FORT MOHAVE — Even without the visual of a hundred retirees wearing custom neon yellow shirts, it’s clear the neighbors are upset. The atmosphere in the meeting room at the Los Lagos Golf Course — itself a splash of green on the windswept brown landscape of Arizona’s Mojave Desert — is as tense as a coiled spring when Tyler Carlson, CEO of the Mohave Electric Cooperative, steps to the podium.

He’s come to convince residents of the Valley View at Sunrise Hills master planned development that putting a new gas-fired power plant less than half a mile from the closest home at its northeast corner will benefit the community.