One might expect an NV Energy project designed to distribute clean energy to be greeted with praise by conservationists. Instead, some of these groups say the utility’s route for a renewable transmission line is paved with poor intentions.
NV Energy’s Greenlink West project entails a 472-mile transmission line, connecting Reno and Las Vegas, that would facilitate renewable energy development in seven counties. As it winds toward Las Vegas, the line as proposed runs through a portion of the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, a route opponents say disturbs the monument, as well as land that at least three Indigenous tribes hold sacred.
Environmental groups believe the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the federal agency leading the project’s permitting process, has been too quick to discard alternate pathways for Greenlink West. They ask, why cut through a national monument? “We’re saying there are two other alternatives that seem to be viable," says Las Vegas resident Sherri Grotheer, who directs Protectors of Tule Springs, a citizens group supporting the national monument (also known as TUSK).
The BLM held three public meetings to present elements of the project and is drafting an environmental impact statement that must be approved by the National Park Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Revisions to the impact statement are expected by March, and a decision on the project two months later.
The bureau’s position is that one alternative pathway, which would veer south to Pahrump, adds $73 million to the $2.5 billion project, and the other, which would loop north following part of the 215 Beltway, adds more than $50 million. The bureau’s preferred plan is to tuck 11 high-voltage electric poles, each 100 feet tall, just inside the monument’s border off Moccasin Road, which runs parallel to U.S. 95 just northwest of Las Vegas.
The BLM did not grant repeated requests for an interview. But in a July 11 public meeting at the Aliante hotel-casino, Greg Helseth, renewable energy branch chief for the bureau’s Nevada office, said running the line five feet inside the monument boundary was the “best alternative.”
Helseth said his office was following BLM, BIA, and TUSK permitting processes and had done all the required environmental surveys. “We’re not destroying Tule Springs. We’re five feet into it,” he said. “We’re talking about 11 transmission poles that are not sited on any of the resources."
But some critics say the same bureau responsible for protecting public land is also tasked with generating money off it. “The BLM wants to make the land pay,” Grotheer says. “It grants land leases to private enterprises and utilities. And some land is perfectly appropriate for that.”
Kevin Emmerich, a Beatty rancher, former National Park Service employee and co-founder of conservation nonprofit Basin Range and Watch, spoke at the July 11 meeting. “I think they are rejecting those alternate routes based only on economic feasibility,” Emmerich said.
Jeff Ruch, director of the western arm of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog for public interest, agrees. He also says the projected push through Tule Springs suggests a lawsuit. “Bullying” its way through the monument violates the National Park Service Organic Act of 1916 and the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009, according to Ruch.
“The BLM admits they would likely destroy fossils, and they’ve presented no mitigation plan,” he says.
In an email, NV Energy referred all interview requests to the BLM, saying the federal agency’s state office “is leading the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) public permitting and siting process ... coordinating all comments and concerns with interested and affected parties, including tribes, other federal agencies, cities, counties, etc.”
None of the three tribes that reportedly regard the land as sacred — the Timbisha Shoshone, Walker River Paiute, and Las Vegas Paiute Tribes — responded to Desert Companion’s emails or telephone calls seeking comment.
In its statement, NV Energy said Greenlink West would “carry electricity from enormous solar farms planned in the Nevada desert between Las Vegas and Reno” and that the Greenlink project “is critical to the switch to renewable energy in the western U.S., delivering gigawatts of power in the coming years to meet ever-increasing demand.” The company is also proposing Greenlink North, which includes a 232-mile transmission line through five counties, from Ely to Yerington.
Grotheer says, “I understand that we’re in a climate crisis ... but there can be another way.”