Amargosa Valley Solar Sprawl - the first phase!

Western Solar Plan Update

Desert gold spring wildflower bloom in northern Amargosa Valley, with the Bullfrog Hills in the distance. This landscape should not be industrialized for energy production.

We are happy to see that there is some recent concern out there about how the new Western Solar Plan will impact Amargosa Valley, Nevada. The plan is a long term blueprint for public lands solar development in the west. But solar will move forward in this region with or without the Western Solar Plan. There are 3 projects that the BLM fully intends to move forward in this region sprawling over 19,000 acres. In summer of 2023, BLM auctioned off the leases for these three solar projects totalling 23,675 acres to 3 developers for a record breaking 105 million dollars. These will all be grandfathered into the new Western Solar Plan.

Building 19,000 acres of solar energy will require the use of about 4,000 to 6,000 acre feet of water mostly for dust supression. While it is a mostly a one time construction use, most projects are under 10 mies from Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and the basin is overdrafted by over 17,000 acre feet. The projects will create fugitive dust nightmares and one will be built next to the community of Amargosa Valley. They will destroy habitat for kit fox, burrowing owl, desert tortoise and bighorn sheep. Endemic tarantulas, scorpions as well as insects will lose bulk amounts of habitat.

In 2010, Basin and Range Watch helped the community of Amargosa Valley push away the Amargosa Farm Road Project. Unlike these, it would have been a 4,600 acre concentrated thermal solar project. It would have needed 3,000 to 4,000 acre feet of water a year. We pushed it into using a dry cooling technology but that ended up bankrupting the project. It was referred to as a "Model Solar Project" by a national environmental organization. Ironically, many groups are very concerned about Ash Meadows now. Times have really changed.

The projects are:
Amargosa Solar Zone - NV Energy - 6,000 acres

Silver Star Solar - Leeward Energy - over 3,000 acres

Rock Valley Solar - Nextera Energy - 10,000 acres.

Amargosa Valley Solar Energy Zone, Silver Star Solar Project application, Rock Valley Solar Project application.

The vastness of upper Amargosa Valley is wonderful to behold. This is an intact Mojave Desert landscape. The Bare Mountains are on the right and the Funeral Range in Death Valley National Park is on the left.

The future? Desert Sunlight Solar Project with Lithium battery storage buildings. From BLM: https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-announces-sunlight-storage-ii-battery-system-fully-operational

Amargosa Valley is full of wildflowers and life: desert dandelion, long-nosed leopard lizard, Mojave aster.

Sand devil scorpion (Paruroctonus arenicola ssp. arenicola) in Amargosa Valley at night fluorescing in ultraviolet light.

Desert bighorn sheep crossing Amargosa Valley in 2015, right on the site of the Amargosa Solar Energy Zone. These creosote flats are bighorn sheep habitat! Bighorn regularly cross basins to disperse to other mountain ranges.