By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
Moapa Band of Paiute members led a symbolic walk across the desert on Saturday in celebration of Earth Day weekend. The event was intended to put continued focus on current proposals to retire the remaining coal-fired power plants in Nevada and build more renewable power generation facilities.
Environmental activists, and travelling members of other Paiute bands in the region, joined the Moapa band in this sixteen mile “Coal to Clean Energy” walk. Beginning Saturday morning the participants began the walk at the Tribal Village near Moapa. From there they walked past the nearby coal-burning Reid Gardner Station. Quickly putting that facility to their backs, they continued on and ended the trek at the site of a planned 350-megawatt solar project on the Moapa Paiute Reservation.
The group then held a brief rally at a spot in the empty expanse of desert, across the I-15 from the Paiute Travel Plaza. This spot and its surrounding land is expected to be home to 2,153 acres of photovoltaic cell arrays that will harvest the sun’s rays and provide power to energy customers of Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, the entity that has already purchased the power.
Taking part in the days events, was National Sierra Club President Allison Chin. She emphasized the leadership role that the tribe has taken in its efforts to build the first-ever industrial grade solar power facility on tribal lands.
“Today’s march from the Reid Gardner coal plant to the future site of the Moapa Solar Project represents for all of us a new coal to clean energy path for not only Nevada, but for the entire West to follow,” Chin said.
The Earth Day walk took place just a couple of weeks after regional utility NV Energy presented plans to the Nevada State Legislature that would accelerate the retirement of Reid Gardner Station and replace it with an investment in more renewable energy.
The proposal would set a final retirement for the coal burning plant to 2017, six years earlier than expected.
In addition, NV Energy proposes to construct, acquire or contract for 600 megawatts of renewable energy in Nevada in the next five years. To meet its growing load demands, and to backup the renewable energy block, the company alos plans to construct 2,000 megawatts of new natural gas generation in the next 10 years.
Paiute leaders, this weekend, made it clear that, whatever happens after the retirement of Reid Gardner, they wanted the focus to be on clean renewable energy in the neighborhood.
“We want to make sure that the coal plant does indeed close and stays closed,” Moapa Band of Paiutes Chairman William Anderson said Saturday. “We don’t want the coal plant to be replaced by another polluting power plant like a (natural) gas plant. We want a switch to truly clean sustainable energy sources like the solar project that will be built in our reservation.”
NV Energy officials have said that there are no final plans on the nature of a generating facility to replace Reid Gardner. But they have admitted that it is hard to imagine a future without some form of generation at the Moapa site.
