Wind power projects may mean 1,500 jobs

Suzanne Struglinski

Wednesday, June 22, 2005 | 9:42 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Wind power projects on government land could generate almost 1,500 new jobs and $16.5 million in sales tax in Nevada by 2025 based on a final study released Tuesday.

The Interior Department opted to study how it could best develop wind power on Bureau of Land Management lands in 11 Western states, based on a recommendation in President Bush's National Energy Policy released in May 2001.

The bureau released the final environmental impact statement Tuesday after reviewing 700 comments sent on the draft that was finished in September.

"This will pave the way for development of 3,200 megawatts of energy for the Western states. That's enough for 1 million homes," said Rebecca Watson, the department's assistant secretary of Land and Minerals Management.

The BLM's Las Vegas Field office and six other field offices in the state will be part of the 52 land use plans BLM will change to include the best ways to manage land for wind power, based on Tuesday's report.

Watson said Nevada is "in a better situation than some of the other states" when it comes to wind development because it does not face as many problems with transmission lines. She said BLM has 20 million acres in the Western U.S. with energy potential but only 200,000 acres could adequately transmit generated power from one place to another.

Nevada has held on to its second place rank as the state with the most wind power potential on public lands. The state has roughly 1.1 million acres of BLM suitable to develop wind power, which could generate 701 megawatts of wind energy generated by 2025, according to the study. This is second to California's 1,462 megawatts by 2025.

The study says BLM land in all Western states would have wind energy development by 2025 but the majority would be concentrated in California, Nevada and Utah.

The study does not pinpoint specific locations where wind developers should locate wind turbines but maps in the report show where there are high, medium and low "wind resources" in the state. Southern Nevada has a large patch of "medium" area near Searchlight with "high" areas sprinkled throughout the rest of Clark County down to Laughlin.

Watson said now that the study is done, it lays the groundwork for those interested in developing wind on public lands. Any project on public land would need to do a specific environmental assessment to measure the project's potential environmental effects.

"Instead of doing a full-blown EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) they can do a shorter version, relying on the main information in this EIS," Watson said.

The report also includes the option that the government could limit wind development to six sites, including the proposed Table Mountain Wind Generating Facility in Sandy Valley.

Sandy Valley resident Beth Bacher, who opposes the project, said the company that wanted to develop it never really came up with ways to get around possible birds deaths caused by the turbines, the noise, traffic problems and other issues.

"We have one paved road in and out of Sandy Valley," Bacher said. "They have no way to mediate that."

Watson said there is "no silver bullet" with any energy resource and critics for everything, but the study includes how the bureau can work around the negatives and make wind power work.

BLM spokesman John Wright said all the environmental study and bureau work related to the Table Mountain project are complete.

"The ball is in the developer's court," Wright said.