blm projects

Obama is pushing a few solar projects through on Bureau of Land Management land that includes projects in Arizona.

I was curious to see if EVMs land was on BLM territory. It seems that it's not but there are projects nearby that have approval pending.

This link discusses the Obama administrations's Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement. This is a bureaucratic attempt to streamline the permitting process for solar projects. It remains to be seen if it is helpful.

I do wonder if any of Chris Davey's recommendations have filtered through the layers of regulators and departments to have any impact on federal policy and the PEIS?

It's pretty dry reading but here is a link...

http://www.cleanenergyauthority.com/solar-energy-news/wind-on-federal-lands-get-jump-on-permitting-080912

A short quote from the article.

Just a couple of weeks ago the Department of Interior announced the final version of the solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) allowing solar projects to be developed on specified lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management throughout U.S. desert southwest. Now the Obama administration is fast tracking nearly 5 gigawatts of solar and wind projects in the U.S. west—including at 3 gigawatts, what will be the largest wind park in the world.

Anyway the above led me to the BLM website where I found a map of AZ detailing BLM land. This one shows the locations of proposed solar projects.

Link here...

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/az/pdfs/energy.Par.18131.File.dat/AZSolar_Wind_Map.pdf

This is a pic taken from the map of the EVM site in La Paz. The red arrow marks the approximate position of the EVM tower. The light blue colour indicates that the land is State owned and white is private land. I'm assuming that the little white square surrounded by yellow (BLM land) and blue is the La Paz County Regional Landfill (Just NE of the arrow). That tip site has been a very helpful marker for me in a largely featureless desert.

Anyway there is no earth shattering conclusion just found it interesting that a CSP trough and a CSP tower are future neighbours to our SUT on Route 95. I guess the infrastructure required to get the power out is cheaper if projects are clustered together.