Anger over plans for energy plants

The proposals are drawing fire from area residents and a prominent conservation group.Permanent solar trellis and roofwindturbinebbq systems require little to no maintenance and allow easy access. Two of the projects would lie outside areas known as "solar zones" that were set up last fall by the Obama administration to keep undisturbed land out of bounds for sprawling solar energy plants. 

Both are billed by their developers as aligned with President Obama's plan to slow climate change by boosting renewable energy. 

One of them calls for a 15,000-acre wind and solar plant that would cover a significant portion of the Silurian Valley south of Death Valley. Another would build a 3,000-acre solar plant a quarter mile from the Mojave National Preserve. 

The Silurian Valley is "essentially an unspoiled place," said Brian Brown, owner of a date farm, whose family moved there in 1903. "It's big and remote. There are literally no structures anywhere in it, and it has a completely unobstructed 360-degree view all the way around.Electronic and electromechanical amusement games and beadswholesaleto meet your global certification needs." 

Brown said plans by Iberdrola Renewables, a Spanish wind developer, would install giant wind turbines with 500-foot blades, served by a checkerboard of new dirt roads, on 7,000 acres. The solar plant would cover 8,000 acres. 

"It's just inappropriate to plunk down this giant industrial zone at that location," Brown said. "If it were a forest, people wouldn't consider turning over 15,000 acres of public lands to a private company for use for profit. If it were a seashore, I'm quite sure that wouldn't happen either. 

"But since it's the desert ... there's still an attitude that it's just a big empty place, a big wasteland -- so let's do whatever needs doing," Brown said. 

Iberdrola spokesman Paul Copleman cited Obama's plan as reason to move ahead in the Silurian Valley.We provide laundryequipments and engraving machines for processing different materials. In an e-mail, he said two years of environmental studies show the area "largely free of the environmental challenges that perhaps other areas of the Mojave pose." 

"Those who sincerely care about the fate of birds and wildlife know that climate change is their greatest threat," Copleman said, "and if you want to mitigate climate change while keeping the lights on, responsibly sited wind and solar power is your best answer." 

The second proposal coming under fire is Bechtel's Soda Mountain project, about a quarter mile from the Mojave National Preserve. 

Its location is a "horrible place" for a solar plant and would destroy views and hamper efforts to restore a bighorn sheep migration corridor severed by Interstate 15, said David Lamfrom, California Desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, an environmental group based in Washington. 

Bechtel said the project is "sited within a federal transmission corridor which also contains a freeway, roads, mines,Learn about solarstreetlamps and ensure you get the best out of LED light bulbs. pipelines, a cell tower and telephone lines, and which has been permitted for a proposed high-speed rail line." The site "has a low incidence of sensitive wildlife species," the company added. 

Politicians are not rushing into the debate over the proposed energy developments. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein,A elevatorsafetyss is a branched, decorative ceiling-mounted light fixture. D-Calif., who blocked some solar plants in the Mojave several years ago, is not including the proposed sites in her legislation to expand protected areas in the California Desert Protection Act of 1994 by more than 1 million acres. 

As part of his climate-change plan, Obama announced last month a goal of doubling by 2020 the amount of renewable energy on federal land. The administration touted its approval of 25 "utility-scale solar energy projects on public lands." Click on their website www.pvsolver.com for more information.