By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
About 200 people participated in a social-distanced “Peaceful Protest” on Saturday, Dec. 12 on the Mormon Mesa just east of the Moapa Valley.
The protest was coordinated by Moapa Valley resident Lisa Hayes Childs with help from other volunteers involved with the Moapa Valley Save Our Mesa movement. The group has been vocal in its opposition to the Battle Born Solar project, a proposal to build a huge utility-scale solar generating plant on more than 9,000 acres atop the Mormon Mesa.
“Our purpose today is to show just how important this land is to us as a community,” said Childs at Saturday’s event. “We want to emphasize that this is a human issue. We are here. This is where we live and where we recreate. You can’t just move people out of the way like you do a tortoise or other resources. This is our backyard and we are staying.”
Over the past couple of weeks, Childs had sent out a call over social media for anyone who wanted to protest the Battle Born project to attend Saturday morning’s event. There would be no central gathering place in order to encourage social distancing. Rather people could ride their OHVs up to their favorite spots on the mesa and enjoy the day there.
And that is precisely what happened. On Saturday, many groups were on the move going from one place to another and gathering in small pods of friends and families at various places on the mesa.
A group of about two dozen local teens gathered just above the famous ‘M’, an important heritage spot for Moapa Valley High School (MVHS) students both past and present.
“This is a significant spot for us,” said Kenzie Hughes, one of the MVHS students who gathered above the M. “But if this solar plant goes in, we could lose access to it. That would be sad for us.”
“And even if they let us keep access, all of those panels up here would really change the experience of coming up here,” added fellow MVHS student Joshua Johnson. “It definitely wouldn’t be the same.”
A central check-in point was set up right at the spot where the road reaches the top of the mesa coming up from the area of the airport.
This is where Logandale resident Blake Monk was located. Monk is President of the local DarkSide offroad racing club, part of the Motorcycle Racing Association of Nevada (MRAN).
Monk explained that the local club holds a five-year permit with the BLM to host MRAN racing events in a huge desert area east of Moapa Valley. The race course spans nearly a fifty mile loop which criss-crosses the mesa in several places.
“If the Battle Born Solar project is built, it will shut us down,” Monk said. “We won’t be able to race here anymore at all.”
Monk said that MRAN had done some financial studies and found that each race that the organization holds generates more than $45,000 in economic stimulus to southern Nevada.
“Those races bring hundreds of riders and their families out to the community,” Monk said. “It is a big help to our businesses and our small town economy.”
Also in attendance at the protest was Laura Cunningham and Kevin Emmerich of Las Vegas. These two are co-founders of Basin and Range Watch, a non-profit organization working to protect open public lands from what they call “energy sprawl”. This includes the disruption of natural areas by large utility-scale solar energy complexes like Battle Born is proposing.
“These are wild, open lands,” said Cunningham looking out over the mesa. “This is just not a good place for a huge solar plant. We live in Nevada and we love our public lands. And we are are always asserting that our public land is NOT a renewable resource.”
Emmerich said that he has been impressed by the mobilization of the Moapa Valley community against Battle Born.
“It is really impressive how organized the local group is and how unified they are in their message,” Emmerich said. “They are hitting hard at just the right time, when the project is still in its earliest planning stages. Most of the time, people don’t start getting involved until a project gets well into the NEPA review process. But once it gets there it is a lot harder to fight.”
Assemblywoman Annie Black made a visit to the mesa on Saturday morning to show support for the cause. She pledged her help in bringing the community’s concerns up to other elected officials who could also help.
“I share the concern about the effects on tourism and public health and safety,” Black said. “I think there is a lot of fear about those things and rightfully so.”
“This community has been through a lot in losing a lot of its economic lifeblood of tourism that came with Lake Mead,” Black added. “A lot of that tourism has gone now and the community has had to work hard to build back up visitation in off-road vehicle use. You don’t want to lose what you have left and I can certainly understand that.”
