KVIG Informative

A hydroelectric proposal is quietly advancing through federal permitting near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. If built, it would use enough water to serve tens of thousands of homes — in a desert basin regulators already call overappropriated.

The Desert Bloom Project, a closed-loop pumped storage hydropower proposal on Blue Diamond Hill, won preliminary approval from federal regulators this spring, according to the nonprofit Nevada Current. The project would generate an estimated 1,170 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually, enough to power roughly 107,000 homes, as developers race to meet growing regional demand for power storage.

The proposal would require 9,800 acre-feet of water stored across two reservoirs — equivalent to about 5% of the total water consumed across the entire Las Vegas Valley Water District’s service area in a single year, according to Nevada Current’s reporting on the project’s federal filings.

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The Center for Biological Diversity has intervened to oppose the project, arguing the Las Vegas Valley groundwater basin is already overappropriated, meaning more water rights have been issued than the basin can naturally recharge each year. Patrick Donnelly, the group’s Great Basin director, said pumped storage is fundamentally the wrong approach for a desert environment already strained for water.

Blue Diamond Hill is no stranger to development fights. The same hillside is the site of developer Jim Rhodes’ long-contested Blue Diamond Hill housing project, which Donnelly said his organization also opposed for years before Clark County ultimately approved it.

Nevada water officials have echoed some of that skepticism. Officials overseeing the region’s water supply have said the hydropower proposal simply does not align with the area’s conservation goals, according to Nevada Current’s reporting on regulatory comments filed in the case.

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Donnelly said a full environmental review, still ahead in the federal permitting process, would likely surface substantial obstacles to the project ever being fully licensed — including impacts to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area itself.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s preliminary approval doesn’t guarantee the Desert Bloom Project gets built. But it does put a nearly 10,000-acre-foot water request on the table in a basin regulators already say doesn’t have the water to give — and the fight over Blue Diamond Hill, old as it is, isn’t finished yet.