The road was never smooth on Oakland company BrightSource‘s three-year journey to permit a 5.5-square-mile solar thermal plant fifty miles southeast of Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert. Not only was it the first large-scale solar plant to be ushered through the Bureau of Land Management’s fast-track permitting process, but it was also slated to be the world’s largest — and sited on land many desert conservationists deemed nearly pristine. But when the company received final approval from the federal government and broke ground on the Ivanpah project in October, it seemed the worst was behind them.
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