Terry Weiner, Conservation and Projects Coordinator, Desert Protective Council
Testimony Before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee S. 2921, California Desert Protection Act of 2010
May 20, 2010

To Honorable Senators,

This testimony is submitted on behalf of the Desert Protective Council and its members. I request that these comments be placed in the record.

The Desert Protective Council (DPC) is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit membership organization founded in 1954. The DPC’s mission is to educate children and adults about the unique natural, cultural, historic, recreational and spiritual resources of the American southwest deserts in order to protect and preserve our desert heritage for present and future generations.

The Desert Protective Council thanks Senator Feinstein for introducing this important legislation. We generally support S 2921 but have concerns with several sections of the bill related to off-road vehicle recreation and to desert renewable energy development. Our support of the CDPA is qualified pending amendments to these sections of the bill.

Section 1603 The Vinagre Wash Special Management Area (SMA)

This section establishes a new designation, the SMA, to accommodate off highway vehicle travel in Imperial County, in the vicinity of the lower Colorado River within an area dense with Native American cultural history and sacred sites, including portions of an ancient foot trail extending from Pilot Knob, California to Spirit Mountain, Nevada.

• The bill language does not include the requirement for a new management plan for this newly created designation. The DPC recommends that the establishment of the Vinagre Wash Special Management Area be treated carefully: there must be a new management plan developed for this new designation.
• First of all, a thorough Native American cultural resources inventory of the area must be completed by archaeologists who have specialized in the archaeology in this part of the desert. The cultural resource surveys must be done in close consultation with Native American tribal cultural resource committees, in particular with the Quechan Tribe Cultural Committee and in consultation with the Quechan Historic Preservation Officer.
• Based upon the results of the cultural resources inventory, a Cultural Resources Management plan should be developed.
• Development of a system of appropriate routes of travel should be based on the results of the Cultural Resources surveys and Management Plan for the area. Routes of travel in the Vinagre Wash SMA must avoid the cultural sites and ancient foot-trail.
• Travel on designated routes of travel in the Vinagre Wash SMA should be restricted to street-legal 4-wheel drive vehicles. This will provide ample and appropriate access to recreational opportunities in the Vinagre Wash Area. In order to protect the cultural and natural resources of this area, green-sticker vehicle use must be prohibited.
• • The SMA Management Plan language must take into account the Presidential Executive Order mandating permanent or temporary closure of routes and areas of public lands that cannot be adequately managed and/or have been damaged by ORV recreation until and if they can be restored to healthy condition.

Title I of S 2921 creates five permanent National OHV Recreation Areas in the Mojave Desert.

The Desert Protective Council does not support this permanent consignment of tens of thousands of acres of public land to destructive off-road recreation.

• This permanent designation would set a very bad national precedent, establishing a quid pro quo trade-off between protection of some public lands for intensification of use on others.
• Apart from the quid pro quo precedent, the DPC believes that to purposely plan to permanently sacrifice vast areas or public land to destruction would demonstrate a deplorable lack of consideration of all of the other demands being made on the California Desert.
• The codification of OHV use as the primary land use of an area effectively excludes all other types of recreation. While the OHV industry lobby is loud and well funded, it is a fact that citizens who prefer other modes of recreation vastly outnumber California ORV recreationists. The California Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Division of State Parks estimates the percentage of California citizens whose primary form of recreation is driving off-road vehicles at about 14%.
• To permanently enshrine these five National OHV Recreation Areas would demonstrate a remarkable lack of vision for the future of the California Desert, given the current threats to the integrity of the desert ecosystem from climate change, from proposed solar, wind and geothermal development projects, from military expansion, from invasion of non-native plant species and consequent increasing wild fires.
• These five proposed National OHV Recreation Areas are all within San Bernardino County, California, a county in EPA non-attainment for particulate pollution. ORV recreation obliterates the desert microbiological soil crusts, creating an additional burden of air-borne dust.
• The establishment of National OHV Recreation Areas should be considered in separate legislation from legislation establishing wilderness and national monuments.

Title I-Regarding the Establishment of Two New National Monuments

The Desert Protective Council applauds the creation of these new national monuments. These new designations will help protect important wildlife travel corridors and linkages from high to low elevations while providing for enjoyment by the public. We do have concerns with Sections 1304S 2921(a)(1) and 1404S 2921(a)(1) of TitleS 2921I. The current language is somewhat ambiguous and could be interpreted to require all existing ORV use to continue. We would like to see clear designation of routes of travel within the National Monument Planning Process for travel by street-legal vehicles only. There is no need for travel by green-sticker vehicles within these new national monuments.

Chairman Bingaman and members of the Committee, thank you for your work and for consideration of our comments. The DPC reserves the privilege of submitting further testimony on other sections of S 2921 during the ten-day testimony window.

We look forward to working with you and with Senator Feinstein to improve and pass the California Desert Protection Act 2010.

Sincerely,

Terry Weiner
Imperial County Projects and Conservation Coordinator
Desert Protective Council
P.O. Box 3635
San Diego CA. 92163

ACTION ALERT: The Imperial County Board of Supervisors rejected a resolution today that would have created the Imperial County Green Building Retrofit and Workforce Development Program. The program would have required energy efficiency upgrades such as lighting and air conditioning on County facilities in order to create green jobs and skilled training opportunities for Imperial County residents. Recently, the Supervisors also passed on applying for a $5 million stimulus grant to create local green jobs.

The Program would have been the first of its kind for a rural county in the US, and would have positioned Imperial County to tap into millions of dollars in public money for energy efficiency retrofits.

Millions of Federal dollars are poised to fund the construction of gigantic “renewable” industrial energy facilities in our fragile deserts, including those in Imperial County. Those tax dollars should be going to reduce our energy consumption! Retrofitting existing buildings has a lower environmental cost than building new facilities, and creates more long-term jobs with transferrable skills.

Please join IBEW Local 569 and other community partners for a Solidarity Rally to hold Imperial County Supervisors accountable for rejecting green energy efficiency jobs and stimulus funding that would have put local people to work and reduced polluting greenhouse gases!

WHO: Hold Imperial County Supervisors accountable for rejecting green jobs and stimulus funding for local working people.

WHAT: Solidarity Rally at “State of the County” address delivered by County Board of Supervisor President Louis Fuentes

WHEN: Wednesday, February 24th at 6:15. The event starts at 7:00.

WHERE: Rodney Auditorium, SDSU Calexico campus. We will meet outside of the auditorium. For directions to the campus, please click HERE.

RSVP: Contact Micah Mitrosky at mmitrosky@ibew569.org or 619-957-2596.

Please pass this alert along to family, friends and community members so we can have as strong a turnout as possible!

[Passed along by Phil Klasky:]

Supervisors Mitzelfelt and Derry are planning to eliminate the staging portion of the off-road vehicle ordinance 3973 at a meeting of the San Bernardino Board of Supervisors in March. This would allow as many as 199 ORVs to gather on 2.5 acres for up to 6 days in a row without oversight resulting in excessive noise, dust, nuisance and trespass — no permits, no control!

Residents throughout the desert are planning a massive CALL IN DAY on Wednesday, February 10 to flood the supervisors’ phone lines with the message:

• Keep the ORV ordinance strong and effective.
• Do not eliminate the staging portion of the ordinance.
• Do not allow large, uncontrolled and unpermitted stagings of ORVs in our communities.
• Stop ORV trespass on our private and public lands.
• Stop harassment and intimidation by ORV riders.
• Protect our rural communities and the desert environment.
• Don’t place special interests above the needs of our communities.
• Defend our desert communities from ORV abuse!

Call Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt at: (909) 387-4830

Call Supervisor Neil Derry at: (909) 387-4855

Be firm but respectful. Hundreds of phone calls will help convince the supervisors that we are prepared to defend our communities from ORV abuse!

DPC supports Senator Feinstein’s  introduction of the CDPA 2010. The bill, S 2921, adds protective status for large swaths of the California deserts and we applaud the Senator for crafting legislation to preserve our beloved California Desert. There are, however, some troubling elements of the bill in the energy development and off-road vehicle recreation sections that DPC and others worked to change during the eight months leading up to the bill’s introduction. We will work to improve the language of these sections as the bill makes its way through the legislative process. As a beginning of discussion here of S 2921, here’s the plain-language description of the bill’s provisions, courtesy Senator Feinstein’s office.

California Desert Protection Act of 2010
Bill Summary

Title I: California Desert Conservation and Recreation

Sec 101: Amendments to the California Desert Protection Act of 1994

Title XIII: Mojave Trails National Monument.
Establishes a national monument managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) protecting 941,000 acres of federal land between Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave Preserve along historic Route 66 in San Bernardino County.
Protects approximately 266,000 acres of land that were donated to or purchased by the federal government over the last decade for conservation.
Maintains existing recreation uses, including hunting, vehicular travel on existing open roads and trails, grazing, camping, horseback riding, rock collecting, etc.
Permits the construction of transmission lines to facilitate the transfer of renewable energy generated in the California desert and adjacent states.
Provides solar energy companies with potential projects currently proposed inside the monument boundaries to relocate to federal solar energy zones being developed by the Department of the Interior.
Establishes an advisory committee to develop the management plan for the monument.  The committee will be comprised of representatives from local, state and federal government, conservation and recreation groups, and local Native American tribes.

Title XIV: Sand to Snow National Monument
Establishes a national monument covering approximately 134,000 acres of federal land between Joshua Tree National Park and the San Bernardino National Forest in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
Maintains existing recreation uses, including hunting, vehicular travel on existing open roads and trails, camping, horseback riding, rock collecting, etc.
The monument would be jointly managed by the BLM and the Forest Service with management guidance from an advisory committee comprised of local, state and federal government, conservation and recreation groups, and local Native American tribes.

Title V: Wilderness
Designates approximately 250,000 acres in five BLM Wilderness Study Areas near Fort Irwin as wilderness as well as portions of Death Valley National Park (90,000 acres) and the San Bernardino National Forest (4,300 acres).
Releases approximately 126,000 acres in the Cady and Soda Mountains that were designated wilderness study areas in the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, thereby allowing vehicular access to these areas.

Title VI: Vinagre Wash Special Management Area
Designates a “special management area” covering a total of 76,000 acres in eastern Imperial County in order to conserve, protect and enhance plant and wildlife management as well as nationally significant ecological, recreational, archeological, and cultural resources.  The area also contains approximately 49,000 acres of potential wilderness and approximately 12,000 acres of former private land donated to the federal government for conservation.
Permitted uses would be hiking, camping, mountain biking, sightseeing, hunting, off-highway vehicle use on designated routes and horseback riding.  Prohibited uses would include new mining, permanent roads, commercial uses, or activities that would preclude the potential wilderness areas from becoming wilderness in the future.

Title VII: National Park System Additions
Adds approximately 74,000 acres of land to the National Park System, including:
Death Valley: Approximately 41,000 acres, including a narrow strip of land between the southern boundary of the park (31,000 acres known as the “Bowling Alley”) and Ft. Irwin that was designated a wilderness study area by the Desert Protection Act and a former mining area (6,400 acres known as the “Crater Area”) in the north that is entirely surrounded by park wilderness.
Mojave Preserve: Almost 30,000 acres on the northeastern corner of the park known as Castle Mountain, which was left out of the Desert Protection Act due to mining which has now ceased.
Joshua Tree: Approximately 2,900 acres in multiple small parcels of BLM land on the northern boundary of the park that have been identified for disposal.

Title XVIII: Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Areas
Designates five existing, administratively designated off-highway vehicle areas in San Bernardino County, covering approximately 314,000 acres, as permanent off-highway vehicle recreation areas.  Land management would remain as it exists today, but the BLM would be given discretion whether to require a new site specific management plan or simply modify its existing desert-wide management plan.
BLM lands under consideration for the expansion of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms would not be incorporated into the Johnson Valley OHV area until it is determined that they are not needed for military training.
Requires the Secretary to conduct a study to determine what, if any, lands adjacent to these recreation areas would be suitable for inclusion and authorizes the Department to do so.

Title XIX: Miscellaneous

Section 1901: State land transfers and exchanges.
Requires the Department of Interior to work with the state to complete the exchange of approximately 3700,000 acres of state school lands located in California desert over the next ten years.  Small isolated parcels of state land in wilderness, national parks and monuments would be exchanged for federal lands elsewhere that could potentially provide the state with viable sites for renewable energy development, off-highway vehicle recreation or other commercial purposes.
Transfers 934 acres currently designated as a BLM wilderness study area to Anza Borrego State Park to be managed as state wilderness, which surrounds it on three sides.
Requires the Department of the Interior to work with local government to potentially transfer BLM lands for municipal infrastructure needs.

Section 1902: Ensures continued military training activities.
Ensures the right of the Department of Defense to conduct low-level overflights over wilderness, national parks and national monuments.

Section 1903: Climate change and wildlife corridors.
Requires the Department of the Interior to study the impact of climate change on California desert species migration, incorporate their results and recommendations into land use management plans, and consider the study’s findings when making decisions granting rights of way for projects on public lands.

Section 1904: Prohibited uses of donated and acquired land.
Prohibits the use of donated or acquired lands for development, mining, off-highway vehicle use (except designated routes), grazing, military training and other surface disturbing activities.  This prohibition would apply only to public lands within the California Desert Conservation Area.
The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to make limited exceptions in cases where it is deemed in the public interest.  Comparable lands would have to be purchased and donated to the federal government as mitigation for lost acreage.
Authorizes the Secretary to accept easements and deed restrictions on donated lands within the California Desert Conservation Area in the future.

Section 1905: Tribal uses and interests.
Requires the Secretary to ensure access for tribal cultural activities within national parks, monuments, wilderness and other designated within the bill.
Requires the Secretary to develop a cultural resources management plan to protect a sacred tribal trail along the Colorado River between southern Nevada and the California-Baja border.

Section 520: Native groundwater supplies.
Protects  the Mojave Preserve’s native groundwater supplies by prohibiting the Department of the Interior from processing rights-of-way applications for nearby projects that are likely to use more groundwater than is naturally restored to the local aquifer each year.

Section 102: Wild and scenic rivers.
Designates 76 miles of wild and scenic rivers, including Deep Creek and the Whitewater River in and near the San Bernardino National Forest and the Amargosa River and Surprise Canyon Creek near Death Valley National Park.

Title II: Desert Renewable Energy Permitting

Section 201: Authorizing Renewable Energy Permitting Office funding and specifying uses for funds generated by renewable development.  This section would authorize the Department of the Interior to:

• Fund its new Renewable Energy Permitting Offices with revenues in the existing BLM Permit Processing Improvement Fund, which can currently only be used for Oil and Gas permitting.
• Establish new memoranda of understanding with states to expedite permitting of renewable energy projects.
• Use the BLM Permit Processing Improvement Fund to expedite Fish and Wildlife Service permits for renewable energy proposals on private lands.
• Use 50 percent of income generated from renewable energy projects on Federal Land to (1) replenish the BLM Permit Processing Improvement Fund, (2) increase the size of the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, and (3) establish a fund for the purpose of reclaiming any abandoned renewable energy project sites.
• Return the remaining 50 percent of income to state and county governments for the purpose of improving permitting and increasing conservation.

Section 202: Establishes a process to eliminate the backlog of renewable energy development proposals on Federal Land.  This section would establish deadlines on both Federal agencies and applicants to expedite the environmental review of renewable energy development proposals, to prioritize development proposals in which the developer makes significant progress, and to turn down ill conceived and speculative proposals.  Applicants who fail to meet deadlines will be rejected in favor of developers who make progress on their sites.  The Bureau of Land Management would replace its first-come, first-serve permit review process with a process that would give priority to renewable energy developers who have (1) completed their biological and cultural studies, (2) submitted an accepted development plan and a plan for securing necessary water, and (3) applied for an interconnection to the power grid.  The Secretary of the Interior has used similar criteria to declare renewable energy proposals on a permitting “fast track.”

Section 203: Establish a coordinated plan to develop renewable energy on Federal Land.  This section would require the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Forest Service to undertake Programmatic Environmental Impact Statements of renewable energy potential on Federal land, with the goal of identifying zones where renewable energy production is in the public interest, and where environmental approval of renewable energy projects can be expedited.

Section 204: Requires the Department of Defense (DoD) to Study Renewable Energy Potential.  This section would instruct the DoD to study the viability of developing a renewable energy program on Southwest military bases.  Military bases in California and Nevada have thousands of disturbed acres which cannot be used for training and may be good places for renewable energy development.  Base leaders are working to develop renewable energy as a result of a DoD goal to generate 25 percent of all energy from renewable sources by 2025.  But the efforts are not coordinated, and this study would focus personnel on this matter formally.

Section 205: Pilot Program to Establish Endangered Species Mitigation Zones:  In order to better coordinate endangered species protection and reduce barriers to shifting development from Federal land to private land, renewable energy developers proposing to develop private lands would contribute money to an endowed fund that would be used to better manage, in perpetuity, habitat for desert tortoise and other endangered or threatened species on at least 200,000 acres of specified public lands.  Recent research indicates that, especially for protection of the Desert Tortoise, better and more active management of existing federal land is a more effective way to protect the species than acquiring additional mitigation acres in an uncoordinated manner.  BLM would adopt a management plan for each zone in consultation with the Fish & Wildlife Service and an expert advisory panel.

Section 206: Bonding:  Developers proposing renewable energy projects on Federal land would be required to purchase and hold a bond to fund the eventual clean up and restoration of projects proposed on public lands.

Section 207: Clarify Permitting Requirements for Temporary Weather Measurement Equipment:  This section would permit the Bureau of Land Management to expedite the permitting of wind and solar measurement devices.

Section 208: Report:  The Secretary of the Interior shall have to report regularly to Congress on progress permitting renewable energy projects on public lands.

Section 209: Establish loan guarantees and grants for advanced technology and underground transmission lines.  New technologies could upgrade the capacity of the electricity transmission grid without requiring the permitting and construction of massive new towers.  Newly designed higher capacity wires can be strung from existing towers, and new technologies allow for more cost effective underground transmission.  However, utilities resist deploying these new technologies because they are not yet proven and they remain more expensive.  By providing support for these innovations, grants and loan guarantees would help prove these emerging technologies in a cost effective public-private partnership.

Still untrashed. Photo by thirteenthbat

Tuesday, Nov. 10 2009 — Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed environmentalists a major victory by ruling that the federal Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) approval of what would have been the world’s largest dump adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park is unlawful. The appellate court turned back an appeal filed by BLM and the project proponent, Kaiser Eagle Mountain, Inc., who challenged a 2005 ruling by Federal District Court Judge Robert Timlin overturning BLM’s approval. Kaiser’s landfill project would have transformed 4,654 acres of canyons south and west of Joshua Tree National Park into the world’s largest landfill, which would have received 20,000 tons of garbage per day, six days a week, for up to 16 hours per day. Kaiser would have received 3,481 acres of public lands in exchange for 2,846 acres of private land and $20,100.

The thousands of acres of undisturbed canyons that would have been covered with trash are habitat for the threatened desert tortoise and sensitive Bighorn sheep, and provide a spectacular visual backdrop for those hiking and camping in Joshua Tree National Park’s remote wilderness areas.

Writing for the majority, Ninth Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson ruled that BLM’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project failed to evaluate a reasonable range of alternatives to the project including other sites, failed to give adequate consideration to the public’s needs and objectives in balancing ecological protection with waste management, and failed to adequately address the dump’s impacts on the desert’s sensitive ecological system. The Court also ruled that BLM undervalued the value of the public lands to be traded. The environmental plaintiffs had pointed out that BLM’s failure to give adequate consideration to the extraordinary resource values that would be sacrificed to accommodate the dump violated several federal environmental laws.

The environmental coalition that filed the first of the two lawsuits that were consolidated in this appeal praised the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. Speaking on behalf of the Desert Protection Society and the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, plaintiff Donna Charpied stated that “This proposed dump would have become an ecological nightmare. Not only would more than 2,000 acres of fragile desert habitat be buried under millions of tons of trash, but the desert’s vulnerable ecosystem would have been degraded for miles in all directions by the air, noise, and visual pollution, lowered water tables, incessant rumble of huge dump trucks, and the attraction of thousands of rats, ravens, buzzards, coyotes, and other scavengers who would prey on the threatened desert tortoise and other imperiled wildlife that have no natural defenses against such intruders.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers stressed their appreciation for the Court’s steadfast enforcement of federal environmental laws. “The land trade BLM approved here would literally have trashed a spectacular national park, whose outstanding natural values have earned it designation as a World Biosphere Reserve. Shy of Yosemite Valley, I cannot think of a worse place to dump LA’s trash for the next century than the fragile desert wilderness adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park,” stated Stephan Volker, counsel for Donna and Laurence Charpied, Desert Protection Society, and Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice.

[Adapted from a press release sent out by DPC's friends Donna and Larry Charpied:]

As Ken Salazar settles into his role as the nation’s 50th Secretary of the Interior, we have a chance to make our voices heard regarding one of the most crucial threats to our public lands: abuse by Off-Road Vehicles.

Our colleagues at Community ORV Watch have designed and printed a postcard — the image and text contents of which you see below — urging Secretary Salazar to move to address trespass into wilderness and private lands, law-breaking, unsafe and unsound rider behavior, and other abuses associated with off-roading on public lands.

The DPC is working to get these cards out to interested members of the environmental community, and we need your help to do so.

Can you distribute a few of these cards to people in your community? Environmental organizations, church and other social groups, friends and family? If so, emailDPC Conservation Coordinator Terry Weiner and she can get some postcards to you.

Text of the postcard:

Dear Secretary Salazar –

I am writing because we have suffered from trespass, property destruction, and excessive noise and dust from off-road vehicles (ORV)s.

Uncontrolled and unmanaged ORV activity is destroying America’s natural and cultural heritage with widespread, sometimes irreversible, impacts to our public lands, wilderness areas and American Indian cultural resources. Illegal ORV abuse is unraveling decades of environmental protection and conservation. The Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies have been unable to protect lands held in trust for future generations.

Serious and at times violent conflicts between ORV riders and rural communities, farmers, ranchers, businesses and recreationists are reported from all across the country. In addition, those who have sought assistance from law enforcement or the courts or who have spoken out against ORV abuse have endured harassment, intimidation and retaliation.

We need your leadership and direction now to deal with this growing threat!

The Department of the Interior announced Monday that 676,048 acres of public lands — 24 tracts in five Western States — are being fast-tracked for development by the solar electrical generation industry.

The tracts, called Solar Energy Study areas, will be scrutinized to see whether it is feasible to build large-scale power plants of three square miles or more in area on the lands.

In a press release issued by the DoI, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said:

“President Obama’s comprehensive energy strategy calls for rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands. This environmentally sensitive plan will identify appropriate Interior-managed lands that have excellent solar energy potential and limited conflicts with wildlife, other natural resources or land users. The two dozen areas we are evaluating could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity. With coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible solar energy production that will help build a clean energy economy for the 21st century.”

Note the phrasing: “rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands.”

The press release also claims that

Only lands with excellent solar resources, suitable slope, proximity to roads and transmission lines or designated corridors, and containing at least 2,000 acres of BLM-administered public lands were considered for solar energy study areas. Sensitive lands, wilderness and other high-conservation-value lands as well as lands with conflicting uses were excluded.

I took a look at the maps of the Solar Energy Study Areas (available as large PDFs here) and found that the folks at the Interior Department didn’t do a particularly exhaustive job of excluding lands with high conservation values. The PDFs themselves are a bit cryptic if you’re not familiar with the lands at issue, so I took the data in them and laid them over more familiar maps to give a rough idea of the lands being talked about.

There are four tracts in the California desert: the Pisgah between Newberry Springs and Ludlow, the massive East Riverside tract running from Blythe to Desert Center, the Iron Mountain tract near Rice and surrounding Danby Lake, and Imperial, which runs from I-8 to the Mexican border south of Holtville. (Links go to the maps I adapted.) Take a look at this detail of the west end of the East Riverside tract:

The base map, from National Geographic’s TOPO software, pre-dates the 1994 California Desert Protection Act and thus shows a smaller Joshua Tree National Monument. Current boundaries of the National Park are shown as a purple overlay. The Solar Energy Study area is indicated by the red hatching. As you can see, the Interior Department’s notion of excluding sensitive areas apparently doesn’t rule out building industrial facilities abutting National Park boundary lines. The Eagle Mountain area, long beset by destructive projects ranging from hydroelectric power generation to a proposed landfill for Los Angeles’ trash, is some of the “non-sensitive” land being eyed for solar development.

Other lands of environmental importance have been included in the tracts as well.

The Iron Mountain tract overlies the southern part of the Cadiz aquifer, which is critically important to wildlife in the ranges just north of Joshua Tree. It also lies within the southern end of Ward Valley, sacred land to the Mojave people and excellent habitat for the desert tortoise.

The eastern end of the East Riverside tract would seem to include a significant portion of the ironwood bosques near the Palen and McCoy ranges. (Ironwood, Olneya tesota, is of sufficient ecological significance that President Bill Clinton established the Ironwood Forest National Monument to protect an important part of the plant’s range near Tucson.)

The broad sweep of bajada along the southern flank of the Cady Mountains, included in the Pisgah tract, is a remarkably intact creosote “forest” that may seem unassuming to casual passersby on I-40, but which shows its vibrance in “bloom” years: the region’s soils are a significant seed bank for native annuals.

The Interior Department is accepting public comment on the sites until the end of July. They’ve made it easy to submit those comments by offering you a webform. The DPC will be keeping you updated on the process as it moves forward.

We were left temporarily speechless by the election of Barack Obama Tuesday night. But now it’s time for the country to get down to work repairing the damage of the last eight years. With that in mind, here’s a 10-point plan for Obama and the country, focused on the environment and the economy.

1. Immediately address the emerging Peak Oil and Global Warming crises by retooling our economy into a much more locally based one (which will happen whether we like it or not), seeking ways to foster local food and energy production, and promoting public and human-powered transit over private passenger vehicles.*
2. Realizing the dire nature of point #1, begin to solve our population problem by supporting comprehensive sex education, all types of family planning, and an equitable solution to our immigration quandary.
3. Renegotiate the NAFTA treaty to continue to foster trade while protecting the environment, the poor and workers in all countries (thereby reducing immigration pressures mentioned in point #2).
4. Institute a 50-cent gas and diesel tax (as recommended by such conservative commentators as Charles Krauthammer), with proceeds to go into clean energy technologies, and offsets provided through tax breaks aimed at the poor and working class.
5. Expand spending on rail, both freight and passenger, to reduce our dependence on long-haul trucking and the private automobile.
6. Begin a massive public works investment in renewable energy, and make sure to put the horse before the cart: energy efficiency and conservation investments first, LOCAL point-of-use renewables and efficient energy technologies second (see point 1), and distant, inefficient, large-scale renewable energy plants last (if ever).
7. Mandate a nation-wide “feed-in tariff” for rooftop solar power, as has been so successful in Germany.
8. Restore the protections for endangered species under the Endangered Species Act that the Bush Administration has attempted to remove.
9. Restore the full integrity of the Clinton Administration’s Roadless Area Rule, and of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, including removing special exemptions for mountain-top removal mining techniques.
10. Get the U.S. back in the business making useful and necessary things, such as renewable energy technologies, through government investment and your wise tax breaks for corporations that create employment at home.

*For more on the Peak Oil crisis, see James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency or his weekly blog posts.

This is the only kind of sunrise we need to see from the San Felipe Hills — or anywhere else in San Diego’s backcountry.

UPDATE: The San Diego Union-Tribune covered Sempra’s donation to the Governor today, May 10, in this article.

The Desert Protective Council has a new article covering the back- ground of the Sunrise Powerlink, titled ”Sunrise Powerlink: Battle for California’s Energy Future,” on our main website. It will also appear in the Summer 2008 issue of Desert Report. (BTW, Desert Report’s current issue has several articles covering the solar energy issue in other parts of the California Desert, including a good article by Bill Powers.)

Utility Consumers Action Network has posted Michael Shames’ report on the latest round of Evidentiary Hearings on the Sunrise Powerlink. He says SDG&E’s case has fallen apart (but don’t think that lets you out of attending Monday’s public hearings in Borrego Springs!). Here’s a quote: “Sunrise is a remarkable money loser — some $8 billion over its estimated 60-year lifespan.”

UCAN also has a reprint of a  Capitol Alert article about Sempra’s recent (and fishy) $50,000 donation to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s favorite political initiative, just days after the Governator reaffirmed his support of the Sunrise Powerlink in a speech at Yale. The Union-Tribune seems to have missed this story, and Capitol Alert requires a registration, so thanks to UCAN for posting this.

We hope to see many (most… all…) of you in Borrego Springs on Monday. If you speak or leave a written comment, remember to emphasize that we don’t need the Sunrise Powerlink anywhere, because we have smarter energy alternatives available within San Diego.

Afton Canyon, just one of the many spots in the California desert left out of today’s passage of the National Landscape Conservation Act.

Two hours ago, the United States House of Representatives passed the National Landscape Conservation System Act. This is good news for much of the nation’s public lands. The National Landscape Conservation System (NLCS) was established under the Clinton Administration, and this act makes that system permanent, giving national park-like protections to millions of acres of public land. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz) is to be commended for championing this bill.

However, as reported in the Los Angeles Times in March and on Daniel Patterson’s blog on Monday, the act effectively removes much of the California Desert Conservation Area (CDCA) from the NLCS. This is a strange omission, since the CDCA has been part of the NLCS since its inception, and the Bureau of Land Management in California wants it kept in the system. This means that millions of acres of Sonoran, Mojave and Great Basin deserts in California will not enjoy the protections they’ve had for years now.

Conservationists, including the Desert Protective Council, had hoped to get the CDCA added to the House version of the bill. Daniel Patterson is working on the issue for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on behalf of concerned BLM staff in California. He says he’s now looking to the Senate to restore the missing lands to its version of the bill, and to keep them there when the bill goes to conference with the House.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Write or call your senators (contact info for California’s delegation below) telling them the California Desert Conservation Area should be added to the Senate version of the National Landscape Conservation System Act. The Bureau of Land Management wants it, and the people of California want it.

Write or call:

Barbara Boxer (D – CA)

112 Hart Senate Office Building

Washingto DC 20510

(202) 224-3553

Web form: boxer.senate.gov/contact

Dianne Feinstein (D – CA)

331 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington DC 20510

(202) 224-3841

Web form: feinstein.senate.gov/public

It also wouldn’t hurt to contact Rep. Mary Bono Mack, thanking her for her vote in favor of the bill, and asking her to support inclusion of the CDCA when the act comes back to conference.

Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R – Palm Springs)

104 Cannon House Office Building

Washington  DC 20515

(202) 225-5330

Web form: Click here