Are you curious what the project might look like when it’s done? White Pine Waterpower, LLC (“WPW”) partnered with engineers and photo simulation experts to create pictures of the Project. Several locations or Key Observation Points (“KOP”) were selected after many discussions with public agencies, like the National Park Service (“NPS”) and the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”). You can see these pictures on our website below and in the Final License Application (“FLA”) that was submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) in February 2023. If you want to know more about visual impacts, please read through the 2022 Visual Resources Study Report and the 2023 Supplemental Key Observation Points and Photo Simulations. 

Pumped storage projects are designed to last up to 100 years. That’s a long time! For a few of the photo simulations, we’ve included visualizations both right after construction has finished and right after revegetation has finished. WPW will revegetate all disturbed lands that won’t be used during operation. Revegetation is great for both the local wildlife populations and the general look and feel of the landscape. WPW’s revegetation efforts should take about 10 years to achieve the results shown in the photo simulations. For a lifespan of 100 years, 10 years is not much.

Several photo simulations represent conditions expected immediately after construction is completed and are not shown as reclaimed with topsoil and vegetative cover.  Restoration, reclamation and revegetation will ensure the Project features visually blend in with the surrounding desert landscape and will start immediately following the completion of construction. To provide additional context for FERC, WPW generated several new photo simulations of the Project’s features to give a representative view after the expected restoration, reclamation, and revegetation of the temporary spoil disposal areas, construction laydown areas, and other non-permanent features.

While you might see temporary construction activities from the highway, showing those types of activities in a photo simulation can be misleading. When building a project like this, the various stages of construction look and feel different every day, and sometimes even hour to hour. Construction is likely to have short-term effects on how things will look, including the visibility of construction equipment, materials, and workers. This also includes the staging areas for construction and places where materials are kept. Construction activities are not shown in the photo simulations because they are temporary and will change regularly. As such, no single moment during construction can be accurately represented for the potential visual impacts. In addition, a lot of the five-year construction period will be done underground and will not be visible most of the time.

Below are the descriptions of several photo stimulations included in the Visual and Aesthetics Study Report and the Supplemental Visual and Aesthetic Study Report. The agencies also agreed on the camera height, photo angles, and focal length lens settings for the photos from each KOP from which WPW developed the photo simulations.