The lawsuit filed by the Center for
It’s the latest public lands conflict pitting green energy production against potential harm to wildlife habitat or cultural resources in the biggest
Environmentalists nationally have rallied around President Joe Biden’s ambitious renewable energy agenda, which embraces solar, wind and geothermal production.
Geothermal plants pump water from beneath the earth to generate steam to make electricity. The deeper they drill, the warmer the water is. The power plants produce significantly fewer greenhouse emissions than plants that burn natural gas or coal.
The lawsuit filed
It also says the agency is violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Bureau spokesman
A judge has scheduled a
Formed by natural springs,
The Biden administration approved the project last month even though the center’s petition to list the toad as a
The center is the same group that won an endangered species listing earlier this year for a rare plant at the site of a proposed lithium mine 225 miles (362 km) southeast of
“We strongly support renewable energy when it’s in the right place, but a project like this that threatens sacred sites and endangered species is definitely the wrong place,”
Tribal Chairperson
“The United States has repeatedly promised to honor and protect Indigenous sacred sites, but then the BLM approved a major construction project nearly on top of our most sacred hot springs. It just feels like more empty words,” she said.
“Even a few weeks of delay in construction of this project ... may spell disaster for the financial viability of the project,” the company said, pointing to a
“This exceptionally long and thorough review period took years longer than anticipated, and was several years longer than the majority of other
The bureau said in announcing the project’s approval in November the two 30-megawatt geothermal plants would help
Donnelly said the company had refused requests to reconsider plans to start bulldozing for a 10-acre (4-hectare) pad and access road at the site on
“That’s why we’ve had to take extraordinary legal measures, to ensure the massive legal deficiencies in this project’s approval process get evaluated before the bulldozers start to run,” he said in an email this week to The Associated Press.
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