DesertBlog

BrightSource Drops Plans for Industrial Solar on Broadwell Dry Lake

From the Los Angeles Times blog LANow:

Controversial plan for solar thermal power facility in Mojave Desert dropped
BrightSource Energy Inc. today said it has scrapped a controversial plan to build a major solar thermal power facility in eastern Mojave Desert wilderness that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) wants to transform into a national monument.

The announcement ended a long-running dispute between backers of renewable energy and environmentalists strongly opposed to the idea of creating an industrial zone within 600,000 acres of former railroad lands that had been donated to the Department of Interior for conservation.

The acrimony even triggered a nasty public squabble between Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior advisor at VantagePoint Venture Partners, which raised $160 million for BrightSource, and David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which raised $40 million to buy the railroad lands and protect them from development.

Of particular concern was BrightSource’s application to develop a solar power plant on a portion of the donated lands known as Broadwell Dry Lake, which lies within Sleeping Beauty Valley. The scenic, near pristine region is home to Big Horn Mountain Sheep and a variety of plants and reptiles found nowhere else.

Kudos to BrightSource for doing the right thing on Broadwell Dry Lake. Might we suggest that the world-class tortoise habitat they plan to bulldoze and pave in the Ivanpah Valley deserves every bit as much respect?