The Art of Not Looking Away

Witnessing the Desert Destruction as Greenlink West Transmission Project Breaks Ground

New construction tracks invade the Amargosa Valley desert. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

Amargosa Valley, NV - I’m normally a very positive person, but lately I’ve wanted to jump through a time portal and choose a past era to escape back to, like in the old Star Trek episode. Back to a time before bulldozers and politicians.

This afternoon we checked out the Greenlink West Transmission Project construction in Amargosa Valley, Nevada, near Big Dune. The 100-acre substation was now fenced off, heavy machinery in place, water trucks in a row, and acres of new roads driven upon and desert shrubs grubbed out. This was depressing because just a few weeks ago this was a highly intact, unfragmented Mojave Desert landscape—flat yes—but full of biodiversity. Desert tortoises, kit foxes, and burrowing owls live here, as well as endemic scorpions and the unique Atomic tarantula.

The delicate desert pebble surface was broken in large areas, revealing the poof-dust underneath to blow in the winds. You could see the trails of numerous kangaroo rats hopping about on the new machinery marks as the hopping rodents collected the seeds from past wildflower blooms.

Kangaroo rat tracks hopping on fine sediment. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

We came here to witness the destruction of this quiet desert valley just east of Death Valley National Park and south of Beatty. We spent years opposing the high-voltage line that will stretch from Las Vegas natural gas power plants to Reno data centers and Tesla giga-factories. We commented to the Bureau of Land Management, attended public meetings, got the news out.

But most environmentalists looked away.

(Many actually supported it.)

Maybe it was the brilliant messaging by the proponent NV Energy, an investor-owned utility and natural gas company, placing the word “green” into the name of this electrical monster that will stretch hundreds of miles across the remote Nevada Outback. The utility has been pushing to build this for years. It was formerly called DesertLink. They will make a gigantic profit by recouping construction costs from ratepayers. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and his company Berkshire Hathaway bought NV Energy in 2013. They saw the potential for energy expansion and return on investment.

A dust devil blows across newly scraped land. The Funeral Range in Death Valley National Park lies in the distance. The small sand hill in the middle distance is home to Giuliani’s dune beetle, a rare insect found only here. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

Far from the urban centers where such money deals are made, the wild desert is thriving out here. Young bursage bushes could be seen growing in groups around older plants. Harvester ants collected fallen seeds to take underground.

These are public lands, popular with recreationists. The sprawling substation is careful to avoid the few roads here. Locals also tried to fight the giant transmission line, but many residents and town councils looked away.

“It’s a done deal,” we heard a lot. I thought, well, if you look away it definitely becomes a done deal…

We tried to interest our senator and Congressional representatives in the plight of this land, but they looked away.

We also talked to environmental attorneys, but they too looked away.

Defending the desert is a tough job. But we refuse to look away, and will document the construction of this transmission project so that more people understand what is lost when society chooses energy-hungry artificial intelligence over natural wonders. We were careful to stay on public lands and not walk on the recently-approved Right-of-Way.

A wash winds through Mojave Desert scrub in Amargosa Valley. Construction equipment is parked in the distance on the site of the future substation for Greenlink. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

I’m a naturalist and biologist by training. I’d rather be out identifying plants, birding with binocs, using field guides to decipher animal tracks, photographing lizards. But I have come to learn more than I care to know about heavy machinery, construction methods, and the impacts of building things out on top of ecosystems. Documenting the before and after of such development is important.

I have trained myself to not look away.

Water trucks, heavy dump trucks, a tracted hoe, and a Cat D-5 “desert ripper” ready for construction activity. Telescope Peak can be seen in the distance on the right. Photo: Kevin Emmerich.

Big Dune lies in the background, with a vegetation grubber parked in the foreground. A trench digging attachment lies on freshly broken desert soil. Photo: Kevin Emmerich.

Acres of desert shrubs are grubbed out and crushed. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

New rolls of shrink-wrapped straw wattles are at the ready. These are used in erosion control during rainstorms. Photo: Kevin Emmerich.

A trash receptacle and water tank on the substation construction site. We wondered where the water came from. Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is in Amargosa Valley about 15 miles to the southeast of this new giant substation project. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

Another dust devil emerges from powdery poof dust on a new access road. Snowy Mt. Charleston can be seen in the distance. Photo: Kevin Emmerich.

Native shrubs uprooted and run over on fresh dirt. These look like shadscale and bursage. Nature is trash. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

Tortoise exclusion fence rims the substation construction site. A desert tortoise mitigation structure consists of a plastic half pipe where a translocated tortoise can seek refuge from the heat after it is removed from its burrow on the project site. They often try to return to their homes. Photo: Laura Cunningham.

Pristine habitat. Creosote and bursage desert with an ephemeral wash next to the substation under construction. Giant solar projects may be built here because the transmission line opens up this remote desert to energy development. Photo: Laura Cunningham.