May 28, 2025 - Today, Friends of Nevada Wilderness and Basin and Range Watch filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada challenging the decisions by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”), and the National Park Service (“NPS”) to authorize portions of NV Energy’s proposed Greenlink West Project, a controversial, 472-mile system of new overhead transmission lines and substations in western Nevada in violation of federal environmental law.
Once constructed, the Project will directly facilitate the proliferation of solar energy development—such as the gargantuan proposed Esmeralda 7 industrial solar facilities in Esmeralda County—throughout pristine desert ecosystems.
The Plaintiffs are asking the court to order the agencies to rescind their decisions approving the Project and halt construction of the line until the agencies comply with their obligations under federal law.
In particular, the lawsuit challenges BLM’s failure to consider the devastating impacts that the Project, and the solar energy development that the Project is expressly intended to encourage and facilitate, will have on the habitat and landscapes of western Nevada. For example, the Project will enable the construction of the Esmeralda 7, a 62,000-acre industrial solar field complex in Esmeralda County, within the boundaries of the proposed Esmeralda/Fish Lake Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). Friends of Nevada Wilderness proposed this area for enhanced protections due to the fact that it provides irreplaceable habitat for iconic Nevada wildlife, including bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, as well as precious historic, archeological, and paleontological artifacts and resources. Yet, as the lawsuit alleges, BLM failed to examine the reasonably foreseeable impacts that the Project, when combined with the Esmeralda 7 facilities, will have on these nationally significant resources.
“The fact that the final EIS completely ignored the future impacts of a proposed industrial solar field complex the size of Las Vegas is simply a dereliction of duty,” said Friends Executive Director Shaaron Netherton. “The transmission line and the new complex are inextricably linked, and the impacts of both should have been thoroughly analyzed. They were not.”
“Friends of Nevada Wilderness has a long history of engaging in public lands management decisions working directly with our land management agencies,” Netherton added. “Yet, here, the agencies ignored our comments and those submitted by many others throughout the process, and refused to address the impacts of the massive industrial solar facilities through Esmeralda County—and indeed, through western Nevada—that indisputably will occur with the placement of the line through a completely undeveloped corridor. This refusal is unacceptable, particularly when other, less impactful alternatives exist. The BLM itself in 2022 recommended that this corridor be relocated to collate with existing infrastructure and provide access to the Millers Solar Energy Zone.”
The Project will also cut through the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument (“TUSK”), a unit of the National Park System that encompasses one of the largest and most diverse late Pleistocene vertebrate fossil assemblages in the southern Great Basin and Mojave Deserts.
Basin and Range Watch Co-Founder Kevin Emmerich was a National Park Service ranger for 17 years and is deeply concerned about how the Greenlink West Project violates that National Park Service Organic Act.
"The National Park Service Organic Act of 2016 clearly states that natural and historic objects must remain unimpaired for future generations," Emmerich said. "The massive construction footprint from the Greenlink West Transmission Project will destroy delicate fossils that are legally mandated to be protected for the future. The Interior Department moved the industrial Project to avoid a speculative mining claim near Beatty, Nevada, but refused to consider an alternative that would have moved the transmission line to avoid impacting irreplaceable resources in one of America's cherished national park units."
Friends of Nevada Wilderness and Basin and Range Watch place the highest priority on protecting valuable natural and cultural resources, while supporting the development of renewable energy in the built environment and in low-impact areas.
The Plaintiffs are represented in this litigation by the public interest law firm Eubanks & Associates, PLLC. The filed complaint can be viewed here.
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Volcanic Hills - Lands with Wilderness Characteristics in the proposed ACEC
About Friends of Nevada Wilderness
Founded in 1984, Friends of Nevada Wilderness has helped protect nearly 3.6 million acres of Nevada’s wild lands by leading efforts in the expansion or designation of all 73 Wilderness areas in the state. Over the past twenty years, the Wilderness Stewardship Volunteer Program has generated over $3 million of in-kind services to benefit Nevada’s public lands. For more information visit nevadawilderness.org.
About Basin and Range Watch
Basin and Range Watch is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to conserve the deserts of Nevada and California and to educate the public about the diversity of life, cultures, and history of the desert, as well as sustainable local renewable energy alternatives. We support our local desert economies because we live here and visit here often.
