Officials from Solar Millenium didn't respond to concerns expressed over their solar project in Amargosa Valley during the four public hearings over the last two weeks.

"The scoping meetings aren't to do a question-and-answer. The scoping meetings are for people to express their concerns in verbal or writing. Then those are part of the comments that get answered in the scoping report and further answered in the environmental impact statement," said Jason Paul Higgins, Solar Millenium director of project development and permitting.

But officials decided to respond to some concerns that were aired.

The draft environmental impact statement is expected to be released after New Year's. Solar Millenium wants to construct a pair of 250-megawatt, solar thermal, parabolic trough power plants on 4,350 acres of public land off Amargosa Farm Road.

Higgins deflected a primary concern over water.

"We want to lease or purchase existing rights that are used for irrigation. The state engineer has determined that irrigation is the lowest beneficial use for water in the state. So therefore, using this for industrial use would be a higher use of water. Our intention is not to increase the net water usage in the basin. The water's going to be pumped anyway," he said.

Solar Millenium Senior Project Development Advisory Don Reid said, "We're not going to increase pumpage. We're going to grow megawatts instead of alfalfa."

Solar Millenium will require 4,600 acre feet of water in a wet cooling process for their solar plant. The company could use a dry cooling system that would use less water, but that would require a 150-foot tower, which could raise problems with the military, Higgins said. It would also be noisier, less efficient and require more land, he said.

Higgins disagreed with figures released by Richard Friese at a public hearing in Pahrump last Friday. Friese didn't identify himself as a Death Valley National Park hydrologist during his oral comments.

Friese said the state engineer's office determined only 7,000 acre-feet of water per year is available for development in the Amargosa Desert Hydrographic Basin, with current groundwater withdrawals of 15,000 acre feet.

Higgins said his company was notified by the state engineer's office that 25,000 acre feet of water is available in Amargosa Valley, of which about 18,000 acre feet, 75 percent of the yield, has been pumped.

"If this project was not close to existing water, we would not even be having this conversation," Higgins said.

Concerns were expressed over the proximity to the Amargosa School at the public hearing in Amargosa Valley Aug. 18. Higgins said the school will be more than two miles from the power block; the edge of the project will be one and one-quarter mile away.

Existing coal-fired plants emitting pollution are closer to residences than that, he said.

"It would be foolish of a company to invest this kind of capital in a project and have an adverse impact on the community," Higgins said.

Reid said Solar Millenium has to build its project at the requested location. If they located the project farther west they would be on private land. Other solar companies filed for right-of-way with the BLM on public land north of the site. Locating the project farther east would result in mirrors too close together, causing a shadow effect, he said.

Reid released a written statement contrasting their technology with a solar plant in Daggett, Calif., where an Amargosa Valley resident pointed out there was an explosion back in 1999.

Reid contacted an engineer who worked at the site in Daggett, which is just outside Barstow, Calif. That plant was using Caloria, an oil similar to vegetable oil, as a heat transfer fluid and heat storage medium. The fire started in one of the thermal storage tanks filled with Caloria. Reid said Solar Millenium's thermal storage system will use molten salt, which is not flammable.

The Daggett facility was constructed during the first push for solar energy during the Carter administration. Two large fields of parabolic troughs, the Solar Electric Generating Station, or SEGS I and SEGS II, were constructed. Solar Millenium officials said layouts and engineering designs have changed considerably since the Daggett plants, which would never be acceptable with fire codes that exist today.

The thermal storage tanks for the Solar Millenium project will be located near the middle of the project, about a mile away from Sandy Lane, Reid said. The technology will enable Solar Millenium to store power three hours after sunset.

In a letter dated Aug. 12, Sarah Craighead, Death Valley National Park superintendent, said the National Park Service supports the proposed 24 solar energy study areas announced by the U.S. Secretary of the Interior June 29.

Projects in those zones, totaling about 670,000 acres nationwide, would be on a fast track and included in one programmatic EIS. That includes a 32,699-acre tract farther west in Amargosa Valley, abutting the U.S. Ecology site on Highway 95.

Solar Investments, doing business as Cogentrix Energy, had filed for a right-of-way from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for 22,400 acres at the Amargosa Valley solar energy study site.

BLM Renewable Energy Project Manager Greg Helseth said Cogentrix Energy's project is still in the early stages. He wouldn't release information on the plan of development by Cogentrix Energy, an affiliate of Goldman Sachs, until the notice is published in the Federal Register.

The Solar Millenium project in Amargosa Valley and a project by NextLight Renewable Power near Primm, are the only projects announced so far in the Federal Register.