Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2004 | 9:19 a.m.
A once-controversial but years-dormant proposal to build two huge water reservoirs just outside the borders of the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area may be gaining new life.
Blue Diamond Power Partners, the partnership dedicated to building the reservoirs as part of a hydroelectric power storage and sale system, last month wrote federal regulators asking them to keep the application open for the project.
Wayne Rogers, president of Maryland-based Synergics Inc. and a former chairman of the Maryland State Democratic Party, told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December that he expects congressional legislation this spring to allow the project to proceed.
Rogers could not be reached for comment.
Rogers' company is one of several companies with an investment in the project, which stalled after Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., pulled his support from legislation that would have allowed the project to go forward in 2001. The project would be located on Bureau of Land Management property just outside the conservation area on an escarpment overlooking the Las Vegas Valley.
Rep. Albert Wynn, D-Md., last year included an amendment to the Energy Bill that allocated $20 million for the development of an off-stream pump storage demonstration project, a spokeswoman said. The demonstration project would help boost the Blue Diamond proposal, but the Energy Bill didn't specify where the demonstration project would be built.
The House passed the Energy Bill last year, but Congress adjourned without the Senate approving the final version.
Wynn's spokeswoman said he is not familiar with the local debate in Nevada on the project.
He still supports the production process though since it is "more environmentally sound" than other sources of energy, she said. Wynn is interested in reintroducing something on it this year, she said.
Rogers, who is a former chairman of the Maryland State Democratic Party, has championed similar hydroelectric plants as a source of clean energy.
Japan-based multinational Mitsubishi Corp. and Utah's Creamer and Noble, an engineering company, have also been partners in the project. Terry Hickman, a consultant for the project and formerly an engineer with Creamer and Noble, said he wasn't aware of any recent forward movement with the project, although he met with BLM officials last fall.
The Blue Diamond plant was conceived in the 1980s, but wasn't formally proposed until 1996.
The plant would act as a sort of giant energy storage system, or battery. Two reservoirs on 175 acres would allow the operators to buy low-cost power at low-use times to pump water uphill.
During peak use periods during hot summer months, the company would allow the water to run back downhill, driving generators that would provide power for air-conditioners and other needs.
The move would re-ignite a controversy that has lain dormant for almost three years. Environmentalists had staunchly opposed the project, which would be on land tucked into the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, near the site for which a proposal was rejected last year to build thousands of homes atop Blue Diamond Hill.
Jane Feldman, an activist with the local arm of the Sierra Club, said the power plant proposal was an issue that helped create a local political movement to protect Red Rock, a movement that has become increasingly vocal over development issues near the canyon. Those issues have included several residential development proposals and the recent furor over plans, since scaled back by the Clark County Commission, to build a 300-foot hotel tower a few miles from the conservation area's eastern border.
The Blue Diamond power plant "was the first thing," Feldman said. "It led the pack."
She predicted that environmentalists and community activists will oppose any effort to establish the power plant.
"There's a million reasons to hate the Blue Diamond pump storage," she said. "First of all, it will use more energy than it will deliver.
"Secondly, it brings industrial development to Blue Diamond Hill and disturbs the whole skyline, which we know is a trigger point for all sorts of feelings," Feldman said. "And third, it could be seen as a wedge to open other kinds of development up there.
"I would expect there would be a whole lot of different groups and individuals who will be very passionate about not wanting a whole lot of development up there."
She noted that the Sierra Club and other national and statewide environmental groups strongly oppose the proposed Energy Bill because it includes provisions that would support a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain.
While the Energy Bill has strong Republican support in Congress and the White House, the Blue Diamond power plant proposal has had support from some local Democrats.
In June 2001, the Clark County Commission, acting on advice from county counsel and Deputy District Attorney Rob Warhola, declined to consider the zoning approval for which the company had applied.
Warhola, backed by former Clark County Commissioners Dario Herrera and Erin Kenny, both Democrats, argued that federal approval was the only approval the company would need to construct and operate the plant.
The Clark County chief of Current Planning, which handles zoning issues, said however that the project would have to come back before the county. Barbara Ginoulias said her office has not received any notice of a request for rezoning from the project backers.
Among those who had concerns about the original proposal was former Rep. James Bilbray, D-Nev., who sponsored the 1993 legislation that expanded the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and included land for the proposed hydroelectric plant.
Bilbray said in a 2001 letter to Clark County commissioners that he never intended that the plant would go forward without "all of the necessary licenses and permits by the end of 1999, including the local zoning approval."
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