope of the Hualapais in Arizona. PEAL needs the Endangered Species Act, badly. The Railroad Valley toad also continues to face extinction. Fracking for oil and gas, and now lithium mining, pose existential threats to this species. And we don’t even know how many of them there are or where they live! It’s a very rare and unknown species. Hopefully we get it some protections before it’s too late.

Read more: Nevada Current, E&E News, KOLO

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Around the World of Great Basin Lithium Mining…

Ash Meadows

We have been working with the Amargosa Conservancy and a large group of coalition partners to protect Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge from potential lithium mining on its borders. Such development could dry up the springs there, which harbor some 26 endemic species, 12 of which are listed under the Endangered Species Act. You probably remember the hubbub last summer about the proposed Rover Metals project there, and our litigation which prompted BLM to revoke the authorization for exploration.

The coalition’s latest move is to propose a mineral withdrawal of the public lands surrounding Ash Meadows. This would remove the area from mineral entry, meaning no new mining claims could be filed. It would also subject existing claims to a mineral validity exam, ensuring a high level of scrutiny of any proposed mining exploration or development within the withdrawal area.

The intent of the withdrawal would be to protect the groundwater flow paths which feed Ash Meadows’ springs, in recognition that the area which contributes to the conservation of biodiversity in Ash Meadows extends well beyond its borders.

The Amargosa Conservancy held a webinar a few weeks ago to describe the issue and the proposed mineral withdrawal. Nye County sent a letter to the Department of Interior, expressing concern about the proposed Rover Metals project, and also encouraging a mineral withdrawal of the area. The proposal is still in its infancy but stay tuned because this could become big news as it blows up.

Read more: Nevada Current, E&E News, Amargosa Conservancy webinar, Nevada Independent op-ed from Dexter Lim.

Lithium & Water Investigation

The University of Arizona Howard Center for Investigative Journalism released a blockbuster report on the intersection of water and lithium production in Nevada and beyond. The lengthy investigation covers the whole West but focuses on Ablemarle’s Silver Peak lithium mine in Clayton Valley, Nevada.

It is North America’s only producing lithium mine and is frequently referenced in articles and discussion about lithium. It produces about 2% of global lithium supply. But almost nobody has ever probed the environmental impacts of the eye-popping facility with its brine evaporation ponds stretching out like a psychedelic industrial tapestry across the playa in Clayton Valley.

Ablemarle has been pumping 10,000 acre-feet per year (that’s 3.25 billion gallons) for decades. They have rights to 20,000 acre-feet, though it’s not clear if they’ve ever used that full allotment. But they have plans to, in part to prevent other lithium companies from claiming the water is forfeit and they instead should be able to access it. Clayton Valley has over a dozen proposed lithium brine and hard rock mining projects.

According to data collected by the Central Nevada Regional Water Authority, groundwater levels have plummeted in Clayton Valley. I was already aware that springs around the valley had gone dry – notably Pearl Hot Spring to the east of Albemarle. But I didn’t know that wells had declined too. Incontrovertible evidence that lithium production is having a significant impact on groundwater in Nevada.

There’s some debate, elucidated in the Howard Center article, about the connectivity between brine aquifers and fresh water aquifers. In Clayton Valley, freshwater aquifer levels have been plummeting, implying a connecting to the brine aquifer. If not a direct hydraulic connection, then the two are in hydrostatic balance with one another, and a significant decline in one may affect levels in the other.

At any rate, the Howard Center investigation is forcing us to confront the reality that the 83 projects proposed in Nevada right now could have enormous impacts on groundwater in the state, strongly suggesting that we need to have a proactive plan for how to deal with this development before it’s too late.

Read more: Lithium Liabilities – Howard Center investigation, USA Today (abridged version of the report).

We Need a Plan

Boy I say that a lot, don’t I? We need a plan for this lithium rush. We need analysis – where are the lithium projects and deposits with the least conflicts with environmental and cultural values? Where the most conflicts? And can we prioritize permitting for those with the least conflicts, to avoid an endless cycle of projects being permitted and litigation and endangered species listings, ad nauseum, throwing a monkeywrench into our clean energy future?

I’ve made a proposal, asking the Nevada Legislature Interim Natural Resources Committee to put forward a bill proposal to fund a study by an independent entity (like the Desert Research Institute) to analyze environmental and cultural conflicts at proposed lithium production sites, as well as analyzing the impacts of varying methods of lithium production. The intent would be to produce a data set of the lowest conflict areas to develop lithium in Nevada. We’ve also asked them to include in the bill instructions to the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to promulgate a rule-making for policies that would prioritize permitting for projects in the least conflict areas, while denying permits or deprioritizing projects with the highest conflicts.

Will the legislature go for it? Unclear at this time. But it’s the Center’s number one legislative priority for the interim and going into 2025 session at the legislature. We only have one chance to get this right. Nevada holds its future in its hands, but we need to act and act swiftly if we hope to avoid a dystopian future of endless conflict over lithium.

Read my letter to the legislature here.

Briefly, on lithium…

• The Salton Sea is seen as a panacea for lithium production, with proposals for direct lithium extraction (DLE) projects to be shoehorned in to existing geothermal energy production on the shores of the lake. Earthworks released a report recently looking at the potential impacts of lithium production at the site. This was followed shortly thereafter by a local environmental group suing over the authorization of lithium production in the area. Will this slow down development there? Sammy Roth definitely hopes not. The state of California has put a lot of time and energy into the Lithium Valley proposal, so I’m sure they’re hoping not. Let’s see how things unfold…

• Nevada lithium mining company frontman Caleb Cage doesn’t want no stinkin’ federal regulations, sounding off against conservation in the Elko Daily.

• Oil companies are one of the leading players in the direct lithium extraction game, because who has the most experience pumping liquids out of the ground? In one Arkansas town, after years of being ravaged by the oil industry, ExxonMobil has come back around to produce lithium from the Smackover formation brines. Read more in Grist.

• NPR has a story on concerns from indigenous people about the lithium rush, focusing on potential impacts to the Hualapai tribe from lithium exploration and possible production in the area near Wikieup, Arizona.  

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Briefly, on other topics…

• White Pine County farmer and president of the Lund water board Rod McKenzie passed away recently. Rod was an important part of the Great Basin Water Network’s fight against the SNWA pipeline, as groundwater levels in White River Valley were likely to be impacted by the proposed pumping for the pipeline. I first met Mr. McKenzie in 2017, and he and his late wife Carol were very kind to me even though I was awful wet behind the ears on Nevada water politics and had never really hung out with a farmer before. Our politics were different but our shared passion for saving the water of the Great Basin was enough that we could put that aside and work together. Mr. McKenzie was a good man. Rest in Peace.

• Rep. Mark Amodei (R, NV02) misses Sen. Harry Reid because Reid would muscle his way through committees and Congress with whatever outlandish public lands fire sale legislation he could ram through. Rep. Amodei admires how Reid cracked skulls and pushed aside concerns about decorum or regulation to get his beloved public land sell-offs. That a notorious public lands enemy like Amodei is waxing poetic about the legacy of the late Democratic senator tells you all you need to know about the Nevada lands bill agenda.

• Mountain lions are persecuted across the West – trapped, hunted with dogs and shot down out of trees, designated for automatic termination in some states, just for existing. They are beautiful, charismatic creatures, and the Center has a long running campaign to protect them in California. However, now there is a rising desire to kill them off in the Sierra Nevada. Why? To save endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep. But is the blame rightly being put on our beloved pumas? Read the LA Times op-ed for yourself and then think critically about if the assumptions made therein are valid.

• The Salt Lake Tribune ran a great story about the desiccation of the Aral Sea and the societal response to it in Kazakhstan. There are many parallels between the fate of the Aral Sea and the looming disaster at Great Salt Lake in Utah. The piece is chilling as it foretells a potential future for the greatest saline lake in the United States.

• Desert bighorn populations on Nevada’s Desert National Wildlife Refuge are beginning to recover after a significant decline during the severe drought of 2020-2022. Springs all across the desert had their lowest discharge in recent human history during the drought, which means the thin thread of water that keeps desert bighorns alive probably gave out, and most likely some of them died of dehydration. Last year’s wet winter and subsequent rains are starting to see a bounceback in the herds. Great story from 8 News Now’s Greg Haas.

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That’s enough for now. Keep on down that long and dusty trail,

-Patrick