More than 100 people turned up for a public comment meeting on the Federal Solar Development Programmatic in Riverside County, Calif., Tuesday night, according to news reports.

The meeting, hosted by the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Department of Energy was the most well-attended of the three public comment meetings BLM spokeswoman Linda Resseguie has lead.

More than 30 of the attendees at the Hyatt in Indian Wells, Calif., signed up to speak, according to news reports. Most in attendance expressed concern that the Solar Programmatic’s proposed development of 80 percent of the area’s desert lands is too high.

Attendees to the previous two meetings voiced entirely different concerns, she said.

The government released its plan to develop southwestern desert lands for solar energy production at the end of 2010. The public comment period for the plan will close in mid-March, and the departments in charge have just started hosting public meetings.

Those who want the BLM and DOE to consider their comments can submit them by mail or via the Internet (the preferred method). They can also submit them at public meetings like Tuesday’s.

“The advantage of the public meetings is that we have a chance to interact with folks before they submit their comments,” Resseguie said. “We can answer their questions, and we have materials with us that we can show them. It gives us a chance to really communicate and interact with people.”

Resseguie hosted a meeting in Washington, D.C., earlier in the year, where nearly all of the 50 or so attendees were representatives from different environmental groups who were most concerned with the process, Resseguie said.

She said those people expressed a hope that the BLM and DOE would find a better method of developing public lands for energy production than they have used in oil and natural gas development, she said.

A meeting in El Centro, Calif., on Monday night was completely different from the one in D.C., she said. And it turned out to be strikingly different from the one in Indian Wells on Tuesday.

There were only about 25 people who attended the meeting in El Centro, Resseguie said.

Their concerns were very community-focused.

“They really stressed how important it is for the BLM to work with the communities that will be impacted to make sure this is going to benefit the communities,” Resseguie said.

Several people said they wanted to make sure there will be federal funding or at least a reinvestment in the communities to cover the cost of increased law enforcement and health care facilities and schools.

Riverside County media reported that local impacts of the proposed solar development of 80 percent of that region’s solar zone identified in the programmatic would include noise levels well over county-mandated limits, increased vehicle traffic, influx of non-native plant species, and visual change in the landscape, among others.

Anyone can submit public comment on the Solar Development Programmatic until March 11.

Image courtesy of Tessera Solar, whose Suncatchers (pictured) have been the topic of debate by residents in Colorado regarding the sound level of the solar technology.