KVIG Informative

President Ulysses S. Grant fixed the Moapa Band of Paiutes’ reservation with nothing more than a river, a meridian and a straight line north. A century and a half later, that same ground carries the electrical output of three separate utility-scale solar plants, built after five decades of a coal plant that polluted it instead.

President Ulysses S. Grant signed an executive order on March 12, 1873, setting aside land in southeastern Nevada for the Indians in that locality. The order, published in Kappler’s Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, described the reservation’s boundary by natural and surveyed landmarks rather than acreage: starting at the Colorado River’s north bank where Nevada’s eastern line meets it, running north along that line, west to the 115th meridian, south along the meridian, and back east to the river.

That order created what is now the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians of the Moapa River Indian Reservation, a federally recognized tribe whose land sits roughly 40 miles northeast of Las Vegas in Clark County, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The reservation covers 71,954 acres, the bureau’s Office of Public Affairs stated in a June 2012 release announcing a solar project on the land.

The Reid Gardner Generating Station began commercial operation in 1965 on land near the reservation, running four coal-fired units with a combined nominal capacity of 557 megawatts, according to a Nevada Division of Environmental Protection factsheet on the site’s cleanup. Early evaporation-pond liners at the plant used clay that let water carrying dissolved salts migrate into groundwater, the state factsheet states, and the state placed the site under an administrative order on consent in 2008 requiring characterization and cleanup. Crews excavated more than 2.1 million cubic yards of pond solids and underlying soil between 2010 and 2017, disposing of it at a landfill, the same factsheet states.

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Units 1 through 3 at Reid Gardner shut down permanently on Dec. 31, 2014, and the fourth and final unit followed on March 11, 2017, according to the state factsheet. Demolition began in 2017 and finished in July 2020, the factsheet states, and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection continues to oversee soil and groundwater cleanup at the site today.

The reservation’s transition to solar power began years earlier. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved, on June 21, 2012, what the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Office of Public Affairs described as the first utility-scale solar project ever approved on American Indian trust land: a project proposed by K Road Moapa Solar LLC for up to 350 megawatts on about 2,000 acres of the reservation. Acting Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Donald Laverdure called the approval a milestone for the tribe and for Indian Country, the bureau’s release states. First Solar announced in 2013 that it had acquired the project from K Road Power, describing the plant’s capacity at 250 megawatts in that announcement, and announced on March 17, 2017, that the plant had begun operation — six days after Reid Gardner’s last coal unit shut down for good.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell approved a second utility-scale solar project on the reservation on Sept. 15, 2016, a 100-megawatt facility on about 900 acres that the department’s press release described as the third photovoltaic project proposed there. Jewell called the approval an important step toward tribal energy self-sufficiency, according to the Interior Department’s release, and Moapa Band Tribal Chairman Robert Tom said the project was key to the tribe’s goals, the same release states.

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A third and larger project followed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs served as lead federal agency, with the Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management as supporting agencies, on environmental review and permitting for the Eagle Shadow Mountain Solar Project, a 300-megawatt plant on a 2,200-acre lease area on the reservation, according to the federal government’s permitting-tracking dashboard, which recorded that review as complete on July 30, 2020. Developer Arevon announced the plant’s completion on May 18, 2023, with NV Energy Vice President of Renewables Jimmy Daghlian saying the project moved the utility closer to its renewable portfolio standard goals and Arevon Chief Operating Officer Justin Johnson crediting the Moapa Band’s cooperation, according to Arevon’s completion announcement.

The boundary Grant described in 1873 ran along a meridian and a riverbank because there was nothing else on the land worth surveying against. A century and a half later, that same boundary now encloses three separate power-purchase contracts and roughly 650 combined megawatts of solar capacity, while the coal plant that operated on the same ground for half a century is still, in 2026, under a state cleanup order with no closure date of its own.