Lyon County Files Protest Opposing BLM Western Solar Plan

Yerington, Nevada – On Monday, September 30, 2024, Lyon County Manager Andrew Haskin filed a letter of protest to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) regarding the Utility-Scale Solar Energy Development Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) and proposed Resource Management Plan Amendments (RMPA). The RMPA, as proposed, will make an astonishing 16% of the approximately 1.3 million acres of land that make up Lyon County and 38% of the BLM-managed land in the County available for solar application. While the County is not opposed to solar development on public lands, it is imperative to locate solar development in areas that avoid or minimize impacts to critical natural resources and the customs, culture, and economy that are directly tied to the multiple uses of public lands.

The protest letter expresses the County’s extreme disappointment in the outcome of the Proposed Plan as well as the process to develop it. Comments previously submitted by Lyon County in April of this year, including the County’s Master Plan and Public Lands Policy, were not acknowledged. The County is concerned the proposed plan will result in fiscal impacts as it will be left to deal with speculative solar applications in inappropriate areas.

In the protest, County Manager Haskin provided “...BLM’s complete disregard for its own mandatory processes, procedures, regulations and policies have resulted in an unsupported Proposed RMPA and Final PEIS. The only way to sufficiently resolve the many errors and insufficient analysis is to adopt the No Action Alternative and support future State and District-specific RMPAs as related to solar energy development on BLM managed public lands.”

The protest letter and supporting documents are available to view on the Lyon County website.

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Attachments:

·         Lyon County Protest Letter 09-30-2024 BLM Solar PEIS and supporting documents

·         Proposed Plan – Lyon County Map