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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Balancing Renewable Energy Development and Conservation in CA Desert

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Wednesday, October 22, 2014   

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. - The public is invited to comment on a proposed plan that would guide the future of all renewable-energy development on more than $22 million acres of the California desert.

The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan is a joint federal and state effort to identify locations suitable for renewable energy development while conserving areas important for wildlife, wilderness and recreation, said Kim Delfino, California program director at Defenders of Wildlife.

"As we're allowing these projects to move forward in these more lower-impact areas," Delfino said, "we also want to identify those lands that are important for the long-term conservation of a variety of a declining and threatened and endangered desert species."

Delfino said the plan involves the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as several counties, state agencies, tribes, the military and energy-development businesses.

She said it would make available up to 350,000 acres for development of wind, solar and geothermal energy projects. Delfino said proper planning is critical, as it appears the Golden State is headed for a surge in renewable-energy development.

"California has extremely aggressive renewable-energy goals," she said. "And in fact, our carbon reduction goals are incredibly aggressive - looking at an 80 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050."

Delfino said the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan would charge fees to companies that build energy projects on public lands, to help compensate for the permanent impacts to those lands. Public meetings on the plan are being held in the desert as well as in San Diego and Sacramento, through the middle of November.

The plan is online at here, and information on public meetings is here.


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