S4E22: Fighting GreenLink: The True Impact of Transmission Lines in the Desert

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555.

0:00:20 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are barren wastelands.

0:00:45 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you Joe and welcome to 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clark. We have an important episode today. We'll be talking with Kevin Emmerich, co founder of Basin and Range Watch, about the environmental cost of the Greenlink west transmission line, which is currently under construction in western Nevada. Greenlink west will link expansive solar farms in the southern part of the state with data centers and similar projects in the north part of the state near Reno.

0:01:13 - (Chris Clarke): There's a lot of the desert being sacrificed to this project and I think you're going to find this interview quite interesting. But first, a couple of update items. Real quick. First off, we have found a date for the recording of our 100th episode. Save the date, that's going to be August 7th. This will be a remote online recording session that you will be able to sign into. We're still working on the details, but you'll be able to listen to the folks that we've lined up reading.

0:01:42 - (Chris Clarke): Have a couple of yeses already. If you're a desert writer in Tucson or Phoenix or the El Paso Las Cruces area, let me know. We could use little geographic diversity in our readers. Mark your calendars August 7th. More details in the next episode. And speaking of Tucson and El Paso, we are raising funds for a trip at the end of September to get to El Paso with a stop in Tucson both on the way there and the way back.

0:02:08 - (Chris Clarke): We're planning to put together an in person live event in Tucson and more details as we have them in El Paso. I'm going to be tabling representing the podcast at the 27th Annual Chihuahuan Desert Fiesta put on by the Chihuahuan Desert Education Coalition at the El paso Zoo. That's September 27th. Look at our show notes for more details. It should be a lot of fun, but we are trying to raise funds right now to make sure this trip happens.

0:02:35 - (Chris Clarke): We have gotten close to our original sort of bare bones goal of 850 bucks and so we just boosted that goal to 1200. Still have plenty of room to make a difference here in the same way that Michael Landrum and Peter Frigeri did. Thank you gentlemen. Go to 90miles from needles.com elpaso all one word. And thanks as well to Gillian Sandel who gave us a generous donation at our General Operating Fund site, which you can reach@90miles from needles.com

0:03:04 - (Chris Clarke): donate thank you, Jillian. Now let's get to our interview with Kevin Emmerich of Basement and Rangewatch. Quick note on sound quality. Kevin lives in a fairly remote part of Nevada on the cusp of the Mojave Desert in the Great basin. He is 75 miles from the nearest supermarket and as a result of his relative remoteness, he doesn't always have the best connectivity Internet wise. So the sound quality is not quite what we wanted it to be on his end with this interview, but his meaning shines through loud and clear and I think you're going to like this episode.

0:03:37 - (Chris Clarke): So let's get to our interview with Kevin Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch.

0:03:55 - (Chris Clarke): Kevin Emmerich, Co-Founder of Basin and Range Watch thank you so much for joining us to talk about GreenLink west and related issues.

0:04:03 - (Kevin Emmerich): Well, thank you very much for having me. This is a real personal one for us because it affects us very regionally and so I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

0:04:17 - (Chris Clarke): Why don't you give us a little bit of context. What precisely is GreenLink West?

0:04:23 - (Kevin Emmerich): Okay. Well this is a big one and I hope the listeners will forgive me if I leave out some details because this is a gigantic project. The GreenLink west project is a 472-mile-long high voltage 525 kilovolt transmission line that's being constructed from the apex area just east of Las Vegas, Nevada to the Mira Loma area and the Fort Churchill substation which is in the Reno area. As the raven flies it's about 350 miles, but there are a lot of offset roads and the line in the north area fragments into smaller lines that are just over 300 kilovolts.

0:05:17 - (Kevin Emmerich): It's a complicated line. Not only are they building a transmission line, they're upgrading and building very large substations which will serve as large energy centers in very remote parts of Nevada. There are two of them under construction right now. One of them is called the Sagebrush Substation that's in Amargosa Valley. And don't you love it how these companies get their plant communities wrong all the time?

0:05:47 - (Kevin Emmerich): Then we have one that we're kind of heartbroken to see. They just started scraping the Esmeralda Substation that's up west of Tonopah, Nevada. Each of these sites are 109 acres and each one of the substations will have the Capacity to carry about 1 gigawatt of energy. In addition, they are upgrading existing substations. One of them is called the Northwest Substation, which is just west of Las Vegas.

0:06:18 - (Kevin Emmerich): And then there's the Fort Churchill substation, which is east of the Reno area. The line itself is designed or intended to be part of the GreenLink network. And I'm sure you've heard of the other GreenLink line called GreenLink North, which would be an approximately 215 mile, 525kV line that extends from the Reno area over to the Robinson substation near Ely, Nevada. That one's very controversial because it will have big impacts on the greater sage grouse.

0:06:59 - (Kevin Emmerich): But like all of these transmission lines, it's got a whole giant spectrum of impact. Visual resources, national historic trails, lands with wilderness characteristics. The list goes on and on.

0:07:13 - (Chris Clarke): Seems like that might make the Loneliest Road in America a little bit less lonely.

0:07:17 - (Kevin Emmerich): That's true. Yeah. And thanks for bringing that up. It'll be on Highway 50, which is famously known as the Loneliest Road in America. It's one of the greatest drives in Nevada. If you can do it now, do it quickly because who knows, it might actually change. Just in addition to that, there are solar applications, of course, associated with GreenLink North. And one of them, to add insult to injury, is called the Lonely Solar Project, to give you an idea of what they're planning out there.

0:07:51 - (Kevin Emmerich): And so back to GreenLink West. It's being built in six phases. The first phase has already started. They have not raised the plan poles yet. And the poles will be up to 180ft tall. But they have pretty much built the roads, gouged outsides of cliffs, ridges and mountains, created giant scrapes that are well over a quarter mile in diameter for each pole. These are all through Amargosa Valleys. They're in the Indian Springs Valley, the Mercury Valley, and the Las Vegas Valley.

0:08:32 - (Kevin Emmerich): And they're currently moving it up toward east of Beatty, our area, and Sarcobatus Flat. Because of this litigation, we believe, along with the Friends of Nevada Wilderness, who are we are co-plaintiffs with that, NB Energy leapfrogged the project up to Esmeralda County. Because a big part of our complaint addresses the potential development of that area, which is really one of Nevada's most remote areas.

0:09:04 - (Kevin Emmerich): It's probably the most remote area in western Nevada, and it just has outstanding wilderness characteristics, dark skies, wildlife. The list goes on. The next phases will be up on Sarcobatus Flat; that's just north of Beatty. And I bring that up because of the archeology and rare plant impact, that's a pretty big deal as well. The last phase of the project they're calling phase six, which would be started in 2026, would be built in the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument in about a mile and a half of the monument lands. And they would build 11 large poles within there.

0:09:51 - (Kevin Emmerich): And that's been greatly opposed by a lot of local groups down there. In addition to all the infrastructure, they're going to build microwave towers to make this a smart line and so it can communicate and theoretically transmit energy both north and south. We've been following GreenLink since the beginning. It was once just called the Link project, but then it was tied in with large scale renewable energy.

0:10:23 - (Kevin Emmerich): And that became very significant after Nevada passed down Senate Bill 358 and that was in the year 2019. Governor Sisolak (then-governor) signed us into law. And basically what it does, it requires utilities to produce 50% of all of Nevada's energy from renewable sources by 2030. And so that created kind of a land rush to not only build these solar projects, but to build obviously the transmission infrastructure.

0:10:58 - (Kevin Emmerich): And GreenLink west and GreenLink north are undoubtedly a part of that. When they say they're going to provide power to everybody, we have to wonder. We've attended the meetings, we've talked to NV Energy, the company that's building it, and they flat out admitted that data centers are what this is really going to be for. There's a great demand support energy for all of these planned data centers and one of and you know, tech factories like Tesla, a lot of GreenLink is going to go and supply that.

0:11:34 - (Kevin Emmerich): So without GreenLink, it's not like the residents here in Nevada would lose a lot of power, but it would stop a lot of future infrastructure from happening. Also, the Nevada RPS was written into the Nevada Constitution, politically speaking. Joe Biden signed executive orders to accelerate transmission development. Trump signed executive orders to protect the grid. So you know, both administrations really want this.

0:12:08 - (Kevin Emmerich): We see that there are executive orders and there's the Big, Beautiful Bill that removes a lot of the tax incentives and all the benefits for wind and solar energy. Yet at the same time the state of Nevada provides a lot of those. And GreenLink definitely would not be built without these. And we do know that without these big, large-scale green energy applications, I should say we do know that down in the apex area there are natural gas plants that are going to plug into the Harry Allen substation which will be part of the GreenLink infrastructure.

0:12:45 - (Kevin Emmerich): So to call this a completely carbon free, carbon free green line is actually a myth. It's going to carry those dirty fossil fuel electrons as well. Yeah.

0:13:00 - (Chris Clarke): So let's talk briefly about the lawsuit. When did you, when did you file it? And what are you, what are you asking for? And this would probably be a good time to shout out Friends of Nevada Wilderness as well.

0:13:13 - (Kevin Emmerich): Okay. The lawsuit was filed, I think at the end of May, and ironically, two days after that, the Supreme Court issued that ruling, that Seven Cities ruling that actually weakened the National Environmental Policy Act. And so a lot of the complaint is NEPA based. But as you know, just to briefly summarize what they did, they made it insignificant to use NEPA to go after cumulative impacts. And so that makes it a little bit more problematic to link all of the big, large scale solar applications with GreenLink.

0:13:56 - (Kevin Emmerich): It's obviously connected. It's obviously a connected action. There's really no reason, for example, they would build the Esmeralda substation if it weren't for solar energy. You can't put a data center out there, there's no water. You couldn't put a natural gas plant or a nuclear plant there. And so the GreenLink lines are definitely there to promote this green infrastructure. It's just that we wonder how much of this complaint can actually be used to actually challenge that now because of that Supreme Court ruling.

0:14:38 - (Kevin Emmerich): But the complaint does address a lot of issues. It certainly doesn't address all of the issues that are going to be associated with GreenLink, but some of the main ones are. Well, first of all, what I mentioned is that the EIS, the NEPA review for GreenLink did not properly evaluate the impact that all of the associated large scale, mostly solar energy applications would have. And to summarize what they're doing, I mean, in Amargosa Valley we ended up having 60-some-thousand acres of application.

0:15:16 - (Kevin Emmerich): And a lot of that infrastructure would be associated with the GreenLink line. But there is another line that they would build out there to support it as well. The Esmeralda substation has associated with it the Esmeralda 7 solar project. Those are applications that would cover 62,000 acres of this area and that's roughly 100 square miles. I have to wonder, however, could that substation support all of that? Because they're talking about generating 5 gigawatts of energy.

0:15:53 - (Kevin Emmerich): And if you remember, the Esmeralda substation can only transmit one gigawatt. And so that in itself is a real inconsistency in this review. When we asked BLM about that, they said, well, they might not all go online at the same time. And I don't know of solar developers that would actually only try to transmit part of their project. It just wouldn't be economical for them, especially in this time when they're cutting a lot of the tax breaks and incentives for solar.

0:16:25 - (Kevin Emmerich): So the first part of that was based on the cumulative impacts and the connected actions of solar. There's the Endangered Species Act. Although most of it's built, the GreenLink line still goes through a lot of desert tortoise habitat. And the complaint addresses how a lot of the actions of GreenLink did not file the Fish and Wildlife Service biological opinion. The GreenLink line is going to go through, is going through, I should say, some very important desert tortoise areas.

0:16:59 - (Kevin Emmerich): One in particular is the Indian Springs Valley, the Mercury Valley. And those areas were identified by the Fish and Wildlife Service as the most crucial desert tortoise connectivity corridor in Nevada. And unfortunately, it's an energy hub as well. There are 20,000 acres of large scale solar applications there. But GreenLink is actually digging into a lot of that habitat as well. We had nominated that area for an area of critical environmental concern based on the desert tortoise connectivity.

0:17:42 - (Kevin Emmerich): And although the BLM agreed with us and even expanded the boundaries of the nomination, they failed to actually designate it or consider it. So it's frustrating. Equally, up north, the Friends of Nevada Wilderness did a really beautiful Esmeralda Area of Critical Environmental Concern nomination. I mean, getting the acreage right, I don't remember Exactly. It's over 800,000 acres. But it seeks to protect really unique cultural sites.

0:18:16 - (Kevin Emmerich): Some of the cultural history there just dates back to the same age of the Clovis Points. But it's also known as an area. It's one of the most continuously occupied area by people over, you know, many generations. But GreenLink West in itself is going to cut through some of those sites and the damage is irreversible. I mean, obviously that's the least renewable resource out there. But not only that, in that area there's also really unique paleontological resources and fossils.

0:18:55 - (Kevin Emmerich): The Esmeralda area is our stronghold for bighorn sheep populations and protects connectivity for three populations. So building Green Link in itself will disrupt that. But if they end up building 100 square miles of solar there, you can pretty much write that off. Equally, the area has some really unique rare plant populations, and a few botanists went out there and really studied that and contributed a lot of that information to the Area of Critical Environmental Concern nomination.

0:19:33 - (Joe Geoffrey): Don't go away. We'll be right back.

0:19:37 - (Chris Clarke): We'll get back to our interview with Kevin Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch in just a moment. But first, about 20 miles south of the route of GreenLink west as it goes through Amargosa Valley is a place called Peterson Reservoir, sometimes called Peterson Pond, which is contained within the boundaries of Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Our nature recordist friend Fred Bell visited Peterson Pond not too long ago and got some recordings of one of my favorite bird songs in the entire Western U.S.

0:20:09 - (Chris Clarke): the yellow headed blackbird. And if you listen to this and you take issue with my description of it as a song, you are not alone. The song of the yellow headed blackbird has been compared to a person being strangled. I think it's a lot more pleasant than that. At any rate, it is a marker of place for sure, one of my favorite birds in the West. Let's listen.

0:21:53 - (Joe Geoffrey): You're listening to 90 miles from Needles, the desert Protection podcast. Don't take your dog on a desert hike in summer.

0:22:02 - (Chris Clarke): And now let's get back to our interview with Kevin Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch.

0:22:07 - (Kevin Emmerich): The other part of this complaint is the National Park Service Organic act going through the Tule Spring Fossil Bed National Monument, we believe really violates that. And you've worked for the NPCA, so you know about the Park Service mission to leave resources essentially unimpaired for future generations. It's really not possible to do that, building these large poles within the monument. NV Energy at one time said they would only build them 5ft within the monument boundary. But if you take a look at what they're doing, we posted some of it on our website.

0:22:48 - (Kevin Emmerich): And the other parts of the Amargosa Desert and the Mercury Indian Springs Valley, they're going to have to take out a lot of habitat, a lot of just the desert, just to build those poles through the monument there. They're going to have to drill down in there to put pylons. And the National Park Service requested at NV Energy do a ground penetrating radar survey of what fossils might actually be impacted by the poles.

0:23:21 - (Kevin Emmerich): And they found significant fossils under seven of them. But under three of them, I think it was they found elephant shaped anomalies, which indicates that those are Colombian mammoth fossils. The National Monument protects a lot of diverse fossils, including the dire wolf, saber toothed cat, Colombian mammoth, but also some really ancient human remains as well. If you've been out there, you'll see that the growth of Las Vegas is engulfing it. On the east and the west side. But it's a very important area to a lot of the people that live there because it's the only open space that they have.

0:24:08 - (Kevin Emmerich): So this was one of the more contentious and opposed parts of Green Lake. And I'm glad we could be involved in a lawsuit about it. One of the things about it is when they created the enabling legislation for the Tule Springs Fossil Bed National Monument, part of the legislation said it could allow a 400-foot-wide energy corridor to go through the monument. But that has to be all from renewable sources.

0:24:39 - (Kevin Emmerich): And down at the Apex Gap we know that it's not going to be all renewable, but the fine print says when feasible. But another part of the complaint is the BLM says they the energy corridor was not legally used. It was illegally moved over to the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. So there's a lot of interesting, unexplained, unresolved issues just with that national park unit alone. And I was really interested in that because if they end up building the line through the monument, it could happen. It's going to set some pretty bad precedents and development standards in the future, I think, for other national park units.

0:25:27 - (Kevin Emmerich): And so in my opinion, there's a lot of important stuff riding just on that little mile and a half of the line through the monument. It's so sensitive, they say they won't even get to that till 2026. So those are essentially four of the issues that we're complaining about. I think a final one would be alternatives. Even though alternatives are defined by the National Environmental Policy act, we're using other laws, we're using the Endangered Species act, we're using the National Park Service Organic act.

0:26:06 - (Kevin Emmerich): And we're saying that the GreenLink west line violates both of those. And because of that, the BLM did not evaluate a good reasonable range of alternatives. And so that's another big part of the complaint that hopefully they'll listen to.

0:26:27 - (Chris Clarke): That's a really thorough summary and I appreciate that. So where are we in the litigation process with the suit? Do you have a court date set?

0:26:38 - (Kevin Emmerich): I don't believe they have that. Soon we're going to start submitting the standing declarations. And so we're very early in the litigation process. It was just recently filed. There has been talk about issuing a preliminary injunction. The lawyers think that's a frivolous thing to do. But we're trying to submit requests to stall the project in certain areas. One in particular where there's a rare plant and Sarcobatus Flat.

0:27:09 - (Kevin Emmerich): It's called the Sodaville milkvetch. It grows on alkali wetlands. It's an astragalus, but it needs a constant supply of water. And it's one of six populations of these plants on the planet. And the GreenLink West Line plows right through it. They made this plan a long time ago. They picked that route. They did modify it partially to avoid the Timbisha Shoshone reservation lands. But because of that, it inadvertently crosses over this really sensitive population of these plants.

0:27:47 - (Kevin Emmerich): And so these plants, the Sodaville milkvetch, is designated as critically endangered in the state of Nevada. And that doesn't really hold a lot of weight. It sounds pretty big, but in order for any development to happen, agency called the Nevada Division of Forestry must issue a permit. And NV Energy hasn't even applied for a permit yet. So we've been asking them, don't issue that permit because we feel that the line can easily be moved about a quarter mile off this population.

0:28:26 - (Kevin Emmerich): Apparently NV Energy is now saying it would only impact nine plants. We think that that's definitely inaccurate. We ran that by one of the botanists we were talking to who also thinks that's pretty inaccurate. But there’ll also be a fragmentation factor of putting that line right through the population. And it will promote the spread of invasive weed like Russian thistle and how it's eaten on the habitat.

0:28:55 - (Kevin Emmerich): And often they use herbicides to control that. And so it does seem like if they build the GreenLink West Line through that population, there will only be five global populations of this plant. Also, GreenLink is through the state of Nevada acquiring water rights and many of them are private land holders. So I'm not really getting too involved in that other than monitoring it. But interestingly, up on Sarcobatus Flat, they're going to take 400 acre feet out of one ranch, which is within viewing distance of the Sodaville milkvetch population.

0:29:37 - (Kevin Emmerich): We don't know for sure, but we're wondering if that's going to take some of that groundwater away and actually kill off some of those plants. Pretty complicated.

0:29:50 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah. I have to say milkvetch long ago became one of my favorite big groups of plant species just because it seems to pop up in different places and interfere with development projects or off-road vehicle use in the Algodones Dunes or tank training on Fort Irwin in California Mojave. And just it's a really diverse and interesting and extremely vulnerable set of plants.

0:30:18 - (Kevin Emmerich): Definitely is. Yeah, I agree.

0:30:24 - (Chris Clarke): So you mentioned a couple of executive orders and I was just before we started talking skimming past one that got put out on the 7th. So that would have been Monday, Monday, July 7th. That basically, as you alluded to, removes tax breaks and subsidies for wind and solar. And I am immediately wondering whether we're going to have a situation similar to the first Trump administration, in which while all the bad stuff was going on, the desert got just a little bit of a break from pressure to develop renewables in the desert. Do you think that's likely to have that kind of effect on the GreenLink West project, cutting back the number of customers that the line will have?

0:31:14 - (Kevin Emmerich): Well, that's a very good question, and I have to accurately say I don't know yet. I know the state really disagrees with that. Governor Joe Lombardo in Nevada is a Republican, but he's definitely a clean energy guy, and the state's going to provide its own incentives. Another thing to consider about this is many of the solar projects that we're following ended up kind of in a limbo, a NEPA limbo after Trump took over the BLM won't really tell me why this is, and I don't think a lot of them know.

0:31:54 - (Kevin Emmerich): However, I see in that bill and the Big, Beautiful Bill anyway, if they can get started building by 2026, if I'm getting that right, they can still maintain the tax breaks. And what I'm thinking might happen is, is some of the solar projects that are in the final stage of NEPA review. And actually in Nevada, there's a bunch of them, Copper Rays, Purple Sage Solar, the Esmeralda 7, et cetera, Bonanza Solar. I'm wondering if they're going to really rush to get started with construction to meet those deadlines.

0:32:33 - (Kevin Emmerich): The thing is that the BLM will not release the final environmental impact statements for those projects. Another factor that I, I'm actually trying to follow is, as you've probably seen, they're trying to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act. I mean, it's the Trump administration. Why wouldn't they do something really bad to that law? Right. And so they're really trying to weaken it, but some of their goals to weaken would reduce the requirements of developers to have these really lengthy environmental impact statements, and those go into the millions of dollars.

0:33:13 - (Kevin Emmerich): And I'm wondering if that's an incentive for some of these bigger companies to keep going. And I wonder if that will be advantageous to them. I remember when Trump attempted weakening NEPA in his first term, the Wind Energy association came out in praise of what he did. And so again, it's complicated. I certainly don't have the answer to that, but I'm watching it closely.

0:33:45 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, it seems like it would be a good opportunity for NextEra to walk over to Mar a Lago and have a private audience because they know how to speak Trump's language. Money.

0:33:59 - (Kevin Emmerich): So, yes, that's very sad. Yes.

0:34:06 - (Chris Clarke): And just for listeners, NextEra is a major player in the public land solar world. They have a lot of projects, some more destructive than others in the pipeline, especially in California. How can listeners help you out? Either Basin and Range Watch or your co-plaintiff at Friends of Nevada Wilderness? Is there something you would appreciate if people did? Can people go to your website and learn more?

0:34:32 - (Kevin Emmerich): Well, at this point for GreenLink litigation, now a lot of it's going to be up to the court. However, Friends of Nevada Wilderness is still pushing to have the Esmeralda Area of Critical Environmental Concern established. And they have a petition out for that which I can email to you later to put on there. And if you talk to Sharon there, she'll give you that information. We are not just giving up either on our ACEC nomination. The Cactus Spring Dairy of critical Environmental concern.

0:35:08 - (Kevin Emmerich): Although they have bulldozed part of it for GreenLink west, it's still just a transmission line and the solar energy would be really sprawling. And if they build that out, they're going to devastate the area. And so we too will actually put out a petition to have people keep asking for that. We see that as an uphill battle, of course, under the Trump administration, but we have to try and I will.

0:35:36 - (Chris Clarke): Put a link to all of those different things in the show notes for convenience of listeners. Kevin Emmerich, I know you're really busy, but I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about further developments in your part of Nevada. It's good to hear your voice again and we're just very grateful.

0:35:56 - (Kevin Emmerich): Well, thank you, Chris. I love 90 miles from Needles. I'll always be a supporter.

0:36:17 - (Chris Clarke): And that brings this episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the desert protection podcast, to a close. I want to thank Kevin Emmerich for joining us once again. It's always a pleasure to talk to Kevin. Basin and Range Watch does some amazing work. They are on the leading edge of opposition to unnecessary conversion of desert habitats. You can check them out at basinand rangewatch2.org that's numeral 2.

0:36:40 - (Chris Clarke): I also want to thank Peter Frigeri and Michael Landrum for donating to our Chihuahuan Desert Travel Fund. You can reach that at 90milesfromneedles.com/elpaso and thanks again to Jillian Sandel for tossing a generous donation into our general fund bucket at 90 miles from needles.com donate thanks to Joe Jeffrey, our voiceover guy, Martine Mancha, who created our wonderful podcast logo, and Fred Bell, our nature sound recordist.

0:37:13 - (Chris Clarke): Our theme song, Moody Western is by Brightside Studio. Other music in this episode by Snow Music Studio. Really looking forward to August 7th, folks, our public recording of our 100th episode, to which you will all be invited. What can I say, it's just a privilege to be working on this for listeners such as yourselves. This is still the only podcast that focuses on the entire North American desert, and we would love to have a little bit of competition slash collaboration.

0:37:46 - (Chris Clarke): There's room enough in this niche for a bunch of people. There are certainly more stories than we can handle, but right now we're it and we got here because of you. So thank you all and I will see you at the next watering hole. Bye now.

0:38:10 - (Joe Geoffrey): 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.