Underground Construction - June 2022 - 13

The wastewater that Palo Verde receives
is treated before it's used at the plant. Water is
usually cycled through the plant and cooling
towers about 25 times before it becomes
too saline for another use.
Once the chemistry of the water makes it
unusable in the plant, it is pumped to massive
evaporation ponds on the property where it
simply dries up.
Big US energy transmission
projects inch closer to approval
The federal government has fi nished
another environmental review of a proposed
transmission line that will carry windgenerated
electricity from rural New Mexico
to big cities in the West and similar reviews
are planned for two more projects that would
span parts of Utah and Nevada, the U.S. Interior
Department announced Thursday.
The SunZia transmission project in New
Mexico has been more than a decade in the
making. After an initial review over several years,
the Bureau of Land Management authorized a
right-of-way grant on federal lands.
That had to be revisited when developers in
2021 submitted a new application modifying
the route after the U.S. Defense Department
and others raised concerns about the path of
the high-voltage lines.
A fi nal decision on the right of way
application is expected this summer,
following a public comment period.
The Biden administration is just the
latest to promise speeding up development
and modernization of the nation's energy
infrastructure through expedited federal
permitting and regulatory reforms. Former
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump
also vowed to roll back bureaucracy.
While the other two transmission projects
are in the early stages of the regulatory process,
the experience in New Mexico illustrates the
complicated nature of getting electricity from
remote areas to population centers.
The siting of hundreds of miles of
transmission lines and electric substations
often involve a checkerboard of private, state
and federal land that sometimes include
environmentally sensitive areas.
Federal offi cials said Thursday that
the projects have the potential to move
10,000 megawatts of electricity generated by
wind and solar resources.
Ice storms, hurricanes, wildfi res and other
extreme weather have knocked out large parts
of U.S. electrical networks with increasing
frequency in recent years, according to an
Associated Press analysis that found power
outages from severe weather doubled over
the past two decade.
The proposed Greenlink West Transmission
Project in Nevada would run through seven
counties from Las Vegas to Reno.
NV Energy has said its investment of more
than $2.5 billion in the project is expected to
generate $690 million in economic activity and
generate thousands of construction jobs. UC
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Underground Construction - June 2022

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