For the potential interest of Desert Blog readers, here are the comments I submitted today on BrightSource Energy’s proposal for a giant solar power generating station in the Ivanpah Valley, just outside the Mojave National Preserve. (Obligatory disclaimer: The opinions in this public comment are mine, and posting here does not constitute formal endorsement by the Desert Protective Council. I’m posting it here for informational purposes.)

re: Ivanpah SEGS Public Comment Thursday, February 11, 2010
To Whom It May Concern:

Of other public comments arriving with regard to the proposed Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station south of Primm, NV, I am confident many will address the abundant technical, hydrological, and wildlife-related problems contained in the proposal to bulldoze a broad swath of publicly owned ancient desert habitat for private industrial development. It is on these details that projects such as the Ivanpah SEGS are either approved or denied, and I am grateful that others can speak to those details more authoritatively than I.

What I can address with confidence and authority, however, is the fact that the Brightsource project threatens one of the most beautiful places in the United States. True, that beauty may not be apparent to the casual traveler on I-15 speeding through the desert with the airconditioning cranked up as they peer through tinted safety glass. It takes a few moments of quiet for the Ivanpah Valley’s beauty to sink in fully.

I lived in the Ivanpah Valley for much of 2008. I have been spending time there and in neighboring places in the desert for much of my life. The Ivanpah Valley is not wilderness, at least not that part of it outside the Preserve. There are many visible human intrusions there. Freight trains roar through the valley sounding loud horns, engines on both ends straining to build up momentum for the long climb to Cima. Off I-15 there is traffic on Nipton Road, long-haul truckers heading for Searchlight, vacationers in RVs and motorcycles heading for the Colorado River. One can in fact hear them from several miles away. They approach. They grow louder. They pass. The noise recedes.

And then the noise ebbs, and the cricket song swells, and the coyotes’ song, the breeze, the sound of blood in your veins. In the south end of the Ivanpah Valley, at least, human influence is limited and inconstant. From the Mojave National Preserve even Interstate 15 recedes in significance, becoming not much more than a pretty string of far head- and taillights in the distance, and that only at night. The sere backdrop of Clark Mountain, the McCulloghs and Lucy Grays in the east, and the protected peaks of the New York and Ivanpah mountain ranges contain between them a vast, largely wild piece of the Mojave. The Ivanpah Valley contains nearly all the Mojave’s landscapes in its boundaries — alkali flat, old-growth creosote and ancient Mojave yucca, Joshua tree woodland, piñon-juniper forests on the slopes of the fringing ranges. There is even an alpine sky-island overlooking the Ivanpah Valley, white firs clinging to the higher slopes of Clark Mountain, directly above the project site. The Valley is the Mojave in microcosm.

Paving thousands of acres of the Ivanpah Valley with mirrors would utterly destroy the wild character of the place. It would be an encroachment on the peace of the Preserve and the lands around it, with the noise and dust of construction and the subsequent blinding glare of the completed facility an intrusion into a peace I have found nowhere else on earth.

Others will question the actual carbon reduction benefit provided by building this plant, and rightly so. They will question the validity of tortoise relocation and mitigation, the additional demand on the 12,000-year-old water in the Ivanpah Valley’s aquifer, the loss of Mojave milkweed habitat. These are all crucial questions that absolutely must be answered. Neither Brightsource nor Interior have done so.

The loss I want to question, however, is the loss of our soul.

Are we really so bereft of wisdom that we see this beleaguered but beautiful stretch of ancient desert as nothing more than a blank spot on a map? Are we really so callous that we can consider the improbably old creosote, Mojave yucca and barrel cacti on the Ivanpah site less valuable than leaving our closet lights on when the door is closed? Many of the plants growing there are older than this nation. Some may pre-date European presence on the continent. We may as well raze the Parthenon to build a strip mall, knock down Stonehenge for use as highway berms. There is something very wrong in us if we value this place not for its beauty but for its square footage. There is something broken in us if we look at the Ivanpah Valley and see not peace, but merely a way to increase our power and the profit we derive from it.

In 2008, just before sunset after a day of scattered small rainstorms, a friend and I got out of her car near the abandoned railroad siding known as “Ivanpah,” in the southern Ivanpah Valley well within the Preserve. We had a clear and unobstructed view of the whole valley there at the end of the paved section of Ivanpah Road. A desert tortoise stood at roadside. We’d stopped to make sure no passing cars hit her as she tried to cross but there were no passing cars, and she had no apparent intent to cross. Unperturbed by our presence, she fell asleep as we watched. A band of coyotes began singing somewhere off toward Morning Star Mine Road. It was hard not to feel very small. The valley held an immensity of space and of time as well, humbling both in the sense of personal insignificance it conveyed and in the realization of our frightening capacity to do unintended harm.

It was one of those moments I have found surprisingly common in the Ivanpah Valley, a place that though altered by human hands is still precious, still wild in essence, well worth being defended from further unnecessary and destructive change.

I urge you to halt this project.

Chris Clarke
Private citizen

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.

New damage to desert pavement in the Desert Cahuilla Prehistoric Area — SCS Engineering photo

Off–road vehicle (ORV) use continues to damage both cultural and natural resources in the Desert Cahuilla Prehistoric Area (DCPA), according to a report [PDF]released today by the Desert Protective Council. Despite assurances from the California Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) that it would ensure adequate patrolling and signage to deter inappropriate vehicle use, the agency has done little to protect the area from increasing ORV damage.

The report, by the engineering firm SCS Engineers, compares aerial photos of the DCPA taken in December 2007 and again in March 2009. Comparing the two sets of photos, SCS found evidence that ORV damage to the DCPA has increased dramatically. The photographs show that since December 2007 off-roaders have carved new cross-country trails and spun “donuts” on delicate “desert pavement” that takes tens of thousand of years to form. Vehicles have crushed desert plants and petrified wood, and created new “hill climbs” — vertical tracks up hillsides that result in extreme erosion. Since acquiring the lands, DPR has failed to maintain even minimal staffing or signage educating users as to the fragility of the landscape.

DPR acquired 4,000 acres in the 23 square miles of mostly state-owned fragile desert land, located between Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and the Salton Sea, in a controversial acquisition three years ago. In 2006 conservation groups, which had attempted to buy the area as an addition to Anza Borrego State Park, urged the area be closed to vehicular use until resource surveys could be conducted and a sound management plan created. DPR maintained that existing staff and policies were sufficient to protect the land until a management plan could be put in place.

“DPR decided not to close Desert Cahuilla to ORVs, and the land has paid the price,” said Terry Weiner, Conservation Coordinator for the Desert Protective Council. “As a compromise we suggested they restrict ORV use to the southern portion of the Desert Cahuilla area and State Parks declined to do even that much. This report shows that DPR isn’t able to manage the existing use, and needs to suspend ORV use in Desert Cahuilla until resources surveys are completed and a management plan has been crafted that can stop the destruction.”

“The tragedy of this out-of-control off-roading which has destroyed plants, animals, cultural sites and other irreplaceable resources was predictable and preventable,” said Ileene Anderson, biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “This report unequivocally compels State Parks to act responsibly and immediately safeguard the public’s treasured resources before even more damage is done.”

In addition to being home to the endangered Peninsular Bighorn Sheep, rare plant species, golden eagles, prairie falcons and desert horned lizards, the DCPA hosts a fossil record of seven million years of geological and ecological change in present-day Imperial County. Petrified wood, remains of some of the largest known mammoths, and remnant landforms detailing many millions of years of California geological history are found here. In addition, DCPA contains a fragile archaeological record of thousands of years of human occupation.

The SCS report can be downloaded at http://dpcinc.org/files/2009/DCPA.pdf. An executive summary is available at http://dpcinc.org/files/2009/DCPAExSum.pdf.

Harper Dry Lake, in the western Mojave between Barstow and California City, is not exactly wilderness. The lake is an historic airstrip serving the former town of Lockhart. It is ringed by alfalfa farms, most of them either fallow or abandoned. To the lake’s west is the Luz Solar Electric Generating Station, a 160-megawatt concentrating solar plant comprising the two largest solar fields in the world, covering most of what was Lockhart.

Most of the lake has been dry since the local agricultural economy overdrafted its groundwater, dried up, and blew away, but in its southwest corner the lake still holds marshes fed by runoff from a handful of nearby irrigated fields. Migratory and resident birds take full advantage of the open water, and thus the BLM has designated Harper Dry Lake a Area of Critical Environmental Concern. This designation, made possible by the 1976 Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA), is given to southwestern places the BLM has determined are in special need of protection to preserve the irreplaceable and rare habitat or other cultural qualities they possess.

Despite its possible lack of wilderness qualities, then, one might expect a certain respect for the lake and its habitat, given that it is one of a very few places in the western Mojave that has open water nearly year-round, an important resting place for migratory wildlife and a gorgeous, quiet oasis.

Sadly, that doesn’t keep people from riding their ORVs through the marsh.

This isn’t news, nor is it surprising to any of us who live with and love these desert landscapes. And the damage shown here isn’t nearly as dramatic as the damage done to the creosote flats that surround the lake, in northwestern San Bernardino and eastern Kern counties, by essentially unregulated ORV use — though it is ironic that with all the hundreds of miles of deserted roads and tracks in the area, people still come to this wildlife gem to ride. It’s just a reminder of how callously some of us treat these irreplaceable treasures, and a reminder that we have to work to keep this kind of damage from continuing.

For more on ORV abuse, check out ORV Watch Kern County, and keep an eye peeled here for the upcoming El Paisano, with lots of useful information compiled by DPC’s Terry Weiner.

Passing along an appeal from our colleagues at the California State Parks Foundation:

Dear Friend,

Yesterday the Governor signed a revised Fiscal Year 2009-2010 state budget, based on the package of bills sent to him by the Legislature on July 24. In using his blue-pencil veto authority the Governor exacted an additional $6.2 million cut to the state park system, bringing the total General Fund cut to $14.2 million. It is expected that this will result in the closure of more than 100 of California’s 279 state parks, more than 1/3 of the state park system!

Take action now to help stop these closures!

The Department of Parks and Recreation has not yet released a list of which parks will be included on this closure list or when exactly park closures will start taking place. We will provide you with updates as details are released.

The news of park closures is not only devastating to park users, but also to local economies. Please take a moment to send a message to your legislators urging them to take action to stop these closures. Our state parks need your support now more than ever before!

Thank you for your efforts to help us Save Our State Parks!

Sincerely,
Traci Verardo-Torres
Vice President, Government Affairs

Barbara Boyle at the Sierra Club informs us that the BLM is granting a 45 day extension on public comment on Interior’s Solar Energy Study areas. Those comments had been due by the end of this month. The new comment deadline will be September 14. The notice for the extension will likely appear July 27.

This gives us a month and a half extra to flood the BLM with public opinion regarding what could be the largest giveaway of public land to private industry since the era of the railroad barons.

The Interior Department has thoughtfully provided a webform for your commenting convenience. Spread the word, and bookmark DesertBlog to stay informed as the issue develops.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service released a study this week that examined the benefit to the US economy from birding, indicating that the popular hobby contributes $36 billion annually to the nation’s economy. The report was issued as an addendum to a November 2007 agency study of wildlife-related activities and their economic impact, and reading the coverage of today’s addendum, I became a little curious as to whether the earlier study might shed some light on the continuing issue of whether to cut finding to California’s wildlife-rich state parks.

That earlier study, the “2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation,” surveyed members of the public to determine how many of us were hunters, anglers, and/or wildlife watchers in 2006. It then went on to measure how much cash we’d all shelled out in our pursuit, lethal or non-lethal, of the nation’s wildlife.

The FWS thoughtfully divided up the data into state-by-state reports, and you can read California’s here (PDF).

The upshot of California’s data: closing the state’s parks is likely to have an economic impact that extends well beyond the loss of salaries of park staff.

Of the three kinds of wildlife-related activities, wildlife watching is the only one whose impact and influence grew between 1996 and 2006. Away-from-home wildlife watching showed marked growth in that period, with the number of Californians engaging in wildlife observation more than a mile from home growing by 23 percent, and the total amount of time spent engaging in said observation growing by a stunning 83 percent. The total time spent hunting and fishing dropped by around half in that same period, with the number of hunters and anglers dropping between 35-45 percent.

According to the study, 6,270,000 Californians spent time observing wildlife in 2006, 46% of them more than a mile from home. Twenty-eight percent of participants were engaged in wildlife photography, and 10% in feeding wildlife, primarily by way of bird-feeders, though planting of wildlife food plants was a very popular near-home activity. Forty-four percent of participants restricted their activities to observation. Visits to zoos, aquaria, wild animal parks and like locations were excluded from consideration for purposes of the study.

All told, wildlife-watching Californians spent $4.18 billion on their pastime in 2006, about half of it in travel expenses and the remainder on equipment from binoculars and hiking boots, to photographic equipment, to bird feeders, to big-ticket items such as campers and watercraft. $1.9 billion dollars was spent by wildlife watchers on excursion-related food and lodging alone, an immense boon to park gateway communities and wildlife-rich rural economies.

The average Californian wildlife-watcher spent 641 dollars on her hobby in 2006. Nearly nine-tenths of wildlife watchers neither fished nor hunted in 2006.

While wildlife in California is in no way restricted to State Parks — the BLM, USFS and National Park Service together administer about 50 million acres of wildlife-watching land in California, for example — the State Parks system does include unique wildlife areas from Anza-Borrego’s namesake bighorn sheep to Año Nuevo’s elephant seal rookeries. Cutting nearby communities off from the wildlife watching economic pipeline could seriously damage whatever recovery is in store for California.

While the California legislature works this week to find alternative sources of funding for our irreplaceable state parks, there is a significant source of funds they should be urged to tap: the OHV Trust Fund. The state’s Off-Highway Vehicle Division insists on spending the entire Trust Fund on promoting and maintaining ORV opportunity but by law about $50 million dollars of the fund should go toward maintaining non-motorized recreation resources.

Please take a couple of minutes right now to call :

California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg: Phone: (916) 651-4006
California Speaker of the Assembly Karen Bass: Phone: (916) 319-2047

and ask them to appropriate this funding from the OHV Trust Fund and put it toward State Park Funding as intended by California Senate Bill SB 742.

Background for the call:
• All Californians who use vehicles off the pavement have a portion of their fuel sales taxes paid into the OHV fund.
• Fees from “Green Sticker” (non-street legal vehicles) registration account for only 12% of the OHV Trust Fund.
• The OHV Division uses these funds exclusively to support green-sticker activities. This is a violation of state law, which says: “The department shall support both motorized and nonmotorized recreation related to off-highway vehicle use.”
• More than four fifths of off-highway vehicle use has nothing to do with green-sticker activities. Most off-highway vehicle use in California involves street-legal driving on dirt roads, either for pleasure or to get to a destination for non-motorized recreation.
• The California Legislature should make the OHV Division abide by the law of the land. $49.8 million in OHV funds has been paid by street-legal vehicle users engaging in non-green-sticker activities. That money should be reallocated to the Department of Parks and Recreation, in accordance with California law, to support the full range of recreational activities.
• Non-street-legal vehicles are used by fewer than 1 in 16 California households. California’s non-OHV parks and public lands are available for all Californians to use. Those parks should get the bulk of the tax dollars derived from recreational driving, not the facilities closed to all but the select few who own green-sticker vehicles.

If you have questions or comments please call or email Terry Weiner of the Desert Protective Council ((619) 342-5524.)

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.

Great news for desert wilderness in Imperial County! The NAFTA Tribunal found that the U.S. government has the right to deny Glamis Gold’s proposed mine at Indian Pass, an area sacred to the Quechan tribe and adjacent to the existing Indian Pass Wilderness Area. Our deep thanks go to Courtney Coyle for her long years of dedication on behalf of the Quechan Tribe in pursuing the protection of this sacred area. Edie Harmon – DPC Life Member, past board member and Sierra Club activist – also deserves major credit for leading the opposition to this mine when almost no one else was listening.

Congratulations and abiding gratitude, Courtney and Edie!

DPC believes this is the opportune moment to pursue permanent protection of the sacred sites and trails in the Indian Pass Area through legislative means.

The press release from the Quechan Nation is reprinted below. The Yuma Sun also covered the decision.

PRESS RELEASE:

NAFTA TRIBUNAL RECOGNIZES SACRED PLACE OF QUECHAN TRIBE – DENIES GLAMIS GOLD’S CLAIM IN FULL

Fort Yuma, California/Arizona (June 9, 2009). Today, the NAFTA Tribunal in the Glamis Gold dispute against the United States released its long-awaited decision.

The Tribunal found that the State of California’s and the United States’ actions in regulating hard rock mining on public lands did NOT violate provisions of NAFTA.

“We were the first tribe to have our briefs accepted in a NAFTA claim dispute,” stated Mike Jackson, Sr., President, Quechan Nation. ” The award shows that the Tribunal understood that the Indian Pass area is a sacred area to the Quechan people, worthy of protection from hard rock mining. After battling the mining company for nearly fifteen years, it is good to have this decided. We encourage Glamis (now GoldCorp) to take immediate steps to put the matter behind all of us.”

Such steps could include GoldCorp not appealing the decision and abandoning or otherwise relinquishing its mining claims so that the existing withdrawal of the area from new mining claims would absorb the area proposed for the mine. Glamis must also pay two-thirds of all proceeding costs.

“We are very pleased to see that an international tribunal recognized the obligation of state and local governments to respect indigenous cultural rights. We also note the United States Government worked with the Quechan Tribe in defending its interests, and that the Tribe’s voice was heard at the hearing,” stated Courtney Ann Coyle, Attorney for the Tribe. “We sincerely hope that the Tribe’s actions will pave the way for increased participation by other indigenous peoples in international economic law disputes.”

However, the ruling does not appear to affect GoldCorp’s mining claims in the land. The Tribe has continued its strong opposition to mining – or any development – in this sacred place. The Tribe will be examining its options to further ensure protection of this place in perpetuity.

Preservation would be consistent with the United States’ position in the dispute that, “Glamis’s unpatented mining claims . . . never included the right to mine in any manner which interfered with the state’s ability to accommodate the free exercise of religion, injured Native American sacred sites or endangered the environment or public health and safety.” Thus, use of the land cannot proceed in violation of those tribal rights/interests. The international tribunal found Glamis’s claims wanting, as the Clinton Administration found their claims under domestic land use laws equally flawed.

The Tribe intends to call upon the Obama Administration to confirm the validity of the original Solicitor’s Opinion in this matter, which determined that BLM has the ability and indeed the obligation to deny mines that would impair or degrade native sacred places. A federal court agreed with the original Opinion, application of which would lead to another denial of the mine, should GoldCorp or another company foolishly seek to permit it in spite of the site’s history.

The Quechan Indian Nation is a federally recognized Tribe. About 3,000 Tribal members live on the reservation. The Quechan is the third largest California land-based tribe, with about 45,000 acres in reservation status. Their aboriginal lands include the area protected in the Clinton-era decision originally denying the Glamis Gold mine, a denial that was later rescinded by the Bush Administration, and lands which became the poster child for successful hard rock mining reform in California. The Tribe has utilized the Indian Pass area since time immemorial for religious, ceremonial and educational purposes. The Indian Pass area was also designated as one of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2002 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Tribe offers its deep appreciation to all of its supporters who helped protect this sacred area.

For additional information, please contact:

Mike Jackson, Sr., President Quechan Nation 760.572.0213
Pauline P. Jose, Quechan Culture Committee 760.572.0661
Courtney Ann Coyle, Attorney Quechan Nation 858.454.8687 or CourtCoyle@aol.com

(Photo of the Indian Pass area courtesy Monica Argandoña / CWC).