Public vs. Private Land

While BLM land in the desert is very much a checkerboard of public and private land, it is thought by BLM employees that solar developers have found the BLM ROW process easier than trying to purchase or lease multiple tracks of land from multiple private landowners. As one BLM employee stated in regards to why developers are choosing public over private land, “There are a number of reasons for it. How feasible is it if you’re looking at an area that’s as large as areas that they’re trying to develop? If there’s a large number of landowners for a 4,000 acre project, that’s 20 or 30 landowners, it’s much harder to deal with and reach agreements and pull a project together with that many landowners than with one federal landowner.”¹ Solar developers choosing BLM land also have the benefit of returning the land to the BLM should the project no longer be viable at the end of the lease agreement. If developers chose to purchase land, they would have to find a buyer for degraded desert lands after the solar project’s life span ended, for which there is a small market base.

1 Bureau of Land Management Staff 3. Personal Communication. 30 July 2009.