Rick Walker wrote in to ask if the company building the new solar plant near Tonopah is hiring Nevada workers ?
Rick says he heard they are bringing in a lot of workers from Mexico.
I talked to Kevin Smith the C-E-O for Solar Reserve, that's the company that's building that plant with a $737 million loan from the federal government.
Right now they're just in the initial stages but the company says when construction ramps up there will be 600 workers on site. They expect about 80 percent of those will be from Nevada. The goal is 90 percent and according to the contract the company will have to pay a fine if it doesn't meet that goal.
Smith says it can be a challenge to find enough Nevada employees with the proper training to do the work, but they are focused on using mostly workers from in-state.
Construction on the project is expected to last 30 months and the plant should be on line by december of 2013.
