By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

A new 350 megawatt solar power generating facility on the Moapa River Indian Reservation moved one step closer to reality with the release last week of the draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

The DEIS is the second phase of a process to complete a formal environmental impact statement (EIS) that the Moapa Band of Paiutes hopes will lead to approval of the project by the BIA and other federal entities.

The power plant will be the first commercial grade renewable energy project on the 54 million acres of Indian lands held in trust in the country, according to Jodi Gillette, deputy assistant secretary in the office of the assistant secretary of Indian Affairs.

William Anderson, chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, said the solar generating project will benefit the tribe in numerous ways.

“This will provide more economic development and more jobs,” Anderson said. “We want to make sure we’re doing everything right which is why we’re working everyone to get it done right.”

“This is one of the first projects of its kind and we’ve been told (by the Obama administration) to pay particular attention to it,” Gillette said. “It is really a unique situation.”

The project falls directly in line with the President’s “renewable energy policy priorities,” she said. “The project is in the right place at the right time. There are a lot of other Indian lands (under consideration) but they’re a lot more remote. We’re still looking forward to our first success.”

The proposed solar facility, K Road Moapa Solar Project, will include 2,153 acres of land about one mile west across Interstate 15 from the Moapa Paiute Enterprise Store/Travel Plaza off exit 75 about 20 miles south of Moapa Valley. It will require 5.5 miles of power transmission lines to tie into the electric grid at Crystal Substation and a 1 mile long water pipeline to supply operational water from an existing well.

K Road literature says the project will generate up to 350 megawatts of renewable electricity; help utilities in the region meet renewable energy goals, and will provide infrastructure via a 12 kilovolt transmission line to the Moapa Paiute Travel Plaza.

The system will use photovoltaic cells that directly convert sunlight in electricity.

Public meetings were conducted Wednesday at the Moapa Reservation and Thursday at the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in Las Vegas to garner public comment on the proposed project, said Amy Heuslein, BIA regional environmental protection officer out of Phoenix.

“This meeting is so the public can take a look at the draft environmental statement,” Heuslein said last Wednesday in Moapa. “The idea is to get input from the public on the document.”

In February the BIA conducted two scoping meetings to get comment on issues the public believed needed to be addressed in the EIS, Heuslein said.

“As a result of those meetings, we changed what the actual project is going to look like,” she said. “We changed the access road and the power line route. These changes prove the process works.”

A 45-day agency/public comment period on the DEIS started Nov. 25 and will end Jan. 9, 2012, concluding the second phase of the EIS process.

Chad A. Martin, principal project manager for ARCADIS the environmental consultant responsible for the DEIS, said his company studied and evaluated areas that might be impacted by construction. Unavoidable impact areas include air quality, soils, water resources, noise, cultural resources, socioeconomic conditions, visual resources, special management areas, resource use patterns, public health and safety, and biological resources.

However, the DEIS details the mitigation measures that will be undertaken to alleviate or substantially reduce the impact in these areas.

How the project might affect the threatened desert tortoise has been the biggest concern expressed and Martin explained there is a detailed plan in the DEIS to mitigate any impact on the species.

Jane Feldman, a volunteer conservation chair for the Sierra Club, expressed concern at the meeting for several plants that might be in the footprint of the project including the Beaver Dam Bread Root.

“We’re really excited about the project, but we want to ensure every possible mitigating issue is addressed,” she said.

The DEIS is available for review and comments on the project website, http://projects2.pirnie.com/moapasolar. It is also available for review at the BIA Western Regional Office, 2600 North Central Ave., Phoenix; BIA, Southern Paiute Agency, 180 N. 200 E., St. George;, and the BLM office at 4701 N. Torrey Pines Dr., in Las Vegas.