Skip to main content
Donate

You Have More Time To Comment On That Desert Energy Plan

By Chris Clarke
November 17, 2014
Support Provided By
DRECP-deadline-extended-11-14-14-thumb-600x400-83945
Better get reading | Photo: Christian Schnettelker/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Those of you who are planning to comment on the gargantuan and nearly incomprehensible plan to regulate energy development on 22 million acres of the California Desert now have an extra six and a half weeks to do so.

Faced with an onslaught of criticism that the 8,000-plus page draft Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan , or DRECP, is too complex, unwieldy, and hard to understand to allow substantive and constructive comment by most members of the public, the four state and federal agencies shepherding the plan through the environmental assessment process have pushed back the deadline for public comments by 45 days, from January 9 to February 23, 2015.

In a press release issued last week, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Energy Commission, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the comment period extension came as a result of requests from the public for more time.

Neither the National Environmental Policy Act nor the California Environmental Quality Act set a maximum length of a public comment period for draft environmental assessment documents, so the agencies could have extended the comment period for the draft DRECP by a significantly longer amount. (We describe why that might well be a good idea here.)

All 8,000-plus pages of the draft DRECP can be downloaded here, and instructions on how to comment can be found at the DRECP website as well.

And you'd better get cracking: with just under 100 days until the new comment deadline, that's about 800 pages you'll have to read each day to make your comments substantive enough to pass muster with the relevant agencies.

Support Provided By
Read More
An oil pump painted white with red accents stands mid-pump on a dirt road under a blue, cloudy sky with a green, grassy slope in the background.

California’s First Carbon Capture Project: Vital Climate Tool or License to Pollute?

California’s first attempt to capture and sequester carbon involves California Resources Corp. collecting emissions at its Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, and then inject the gases more than a mile deep into a depleted oil reservoir. The goal is to keep carbon underground and out of the atmosphere, where it traps heat and contributes to climate change. But some argue polluting industries need to cease altogether.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
By Emma Foehringer Merchant, Inside Climate News