The government said Wednesday it is calling off a recently announced moratorium on applications to build solar plants on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management made the announcement after public opposition to its original decision, reached at the end of May. The BLM had wanted to put new applications for solar plants on federal land on hold while undertaking a comprehensive review of potential environmental impacts from such plants. That review was not scheduled for completion until May 2010. Meanwhile, BLM planned to keep processing the applications it's already received for 125 proposed solar projects on about 1 million acres in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. BLM has yet to approve a solar project on federal land; the solar projects already built or under way in this country are on private property. Still, industry officials already impatient about the BLM's pace worried that putting a stop to new applications would allow other industries to lay claim to federal land that could go to solar. They feared it would also send the wrong signal to potential investors just as the solar industry is getting started. "Hitting the brakes before we'd really gotten off the ground was definitely a scary prospect for the industry," said Katherine Gensler, manager of regulatory and legislative affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association. BLM Director James Caswell said the agency's action Wednesday was intende ...
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