The Mojave yucca Yucca schidigera, like the somewhat better known creosote bush, forms very long-lived clones.

On the site of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project, I saw a couple that I estimated at in excess of five hundred years old. Which is very young compared to the one in that link up there, but still older than, say, most of the trees in the California Coast Ranges.

The project’s developer BrightSource had promised, during hearings and in documents presented to the California Energy Commission and BLM, that the yuccas on site would be transplanted into a nursery to be used when the site was decommissioned in 25-50 years.

This video, involving a clump of about that size (maybe a bit smaller) was filmed last month on the Ivanpah construction site. I’m not sure I would call this “transplanting.”

Five hundred years, incidentally, is 10-20 times longer than the Ivanpah solar plant’s expected useful life.

1. 
   Ceal 2011 04 10 at 11:28:14 pm

   Industries idea of “pruning”, I’d like to see their hollow lies posted along with that video

2. 
   bev 2011 04 11 at 9:27:31 am

   This saying comes to mind:

   “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”

   These days, the world seems to be hatching an increasing number of jackasses and many less carpenters.

3. 
   Bill Mcdonald 2011 04 11 at 9:29:55 am

   I always wondered while reading the EIR’s I think they are called, why they would say these solar plants had a lifespan of 25-50 years.

   Call me paranoid but could it be they’d just move them somewhere else in the desert when the groundwater ran out?  I mean if these solar and windfarms are the answer to all our needs, you’d think that they would stay in place, like a big hydroelectric power dam.

   Tearing up all this beauty for 25 years doesn’t seem fair.

4. 
   Michael Gordon 2011 04 11 at 3:32:29 pm

   This was awfully difficult to watch, Chris. Looks and feels like a murder scene.

5. 
   Wild_Bill 2011 04 13 at 6:05:07 am

   Terrible and awfully ironic.  That they are doing this in the name of the environment as an alternative energy source.  This proves that they have no respect for living entities, and that their “environmentally consciousness” is pure crap. 

   Given that it appears this is outside the limits of their permit a cease and desist order should be issued and they should be severely fined. 

   I’ll bet that doesn’t happen though!