Revelations have emerged that documents have been purged from the Bureau of Land Management’s web site, BLM.gov, stating that the agency wants besieged Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off land his family has worked on over 140 years to make way for solar panel power stations.
A BLM document entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts,” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, more specifically the construction of “utility-scale solar power generation facilities” on “public lands.”
“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.
Another BLM report entitled “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone” reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by BLM.
“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”
“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”
These discoveries come only weeks after The Bureau of Land Management cashed in with $1.27 million in oil and gas leases in Nevada reported by ShaleReporter.com:
U.S. Bureau of Land Management geologist Lorenzo Trimble tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal the Elko County oil and gas leases sold Tuesday for $1.27 million to six different companies. The auction took place in Reno. The leases are near where Houston-based Noble Energy Inc. wants to drill for oil and natural gas on 40,000 acres of public and private land near the town of Wells. The Review-Journal reports the project would be the first in Nevada to use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract oil and gas from shale deposits.
In the wake of the Bundy Ranch controversy former senior adviser of Harry Reid Neil Kornze was just named Deputy Chief Director of the BLM Wednesday. Awkward time for the placement right?
Well, not if you are Harry Reid. It is convenient for Reid that his senior adviser be named BLM director during the Budy Ranch showdown. Especially considering it appears that it was under Kornze’s authority that the aforementioned documents where scrubbed from the BLM website. Luckily the documents were reposted for posterity by the Free Republic keeping them from escaping down the memory hole.