Small crowd attends Pahrump solar hearing

Small crowd attends Pahrump solar hearing

By MARK WAITE - Pahrump Valley Times

The NIMBY crowd wasn't in attendance at the public hearing in Pahrump on the Solar Millenium project in Amargosa Valley 35 miles away.

Instead, the handful of people who showed up for the Friday night hearing at the Pahrump Community Library meeting room focused more on generalities: A couple skeptics expressed fears about water or the night sky, proponents talked about jobs and the need for renewable energy. There was no sentiment of Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) as was current at Amargosa Valley three days before.

Tom Husted, Valley Electric Association chief executive officer, who showed up with a few VEA officials, was supportive of the project.

"This project will allow us to increase utilization of existing and planned infrastructure," he said. "No. 2, it will provide additional revenues that will flow straight through to the bottom line of the utility. No. 3, it will reduce operating expense requirements of the utility and therefore, member owners and No. 4, it will greatly increase reliability of the utility through the increase in transmission facilities."....

Scot Rutledge, executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, said with new legislation requiring utilities to obtain a portion of their power from renewable energy in Nevada, projects like Solar Millenium's two, 250-megawatt solar power plants are going to have to be developed.

"We'd like to see that water come from existing water rights," Rutledge said. He added, "We'd like to see it done in as environmentally sensitive way as possible."

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