By Greg Haas
(KLAS) — A solar project 38 miles west of Las Vegas was approved on Thursday despite environmental conflicts with the threatened Mojave desert tortoise.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the Rough Hat Clark Solar Project, which will cover about 2,469 acres of public land in the Pahrump valley, according to a news release. The solar project is expected to produce up to 400 megawatts with 700 megawatts of battery storage, and adds to the growing number of renewable energy projects approved under the Biden administration.
Rough Hat Clark borders State Route 160, the road between Las Vegas and Pahrump.
“In the spring of this year, biologists will excavate every burrow and hole in the ground on the project site to find and move as many desert tortoises as possible,” Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of the conservation group Basin and Range Watch, said on Thursday.
“We continue to be amazed that the BLM pushed so hard for this project at the expense of the declining desert tortoise. Solar energy does not need to be built on the most sensitive habitats. Alternatives on rooftops, degraded lands and even Solar Energy Zones on public lands could be used to avoid these impacts. Enough important habitat has been compromised for energy, and we have the technology and ability to avoid these habitats,” Emmerich said.
An estimated 114 adult desert tortoises are on the site, but biologists say there are typically more juvenile tortoises — the size of a quarter — on any given habitat site. “This means that hundreds of desert tortoise juveniles and hatchlings could be crushed by large earth-moving equipment,” according to a Basin and Range Watch news release.
So far, the Biden administration has approved projects with total capacity of 13.5 gigawatts — enough to power 6 million homes.
Rough Hat Clark will be built, operated and maintained by Candela Renewables, LLC, which has headquarters in San Francisco.
Previous tortoise relocation projects have subjected tortoises to predators.
“The project site is located on diverse high elevation habitat for several other important Mojave Desert species as well,” according to Basin and Range Watch. “These include Joshua trees, Mojave yuccas, kit foxes, American badgers, rare cacti, kangaroo rats, roadrunners, and LeConte’s thrashers.
“In March of 2024, a coalition of organizations and several individuals requested that the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management cancel the environmental review for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project over significant impacts to the Mojave Desert tortoise,” Basin and Range Watch said. “It appears that BLM values the wishes of the large-scale solar industry over protection of endangered species.”
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