A battle over solar farms and water on Nye-Clark County line
Alan Halaly
Solar energy projects could reshape public land in Southern Nevada and could put further stress on the state’s water basins.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal
PAHRUMP VALLEY — Laura Cunningham can see the invasive grass through the fence.

The yellow plant that coats the ground under new colossal solar panels thrives on disturbance — a telltale sign that clues her in to how this swath of Mojave Desert has been altered forever. It’s the same desert stretch near Pahrump where Spanish explorer Antonio Armijo and his crew stopped after discovering and naming Las Vegas on the way to Los Angeles around 1829.

“Here, the soil is undisturbed and intact,” said Cunningham, gesturing outside of the fenceline to sparse patches of the grass. “But they’ve had a massive invasion in there.”

Cunningham, of the nonprofit Western Watersheds Project, is one of several environmentalists who have submitted a petition to the Bureau of Land Management to award this section of Pahrump Valley a designation of “area of critical environmental concern.”

Largely symbolic in nature, the push for the recognition is calling attention to the question of whether the need for Nevada to use its public lands to transition to green energy sources justifies putting stress on desert ecosystems. The area is also historically significant, encompassing Armijo’s Old Spanish Trail, they argue.

The BLM didn’t respond to a request for comment about the potential for such a conservation designation.

“Solar panels should go over shaded parking lots or on rooftops,” Cunningham said. “Pristine Mojave Desert habitat should be the last resort.”

The only project that has broken ground in the area is the nearly finished Yellow Pine Solar Project, though five other companies have put forth plans that are at varying stages of the BLM’s permitting process.

In total, the six projects could vastly change the landscape of nearly 20,000 acres of public land — the equivalent of more than seven Harry Reid International Airports. They also could generate enough electricity to power thousands of homes, though none of the companies have made it clear if Southern Nevada would primarily benefit.

A threat to the desert tortoise?

Perhaps the most discussed impact of these solar projects is to the desert tortoise, a threatened animal that some in Las Vegas keep as house pets.

The fence surrounding Yellow Pine is designed to keep desert tortoises out and solar panels in. It even goes several feet into the ground to prevent tortoises from burrowing. Design plans for the six projects show a wide range of approaches to dealing with the tortoises, with some suggesting that the animal could co-exist with solar panels once construction is over.

Cunningham said tortoises that are relocated nearby will sometimes return to their original habitat, circling the fence for hours until they succumb to triple-digit heat. Species numbers continue to decline each year, she said.

“What does that say about their long-term survival?” Cunningham asked.

A representative for NextEra Energy Resources, the company building Yellow Pine, said in a statement that wildlife concerns were addressed with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the BLM, adhering to all federal and local standards.

Another project that has stirred concern for the tortoise is the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project; in March, a group of environmentalists wrote to the BLM pleading that it cancel federal permitting for the project put forth by Candela Renewables.

Louis DeRosa, who oversees Candela’s permitting for solar projects, said the wildlife service’s process for tracking desert tortoises is rigorous. Biologists will identify each of the tortoises and evaluate their health, placing a GPS tracker on them before they are relocated, DeRosa said.

The BLM will determine if tortoises may be able to move freely back into the project area when construction is completed, said Jim Woodruff, Candela’s vice president for public affairs. He said the project is close to “almost no disturbance” of the ecosystem long term.

“That’s been the Holy Grail for regulators, the industry and environmental organizations,” Woodruff said. “It’s a way to have tortoises co-exist with the project.”

Construction in Nevada’s most delicate water basin

In the nation’s driest state, many have concerns about the projects being situated in the hydrological basin that tops the list of the most over-committed on paper. People own many water rights in the area, far outweighing the water that’s put back in the ground each year from snowpack.

The basin has the highest number of Nevadans who rely on domestic wells for their water, too.

Solar projects don’t require much water for upkeep. But they do guzzle a significant amount of water in the construction phase, something that has inflamed worry for water as Nye County residents see the water table decline over time.

This is a dilemma that local officials, including Megan Labadie, Nye County’s director of natural resources, have tried to tackle head-on.

She sent a letter to the Clark County Commission in January to ask it to stop issuing land permits for solar — something Labadie said Nye County currently has a moratorium on. Because many of these projects straddle the county line, Nye County doesn’t have much power, even though pumping water from the basin is exclusively to the detriment of groundwater users in towns like Pahrump.

“In rural America, we don’t have much representation or support,” Labadie said. “It’s like Clark County is the golden child and Nye County doesn’t get a lot of say.”

DeRosa, of Candela Renewables, said his company will retire its water rights permanently once construction has completed — something he sees as responsible stewardship in a strained basin.

That will be almost all of its water rights of 800 acre-feet, or 260,000 gallons, with a small amount of water kept for day-to-day operations. It’s unclear if the other companies will follow suit.

“Every year, that’s water that will not be pulled out of the ground that would otherwise have been pulled out,” DeRosa said.

Pahrump Valley’s solar rush is a post-effect of the BLM nixing an update to Southern Nevada’s land-use plan, Labadie said. The new version would have worked with Nye County to identify ideal solar zones.

In response to concern about the energy generated not being to the benefit of Nye County, officials are in the early stages of drafting an ordinance that would require companies to pay county taxes, Labadie said.

“We’re developing this ordinance for renewable energy so we can at least see some benefit,” she said. “But that doesn’t solve our water problem.”

The future of “least-conflict zones”

Leading the research of where solar can be best placed in Nevada is The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit that has released a report identifying so-called “least-conflict zones” for solar across the country.

These are often on old mining lands or otherwise already-polluted and disturbed areas, known as brownfields.

In Nevada, there are almost 400,000 acres that meet that criteria, or 2½ times the size of Lake Mead.

The nonprofit, along with other science groups, worked together to unsuccessfully ask the BLM in 2020 to identify the right pockets of public land suited for solar. The area of critical environmental concern petition is a response to that, said Jaina Moan, The Nature Conservancy’s director of external affairs for Nevada.

Any desert habitat disturbance should be avoided as much as possible, she said, adding that the Mojave can take hundreds or thousands of years to naturally recover from disruptions.

“We need to think about how to responsibly deploy this on our landscape,” Moan said. “And maybe there’s a point where there’s not enough room anymore.”