The “Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone” presents a strategy for compensating for the unavoidable impacts that are expected from the development of the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone (SEZ) in southern Nevada. This strategy responds to a call for the development of solar regional mitigation strategies for each of the SEZs, as committed to in the record of decision for the “Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States.”
The strategy consists of preliminary findings and recommendations for conducting each element of a process that identifies:
- The unavoidable impacts of utilityscale solar development in the Dry Lake SEZ that may warrant regional mitigation;
- Mitigation actions that can be implemented in the region to compensate for those impacts;
- How a regional mitigation fee could be calculated; and
- How the impacts and mitigation actions could bemonitored.
While this pilot strategy for the Dry Lake SEZ is not a Bureau of Land Management decision, it will inform future decision documents for: configuration of lease parcels within the Dry Lake SEZ; lease stipulations; impacts to be mitigated in the region; where and how regional mitigation will occur; and how monitoring and adaptive management will occur.