The Mojave Desert is 22,000 square miles of parched land with summer temperatures that can reach 130 Fahrenheit, making it a perfect location for solar energy installations. But on March 23, 2009 Senator Diane Feinstein has expressed opposition to widespread solar energy development in the area. Senator Feinstein “intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.”
There are 19 companies that have submitted applications to build solar energy or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 desert acres, but Senator Diane Feinstein announced she would introduce a bill setting 600,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management holdings in the Mojave Desert off-limits to solar energy projects. “Such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public,” she said. “It would destroy the entire Mojave Desert ecosystem,” added David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, which originally dedicated some of the land to the BLM.