Las Vegas water officials and conservation advocates are lining up against a pumped-storage hydropower project proposed for the top of Blue Diamond Hill, just outside Red Rock Canyon. The developer insists the closed-loop system would quietly store water in two sealed reservoirs and churn out reliable power, but critics say the water demands and habitat risks do not square with Southern Nevada’s hard-fought conservation goals.
The Desert Bloom Energy Storage proposal calls for two reservoirs, each holding about 4,900 acre-feet of water, paired with a 450-megawatt powerhouse and a short transmission tie. The company pegs annual generation at roughly 1,170 gigawatt-hours, according to the Federal Register. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission notice stresses that a preliminary permit only secures a priority spot to study the idea and does not greenlight construction or any land-disturbing activity.
Even with a “closed-loop” design, the project would still need nearly 9,800 acre-feet of water to initially fill the reservoirs and offset evaporation, a number that has set off alarms among local water managers and environmental groups. The energy output pencils out to roughly 108,000 U.S. households using the Energy Information Administration’s average residential consumption, a sizable boost in power that comes with equally sizable questions. Local officials have also highlighted the cost and complexity of building many miles of pipeline and pumping stations to move water up the hill, with local coverage reporting that those expenses would fall on the developer or regional utilities, as summarized by The Nevada Independent…