Power firm says it hires Nevadans

CARSON CITY -- A spokesman for a company criticized Thursday by a legislator for not hiring Nevadans said Friday that 65 percent of the workers they used to build a Boulder City area solar facility were local residents.

Art Larson, a spokesman for Sempra Energy, said the firm has a policy of hiring local workers for its projects and that 65 percent of the 111 construction workers and 20 union electrical workers at the El Dorado Energy solar facility were local. The facility was finished late last year and the power was sold to Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Without naming the company, Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, said an energy company received $1.8 million in state tax breaks, hired out-of-state workers and is selling power to another state. She added Nevada got only one worker out of the deal.

A report on tax exemption identified the company as El Dorado, whose parent firm is Sempra.

Larson said it is true there is only one full-time worker at the facility now, but that is because that is all it takes to run it.

He added that his company offered the power to "many potential customers."

"PG&E showed the most interest," he said.

Sempra, by this fall, may begin a 50 megawatt expansion to the existing 10 megawatt solar facility, according to Larson. Two hundred workers would be needed to build the facility and it would need three full-time workers to run it.