Environmental Science Division Argonne N

Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Arizona Solar Energy Zones Environmental Science Division Argonne N

The "Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Arizona Solar Energy Zones" presents a strategy for compensating for the residual or unavoidable impacts that are expected from the development of the Agua Caliente, Brenda, and Gillespie Solar Energy Zones (SEZs) in western Arizona. This strategy responds to a call for the development of solar regional compensatory mitigation strategies for each of the SEZs, as committed to in the Record of Decision for the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States. The strategy consists of preliminary findings and recommendations for identifying: (1) the residual impacts of utility-scale solar development in the Arizona SEZs that may warrant regional compensatory mitigation, (2) mitigation actions that can be implemented in the region to compensate for those impacts, (3) how appropriate regional compensatory mitigation obligations could be determined, and (4) how the impacts and mitigation actions could be monitored. While this strategy for the Arizona SEZs is not a Bureau of Land Management decision, it will inform future decisions, including project-specific National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), regarding configuration of lease parcels and issuance of leases for the Arizona SEZs, lease stipulations, impacts warranting compensatory mitigation in the region, where and how regional compensatory mitigation might occur, and how monitoring and adaptive management might occur.