By Lynn Boulton

What's a PEIS? It's a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement which means they are identifying a basic set of rules that would apply across all new projects. In this case, it is the rules that the BLM would go by to decide if a company could build a large-scale solar project in a particular spot on public BLM land. The BLM has proposed 5 alternatives. All of them would exclude land based on a list of criteria called resource-based exclusions. Alternatives 2-5 would put a cap on the slope, limiting solar projects to locations with less than 10% slope. Then Alternative 3 layers in a requirement that a solar project would need to be within 10 miles of a transmission line. Alternative 4 would layer in a requirement that the solar project would have to be on a disturbed land. Alternative 5 would be a combination of the two. Here is a chart of the combinations. The chart that follows on the next page shows how many acres would be open to solar development under each alternative. 

So how does this play out in the Eastern Sierra or in Nevada? Here's a map that you can use to see. You just click on and off the alternatives. It defaults to Alternative 1 when you bring up the map. The green areas will be the ones open to solar development under each alternative. The alternative that opens up the most BLM land to solar development is Alternative 2. The one that opens up the least amount of land to solar development is Alternative 5. The BLM preferred alternative is Alternative 3, a compromise. The map is a work in progress and some resources have not been fully mapped yet or will not be shown. There might be some mapping errors as well. The BLM will go by the criteria, not the map. The list of the Resource-Based Exclusions (starts on page 91) of the PEIS document. 

This is an important project as it will guide solar companies as to where large-scale solar can and cannot go for the next few decades. Comments are due April 18, 2024. The Sierra Club will be submitting comments. You can also submit comments as an individual. For more information about the projects and how to submit comments, click here.