Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011 | 1:19 p.m.
Related Documents (.pdf)
Environmental groups and Indian tribes sued the federal government Tuesday, challenging plans for a $260 million wind energy farm planned near eastern Nevada's Great Basin National Park.
A lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for Nevada against the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the government agency that approved the plan for windmills called the Spring Valley Wind Energy Facility.
The developer is designing the farm to minimize the deaths of bats and birds and other environmental impacts, the BLM said in approving the project.
Critics disagree with the assessment.
"Despite very significant and unknown environmental and cultural impacts, and against the advice of several sister agencies and its own personnel, BLM refused to conduct the full environmental analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Instead, under pressure from high-level BLM officials and the industry proponent, BLM rushed through a short-cut analysis in order to meet arbitrary funding deadlines desired by the industry," charges the lawsuit, filed by the Western Watersheds Project, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and the Ely Shoshone Tribe.
The lawsuit claims other consequences of the farm include infringements on lands Indians use for cultural, religious and traditional purposes. The suit asks the court to block development of the windmill farm until the BLM better studies its environmental impacts.
The BLM, in approving the project in October, said it's planned for sparsely-populated Spring Valley in White Pine County, 30 miles east of Ely, and would be developed on federal land by Houston company Spring Valley Wind LLC. That's a subsidiary of Pattern Energy Group LP of San Francisco.
The 149.1-megawatt wind facility on up to 8,565 acres would include 75 wind turbines and an electrical substation. NV Energy has agreed to buy electricity from the farm under a 20-year agreement announced last February. Similar-sized farms around the country can serve about 45,000 homes.
"cultural impacts"? Maybe we should give Manhattan Island back too. Where is Custer when we need him?
Lets just build a new coal plant and be done with it.
And you wonder why we can't move forward as a "green society". Bats would simply avoid it with their keen sense of radar (echolocation) and birds don't fly at night. How many birds do you just see randomly fly into fans at your local outdoor eatery? Hmm. Frivolous and a way to make easy money off of taxpayer dollars.
This country is FUBAR.
Wonderful news that someone is finally seeing that "green" projects that kill wildlife are not even close to green.
Hopefully this will set a trend that shows that you just can't put these ugly turbine anywhere.
The green bubble is starting to burst.
Spring Valley has never had enough wind to make this work. Just a Goldman Sachs stock market bump...
Please show me an inch of land these tribes do not consider sacred when money is floating around. Let the Indians do a survey of all Indian land and identify which is suitable for development. At that time offer them training to work the jobs created by these developments. No pure money handouts to leadership. Only Education, Training and Infastructure.
How can the environmentalists be against Wind Energy. I guess they are against everything. Especially when the suit claims that unknown things may happen.
The wind farm would actually disturb burial sights. I know the racists on this list don't care about wildlife, native people, national parks, etc. , but consider that this waste of money won't even produce much energy! That's right, your power bill will sky rocket when they need to pay for all of this subsidized garbage!
So take your green bubble and pop it!
"And you wonder why we can't move forward as a "green society". Bats would simply avoid it with their keen sense of radar (echolocation) and birds don't fly at night. How many birds do you just see randomly fly into fans at your local outdoor eatery? Hmm. Frivolous and a way to make easy money off of taxpayer dollars"
Time to do some reading. Bats get killed by turbines. The literature is out there. Find the links!
I wonder what the long term impact of climate disruption will be on these indian lands?
Maybe we'll get lucky and the so-called 'birds' will turn out to be pidgeons which are not birds at all but rather flying rodents who carry disease. Oh for crying out loud - they're worried about killing BIRDS? Give me a break........ birds people - not dogs or cats - BIRDS .....