Beatty board unanimously opposes 10,000-acre solar project near Ash Meadows

Beatty’s town advisory board unanimously opposed a proposed 10,000-acre solar project near Ash Meadows, turning a land-use fight into a test of local accountability in one of Nye County’s most sensitive desert corridors. The board’s objection centered on water, land use and whether nearby communities would receive any meaningful benefit from a project of that size.

That vote matters, even though it was not a final county approval or denial. The Beatty Town Advisory Board can register local opposition and force a public reckoning, but the next formal decisions rest with the Nye County Board of County Commissioners and the broader permit-review process that governs whether large projects can move ahead. In practical terms, the unanimous vote puts the developers on notice that any plan near Beatty will face close scrutiny before it can advance.

The county has already spent years trying to draw lines around renewable-energy development. Nye County adopted a temporary moratorium on renewable energy generation facilities in November 2022, then extended it in May 2023, November 2023 and again in 2024 while officials reviewed how to regulate commercial-scale projects. That backdrop helps explain why Beatty’s leaders treated the proposal as part of a larger countywide question, not just a single application.

Federal action has added to the pressure. In April 2023, the Bureau of Land Management announced auctions for four parcels totaling 23,675 acres in the Amargosa Desert for utility-scale solar development. The agency said those parcels, if fully developed, could produce nearly three gigawatts of renewable energy, a scale that has deepened local concern about how much industrial development the region can absorb.

The proximity to Ash Meadows gives the fight even more weight. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge as a globally significant biodiversity hot spot with 12 threatened and endangered species and 26 endemic species found nowhere else on Earth. The refuge was established 40 years ago after The Nature Conservancy bought 12,613 acres slated for development and transferred them to the federal government.

Water has long been the decisive issue there. The Fish and Wildlife Service says groundwater pumping in the 1970s threatened the Devils Hole pupfish with extinction, helping drive the Cappaert v. United States case that protected the groundwater system supporting Devils Hole. In January 2025, the Bureau of Land Management also sought public comment on a proposal to withdraw about 308,890 acres in Nye County to protect biological and hydrological resources around Ash Meadows and limit impacts from mining.

Beatty’s opposition fits a pattern that stretches beyond one solar proposal. Earlier local reporting showed Beatty and Nye County had already sought federal denial of several solar applications around the town that together targeted almost 35,000 acres on both sides of U.S. 95. The unanimous vote on the 10,000-acre project only hardened the message: in this part of Nye County, land, water and wildlife still set the terms of development.