[CPEO-BIF] Renewabale energy and mining brownfields

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Limbo land: Brownfields for green energy

by Cally Carswell
High Country News
June 7, 2010

There's gotta be a better place: That's become the mantra of 
environmentalists protesting wind and solar projects on undeveloped 
public lands. And it's the argument behind a movement to develop 
already-sullied places instead -- decommissioned landfills, abandoned 
mines and the like.

The idea isn't new. The Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed it 
in some form since at least 2003, estimating that more than 11,000 
contaminated sites nationwide are suitable. A handful of built projects 
prove that brownfields can turn green, but the concept has yet to be 
broadly implemented. "There was no driver," says Blair Loftis, 
alternative and renewable energy director for Kleinfelder, a San 
Diego-based engineering firm.

Kleinfelder hopes to fill that void, styling itself as a matchmaker 
between mining and solar companies. And as conflicts intensify over 
planting wind turbines in sage grouse habitat and fragmenting the Mojave 
Desert with sprawling solar farms, the notion is gaining steam.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.10/limbo-land

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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