Residents, wildlife officials and council push back on 4,000-acre Drunkard's Wash solar lease; council votes to ask commissioners to oppose further state-land

The Emery County Public Lands Council spent the bulk of its meeting on the proposed Drunkard's Wash solar development — a roughly 4,000-acre project on state trust lands north of Huntington — and on whether the county should push back after the state issued a lease to the developer.

Daniel Wilson of the Utah Division of Wildlife said the project, now under lease to Nadara (which purchased the original developer Novus), would require about 14 miles of perimeter fencing and the removal of roughly 4,000 acres of winter range. "This is a 4,000 acre project," Wilson said, and "once the project goes in, pretty much all the habitat is lost for wildlife inside that project area." He added the area is a crucial mule-deer winter range — some collared animals travel 20 to 30 miles to reach it — and that the region is already "25% below population objective for deer."

Wilson described two paths if the project proceeds: moving the arrays to…