Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R-WY) says she has “strong concerns” over the Biden Administration’s proposed Western Solar Plan and is sending a letter to the Bureau of Land Management voicing her opposition.
Under the proposed plan, the updated Western Solar Plan will cover five additional states, prevent the BLM from wasting time and energy on bad projects, and guide development to the right places – lands close to transmission lines where solar potential is high and projects are less likely to impact critical wildlife habitat, cultural sites or the recreational values that public lands hold for communities.
In a release, Representative Hageman (R-WY) states that the Biden Administration’s proposed plan threatens the long-standing multiple-use mandate for millions of federally-managed acres throughout the West. She was joined by Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and 6 others Members of Congress.
“President Biden is continuing his war on the American West with this latest attempt to prop up unreliable and unaffordable energy to the detriment of the nation,” said Rep. Hageman. “This Western Solar Plan is nothing but another massive land grab designed to harm our legacy energy industries that have been under constant attack by this administration, and the Bureau of Land Management’s own proposal demonstrates the immense legal gymnastics they have gone through to prevent the production of energy resources that are actually reliable and affordable.”
Rep. Hageman goes on to say that the preferred alternative in the Biden plan would allow, the BLM to claim 22 million acres of land – land that could be used for mineral extraction, livestock grazing, and recreation – will be designated for potential solar generation, a drastically less reliable, less affordable, and less efficient form of energy production than oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear. 162 million acres throughout the West, over 2.5 times the size of Wyoming, will be negatively impacted by this plan.
“Tellingly, only 1 page out of the over 1,000 pages in this report even mentions mineral resources and livestock grazing. This plan is an insult to the multiple use framework and the BLM must provide Congress with answers to these very serious concerns,” so says Hageman.
The Biden Administration has consistently undermined the multiple-use mandate for our public lands, so says Hageman.
The proposed revamp of the Western Solar Plan is no outlier,” said Chairman Newhouse. “This plan impacts 162 million acres of Federal land, potentially taking these lands offline from uses such as mining and grazing to restrict use to solar, in contradiction to the intended purpose of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. This is the latest attempt by the Biden Administration to elevate intermittent renewables over reliable traditional energy generation and affected stakeholders across the West deserve answers.”
