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Solar: California's new gold rush

It's been called California’s second gold rush: the clamor by large solar companies to stake a claim in southern California’s open deserts and capture one of its most abundant resources - sunlight.
  1. A male desert tortoise - about 40 years old - was rescued by the Joshua Tree Tortoise Rescue. Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun

    Endangered tortoises slow push for power

    The open deserts surrounding the Coachella Valley aren't only prime locations for large-scale solar development. They're also prime habitat for a number of threatened plants and animals, including the endangered desert tortoise, whose population has declined 90 percent since the 1980s.

    • Apr. 25, 2011
  2. NextEra Energy's Solar Electric Generating Systems facility near Kramer Junction, which is near Barstow, in San Bernardino County. The company is planning a similar solar thermal plant to be located on federal land east of the Coachella Valley. NextEra Energy

    Solar: California's new gold rush

    It's been called California's second gold rush: the clamor by large solar companies to stake a claim in southern California's open deserts and capture one of its most abundant resources — sunlight.

    • Apr. 24, 2011
  3. Alfredo Acosta Figueroa of Blythe, founder of La Cuna de Aztlan Protection Circle, is concerned that many of the Native American archaeological sites near Blythe will be destroyed during the construction of planned solar projects. Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun

    Tribes: Solar projects tread on sacred Indian grounds

    Alfredo Acosta Figueroa unflinchingly finds himself at the center of a storm — a legal battle threatening to derail the state and federal governments' multi-billion-dollar solar energy development plan for the California desert.

    • Apr. 24, 2011

  4. A desert transformed: Map of California solar projects

    America's and California's drive to create clean, renewable sources of energy is happening on no larger scale than in the deserts surrounding the Coachella Valley.

    • Apr. 24, 2011

  5. Shining the light on solar projects

    With answers still in flux as to where, how and how much large-scale solar development will occur on the desert public lands surrounding the Coachella Valley, the debate will be a part of the regional conversation for years to come.

    • Apr. 24, 2011
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