Trying to rebuild after 40 frozen years

A 1966 ban on development in a disputed tribal area left many Navajo living in third-world conditions -- or forced them out entirely. When the freeze ended, many residents didn't know where to begin.

Dispute over the 1.6 million acre tract of tribal land in northern Arizona became known as the "Bennett freeze." (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

By Kate Linthicum
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Cameron, Ariz. - This is the land where Larry Gordy was destined to live, until it was made unlivable.

The Navajo believe that a person will always be tied to the place where his or her umbilical cord is buried. When Gordy was born in 1968, his father put his in this rust-colored dirt. It was here on the family's ranch on the edge of the Painted Desert that his father dreamed of one day building homes for his children, and of tilling a field where watermelon and corn could grow.

But the Gordys were forced to put their dreams on hold. In 1966, the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Robert Bennett, halted development on 1.6 million acres of tribal land in northeastern Arizona that was claimed by both the Navajo nation and the Hopi tribe. Bennett imposed the ban to stop either tribe from taking advantage of the other while they negotiated ownership.

The ban became known as the Bennett Freeze. It meant the Gordys and the 8,000 or so other Navajos living on the land couldn't erect homes, open businesses or even repair their roofs. No roads or schools were built, no electric, gas or water lines were permitted.

The land dispute dragged on for 40 years, paralyzing residents in a state of poverty rarely seen in America. Because few Hopis lived on the disputed territory, the ban affected mostly Navajos like the Gordys, who deserted their ranch after it fell into disrepair.

The tribes settled their differences in 2006 -- most of the land went to the Navajo -- and in May, President Obama cleared the way for federal funding to help rehabilitate the area, but no money has been earmarked yet.

Navajo officials hope some money may come their way. But as politicians grapple with how to spend any funds, the people face a question of their own: Is it possible to make up for 40 years of nothing?

Gordy is now 41, with a wife and four children. They live in a drafty trailer in the town of Cameron, a 30-minute drive from the old ranch. Cameron was also under the Freeze, but in town, at least, the family could string an extension cord from a neighbor's house to get electricity, and draw water from a working well a few miles down the highway. Though it is now free to do so, the family has not made improvements to the trailer. The cash Gordy makes selling firewood, and the money his wife earns selling jewelry to tourists at the Grand Canyon, an hour away, isn't enough.

As often as he can, Gordy brings his children to the ranch, which is scattered with rotting buildings, dirt-caked appliances and rusty car parts, to teach them about their heritage and about the land they were forced to leave.

But he isn't sure where to begin.

"If it wasn't for the Bennett Freeze, we would have a place to live," said Gordy, a large man with a patchy black beard and an amiable manner. "But now we just have a junk pile out here. Now that the freeze is lifted, we're expected to come out here and build something out of all this junk. Well, with what? It'd be like if a rancher penned up a bunch of sheep for 40 years and then all of a sudden one day he opened the fence and let them loose. They wouldn't know what to do. And neither do we."

The Navajo nation, whose territory sprawls 27,000 square miles across three states, is America's largest tribe, and one of its poorest and most isolated. The tribe only recently opened its first casino, and unemployment hovers about 50%. Many people still live without electricity and plumbing. But even by Navajo standards, the conditions in the former Bennett Freeze region are astonishing.

A study commissioned by the Navajo found that only 24% of the houses in the area are habitable. Most homes lack plumbing, and while a third of the residents haul in potable water, others resort to drinking from the same wells as their livestock -- water that in some cases is contaminated with bacteria or uranium.

Nearly 60% of houses lack electricity, even as steel power lines strung across the land buzz with the energy they carry from the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., south to Phoenix and west to Los Angeles.

But on a recent afternoon, on a high, dust-blown plain known as Black Falls, the sounds of promise rang out from a rooftop. Two men, sweating in the sun, had spent all day on top of Mary and John Knight's 47-year-old cinder-block home, hammering down a tarp to protect the roof from the elements. It was a simple act that had been illegal for nearly half a century.

When the freeze was lifted, a local community organizing group informed the Knights that they were now eligible for money from federal programs. They secured roofing materials from a weatherization program and called over some friends to help install it. As a gesture of thanks to the workers, they planned to slaughter a sheep to make mutton stew.

The Knights had tried to fix the roof twice before. Rangers from the Hopi tribe came by each time and told them to stop.

The tribes have been rivals since the 1500s, when the nomadic Navajo arrived on the Hopi-occupied Colorado Plateau, a stretch of high-altitude desert where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico now meet. The conflict over land rights began in 1934, when Congress set aside a large tract in Arizona for "the Navajo and such other Indians as may already be located thereon." The land was populated mostly by Navajos, but the Hopis laid claim to the area because a Hopi village, Moenkopi, was located in its midst.

In 1966, while the tribes negotiated ownership, Bennett imposed the development ban. Moenkopi and the Navajo town of Tuba City were exempt. But residents of Bennett Freeze lands lived under continuous monitoring.

"Our parents felt like they had to hide and sneak around," Gordy said. "If you tried to do an addition, the Hopi would pay you a visit and say, 'Hey, there's no agreement yet.' "

Some people found ways to evade the freeze by building horse corals slowly, post by post, to avoid attracting attention from Hopi rangers who circled overhead in helicopters. Others camouflaged improvements by remodeling only the inside of their homes. Gordy's family stored the hay for their horses in a junked bus and built their corral on the side of a sandstone rock, where it was somewhat hidden. But they couldn't hook up to water or electricity. Eventually the hardship drove them out.

Many, including Katherine Peshlakai and her daughter, Eleanor, stayed.

The Peshlakais live about an hour's drive from Gordy's ranch in a neatly kept house atop a wind-swept hill beneath the vast Arizona sky. From their home they can see hundreds of miles in all directions, from the burnt-orange mesas in the east to the San Francisco Peaks -- one of the Navajo's four sacred mountain ranges -- in the west.

Both tie their silver hair back in buns and walk with the help of canes.

"Our children and our grandchildren is why we stay," said Katherine Peshlakai, who is in her 80s.

Since the freeze was lifted, the Peshlakais' home has been outfitted with a solar panel and a small wind-power generator, which they rent for $25 a month from their tribal chapter.

They say they are also in line to receive a water sanitation system that would include bathroom fixtures from the Indian Health Service. But they complain that the aid extended so far from the Navajo nation and the federal government has only come from the top down. "They don't want to hear our suggestions," Peshlakai said. "They don't want to work with us."

Many people who lived through the Bennett Freeze say they have little faith in the federal government and complain that the tribal government should have done more to get the freeze lifted.

"What really makes me sad is when the tribe gives up on its own people," said Vera Redell Bennett, 52, who was told that she could not move onto a plot of land near her mother's home on the outskirts of Tuba City because it was on the freeze.

Paralyzed from the waist down since age 18, when she was shot by her ex-boyfriend, Bennett has lived inside her van for the last six years. She parks it in an empty lot in Tuba City.

It's cold in the winter, she said, and she often doesn't have enough gas to keep the heater running. But at least she has a bed, piles of blankets and her little dog, Missy. Every day a caretaker provided by the state brings her food and empties the jugs that she relieves herself in.

Bennett has resigned herself to her disability, but not her third-world living conditions.

"People who don't live on the reservation don't live like this," she said. "I shouldn't be living like this."

The development freeze was hardest on the sick, said Nina Tohannie, 50, who works for the Indian Health Service. She said substandard living conditions had led to a number of health problems, including an epidemic of upper respiratory problems linked to badly ventilated stoves. And life without electricity meant that sick people were unable to refrigerate their medicines. That was one of the reasons Gordy's father, who, like many Navajo, suffered from diabetes, left his ranch. He died in 1995 from complications of the disease.

Roman Bitsuie, a Navajo official who is working with Arizona Sen. John McCain's office to craft legislation to infuse money into the Bennett Freeze area, said it might be impossible to repay people for damage done to their physical and psychological health.

"How do you compensate for someone's spiritual scars?" he asked. "I don't think there's a price on that."

Bitsuie said he did not know how much money might be included in the bill, which could be introduced later this year, or how it would be distributed.

Don Yellowman, the president of Forgotten People, a Navajo community organizing group that is one of the only groups doing work in the former Bennett Freeze region, said that redevelopment money should not go through the Navajo government but through federal agencies such as the Department of Transportation or the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The people don't trust the tribal government to handle rehabilitation, he said, because of a history of corruption -- the Navajo president was recently put on leave while he and other top officials are investigated for fraud -- and because they feel let down.

"There was no real public education about what people were enduring," he said.

Some people, like Denise Almeida, who lives not far from central Tuba City, don't even know whether they were living under the freeze.

All Almeida knows is that she was unable to get aid when her trailer burned down last year. She and six of her children now live in a sagging travel trailer without water or electricity.

People carry on; if there was one thing Larry Gordy learned while living through the Bennett Freeze, it was that.

Even though he no longer lives on the ranch, he still keeps a few horses there. When his children were born, he buried their umbilical cords in the corral.

Now that the freeze is lifted, Gordy hopes to rebuild and move his family back onto the land.

Next March, he said, he will start by tilling a field. The kids want to grow pumpkins. And he'd like to try his hand at watermelon and corn.

Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources

Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's no health risk.

By Frank Clifford
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M. - More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.

Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.

So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission.

Laboratory officials insist that the waste doesn't jeopardize people's health because even when storm water rushing down a canyon stirs up highly contaminated sediment, it is soon diluted or trapped in canyon bottoms, where it can be excavated and hauled away.

"We are seeing no human or ecological risk," said Danny Katzman, director of the lab's water stewardship program. "We won't be surprised on occasion to see a higher than normal reading. But those higher values last for 40 minutes during a flood, and maybe two hours out of a year."

Much surface contamination, however, becomes embedded in sediment or moves down into groundwater. That subterranean migration poses the greatest long-term danger to drinking-water wells and ultimately the Rio Grande.

"When you see a child's footprints and Tonka toys in canyons where there is plutonium, there is reason to believe that a lot more work needs to be done to make the environment safe," said Ron Curry, secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department.

In 2002, the department issued an extensive cleanup order stating that waste at Los Alamos may pose "an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment." Laboratory officials accused the department of exaggerating the threat and resisted the order for several years before agreeing to a revised plan to scrub about 2,000 dirty sites by 2015.

As part of that effort, about 300 monitoring wells and gauges have been installed. Contaminated soil is being removed from canyon bottoms. Wetlands are being planted and small dams built to arrest the flow of polluted storm water. In the summer, the lab began loading some of its hottest radioactive waste into sealed containers by remote control and trucking it to a federal underground storage facility in Carlsbad, N.M.

Ambitious as it is, the plan deals with surface sites, not tainted aquifers. About 18 million cubic feet of waste is sequestered at Los Alamos. No one knows how it is slipping through scrambled layers of rock described by Katzman as "unbelievably complex geology."

Moreover, scientists at Los Alamos say they haven't determined where all of the waste was buried across the laboratory's 40-square-mile property. And they acknowledge that some of the monitoring wells used to measure contamination in deep groundwater may have failed to detect certain radioactive isotopes.

Adding to the uncertainty, a draft report released last summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the lab may have substantially underreported the extent of plutonium and tritium released into the environment since the 1940s.

More recently, the state Environment Department reported finding DEHP, an organic compound used in plastics and explosives, at 12 times the safe exposure level in an aquifer that supplies drinking water to Los Alamos and the nearby community of White Rock. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies DEHP as a probable human carcinogen also capable of harming reproductive systems.

In another surprise, water from a broken main flushed out buried waste near an old plutonium processing plant last year and pushed it beyond the largest dam built to stop the spread of contamination. Analysis of sediment by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oversight Bureau revealed "the highest concentrations [of plutonium] the bureau has ever recorded for this medium."

One of the canyons where radioactive waste has been found joins the Rio Grande just three miles above a diversion project the city of Santa Fe is building to capture nearly 3 billion gallons of water annually from the river. The $200-million project, scheduled to start operating in two years, is being designed to screen out and treat contaminated water. But not all radioactive isotopes are easily treatable. Tritium, which has been detected near the Rio Grande, bonds with water.

The directors of the diversion project -- while publicly expressing their confidence in the treatment system -- have been quietly urging the laboratory to do more to stop waste from moving toward the river.

George Rael, assistant manager of environmental operations at the lab, said it would cost as much as $13 billion to remove all accessible contamination. Even if there were enough money available, exhuming the waste could put more people at risk than leaving it alone -- at least in the short run.

"Some of the waste offers quite a challenge," said David McInroy, director of the lab's corrective action program. Digging it up, he said, could expose workers and others to a toxic cloud of debris. If left in place, it might turn up years later in groundwater.

With a population of more than 12,000, Los Alamos today is a far different place than it was in 1943 when the secret weapons complex was known as "Site Y."

The lab conducts climate-change research, screens AIDS vaccines, evaluates new tests for breast cancer and analyzes biological pathogens. Yet most of its budget still goes toward national defense. Los Alamos is the nation's sole manufacturer of plutonium pits, the triggers for nuclear weapons, and it continues to produce toxic waste.

Many residents of Los Alamos have become inured to the hazards of their environment. They hike and picnic in canyons dotted with toxic hot spots.

Just north of Los Alamos, the Santa Clara Pueblo recently installed air monitors that confirmed fears that the wind carries radioactive dust.

Joseph Chavarria, head of Santa Clara's environmental affairs department, said dust settles on the ground after it rains and contaminants are absorbed by edible plants. He said even potters are at risk: "When we make pottery, we test the texture of the clay by putting it in our mouths."

Pueblo officials would not reveal the levels of contamination detected by the air monitors. "I can say they were high enough to raise concerns about the future," said Santa Clara Gov. Walter Dasheno. "It made me think it might not always be safe to live here."

Tug-of-war over future of public land in Mojave Desert far from over, despite sweeping protections

Access to land such as Joshua Tree National Park is a key issue to many. (2003 / The Press-Enterprise)

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise

Fifteen years have passed since the historic California Desert Protection Act set aside millions of unspoiled acres as wilderness, elevated Joshua Tree and Death Valley to national park status and created the Mojave National Preserve.

The legislation was the largest land conservation bill in the continental United States, hailed for its safekeeping of a long-ignored 6.37 million acres of landscape that counts "singing" sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones and world-class climbing boulders among its attractions.

"It was a hell of a battle. We didn't know how hard it would be," said Elden Hughes, of Joshua Tree, former chairman of the Sierra Club's desert committee. "I don't care where in the United States you were, you could hear me shouting when it passed."

Now, proposals are pending for desert landfills, airports, housing developments, renewable energy projects and water harvesting, pushing a new generation to find ways to balance such pressures with the need for open space.

The process has to be a consensus, said Ralph Hollenbacher, a manager at Chevron, which is planning several solar projects.

"You don't have to please all of the people, but you have to please most of the people," he said. "What may be developable for one individual may be a national monument for another."

Among Chevron's projects is a 4,000-acre development near the southeast border of Joshua Tree National Park. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management vetoed the company's two previous site choices because they were in sensitive areas, Hollenbacher said.

With new urgency, environmentalists are filing lawsuits not just to protect endangered species from urban sprawl, but also from climate change. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is crafting legislation that would set aside millions more acres in the Mojave.

"If you look at the California desert, it's wedged in between two of the most rapidly expanding areas of the country, greater Los Angeles and greater Las Vegas. With that comes some intense development pressure," said Mike Cipra, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Proponents of the Desert Protection Act laud it as a guardian of great expanses that provide solitude, inspiration and a refuge for wildlife. Almost 3.5 million acres were declared wilderness, which puts it off-limits to vehicles, mining and energy development. Hiking, hunting, camping and livestock grazing are allowed.

Critics say the protections are too extreme and make the land inaccessible to all but a small percentage of the population.

Some people contend that development in the desert is a necessary, and inevitable, way of keeping the state economically viable and meeting sustainable-energy goals. But others say it would prompt plant and wildlife extinctions and bring indelible changes to one of the state's last uninhabited spaces.

Competing viewpoints

Donna Charpied, an organic jojoba farmer, has lived in Desert Center for 29 years. For almost the entire time, she has been fighting the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill, which would dump Los Angeles County trash into an old iron ore pit within two miles of Joshua Tree National Park wilderness, where threatened desert tortoises roam. The case is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Desert Protection Act missed a "big piece of the puzzle" by not including Eagle Mountain, Charpied said. She also is fighting energy development plans that would bring new roads and other changes.

"There are going to be places we've gone all our lives that we won't be able to, and it's not because it's protected, but because it's fenced," said Charpied, who also worries about air quality and industrialization from the projects.

Arkansas resident and retired Riverside firefighter Hallett Newman has a similar complaint about access, but it has to do with wilderness protections.

"They're closing down way too much desert," he said. "Few people have the opportunity to visit the interiors of wilderness areas because of their physical ability, when you have to hike and carry everything with you."

John Stewart, resource consultant for the California Association of 4WD Clubs, said some of his favorite spots are no longer accessible by road.

"I love getting out in the desert, driving the washes and the old roads to see where they go. You find beautiful vistas, places to have a campfire at night under the stars, places of solitude. These are places you can't really hike to."

Future protections

Environmentalists are hanging their hopes on new legislation by Feinstein, who also carried the 1994 bill.

Feinstein's latest piece, expected to be introduced within days, purportedly would create a national monument and protect public land in eastern San Bernardino County, south of the Mojave preserve.

The monument would encompass thousands of unspoiled acres of former railroad land stretching from Barstow to the Colorado River. The Wildlands Conservancy bought the land and turned it over to the BLM in 2004 for preservation. But the BLM has accepted applications for energy developments on much of that acreage.

David Myers, the Oak Glen-based conservancy's executive director, said Feinstein's bill would alleviate many impacts of renewable energy, which can consume massive amounts of water, scrape the land bare and disrupt wildlife corridors.

"If you look at the desert as a body, this will save a lot of the vital organs. It saves the heart of the desert," Myers said. "It's really important to think big and protect big landscapes."

His group supports wind and solar projects on private land already disturbed by farming or other activity.

So does Jim Dodson, one of the original Desert Protection Act proponents.

"There's enough land out there so we can have parks and monuments and wilderness and still have enough land left over for renewable energy generation," he said. "It just requires some reasoned analysis and forethought."

Navajos to reclaim bones misidentified as poet's

By PAUL FOY
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — A few months ago, the family of Everett Ruess, an idealistic young artist who vanished on a wilderness journey in 1934, was ready to accept his grim fate — that he had been killed by Indians.

They prepared to cremate remains that were found in wild Utah redrock country, which would have forever sealed the legend of Ruess with ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

But nagging doubts led four nieces and nephews to another DNA lab, which reported the bones were from another, unknown person. It was a stunning reversal for a legend-busting story in National Geographic Adventure last spring.

For Ruess flame keepers, it was proof the man never wanted to be found. For the family, it was only more grief.

"It's very difficult for us," Brian Ruess, a 44-year-old software salesman in Portland, Ore., said Thursday. "Our interest was more for closure than romanticism. It's tough."

Ruess said the family was "very close" to cremating remains of somebody who wasn't their uncle. Now the family is shipping the bones and a few artifacts to the Navajo Nation reservation where they were discovered last year. Scientists say the remains are most likely those of a young Navajo Indian.

So how did the original DNA researchers get it so wrong, and where does family go from here?

Brian Ruess said the family doesn't know where to turn to solve the mystery of their uncle.

"The story is about Everett. We just found the wrong grave," said David Roberts, a contributing editor of the magazine, who weaved a Navajo legend describing Ruess' murder by other Indians to a site where an elder said he hastily buried the body.

"It's possible he's there, nearby," Roberts said Thursday. He plans no further search.

Others believe the rest of the story holds up. It relies largely on an account of a Navajo elder who waited decades to reveal that he had witnessed the murder of a white man resembling Everett Ruess.

The story was originally revealed to Daisy Johnson, who lived on the Navajo reservation, by a medicine man who blamed her grandfather's cancer on having handled Ruess' remains decades earlier. Johnson died of ovarian cancer Aug. 25. Her brother, Denny Bellson, followed the accounts to a burial site. He might have gotten the location wrong.

A measure of the power of the Everett Ruess myth was the backlash and threats that followed Robert's story. Brian Ruess said the family disavows zealots who didn't want to hear that he "lasted for a month and was killed by Indians" on his final wilderness journey.

"People want their heroes to succeed," Brian Ruess said. "Everybody likes a happy ending."

Before Everett Ruess vanished, setting off from Escalante, Utah, he wrote a final letter to his family in California that "as to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon" and "it is enough that I am surrounded with beauty." He was 20, a gifted poet who had explored the Southwest over much of four years.

Initial DNA tests were termed "irrefutable" months ago by University of Colorado researchers. On Wednesday, they said they had been unable to duplicate the results on a second try, but don't know how they erred. Other experts suggest they mixed DNA from Ruess' survivors with that of the discovered bones, contaminating the results.

Scientists at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md. — considered one of the world's pre-eminent authorities on DNA research — say they have better technology for evaluating badly degraded DNA and made the right call.

"It was definitely not a match," said Mike Coble, research section chief for the Maryland lab. "Our results were very convincing."

Coble said his lab took on the Ruess mystery as a challenge, refusing the family's offer of payment for its services. They had one femur, a leg bone, to work with for DNA testing.

The structure of the bone suggested a man in his early 20s — the right age for a Ruess match — but military scientists say the DNA was distinctly Navajo, while anthropologists say other parts of the skeleton — a jaw bone and a tooth — suggested a Native American.

The DNA testing wasn't easy.

"The fact this bone was lying in desert soil so long, it was actually reddish-pink, the color of the soil. That can create problems when you do genetic testing," Coble said.

The Armed Forces lab is dedicated to identifying remains of U.S. soldiers and is working cases as old as from World War II.

Earlier this year, it disproved a legend of the Russian revolution, confirming that two missing children of Russian Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, did not survive the slaughter that left the rest of the family in a mass grave in 1918. Remains of the czar's only son and a daughter were recovered from another location.

Coble said nothing about DNA science is easy or simple and that the technology was still evolving. The testing by a colleague of his, Dr. Odile Loreille, use techniques employed at only one other U.S. lab, in New York, for criminal cases.

University of Colorado biologist Kenneth Krauter, who handled the initial DNA tests of Ruess' supposed remains, used equipment considered reliable only for good DNA samples, Coble said. Krauter readily conceded his error and said he was using "inappropriate" technology.

Heat, heavy coverage hurt bird hunting

Jim Matthews, Outdoor Writer
Inland Empire Daily Bulletin

APPLE VALLEY - Upland bird hunters reported seeing good numbers of quail and chukar throughout most of Southern California's deserts and foothill regions, but rain just before the opener, then heat and heavy hunting pressure over the weekend, made for difficult conditions and low hunter success.

"At Goat Springs, there was approximately the same number of vehicles you'd find at a large car dealership," said Rick Bean of Hesperia about a popular chukar hunting spot in the West Mojave off Highway 247 between Barstow and Lucerne Valley on opening day. While Bean and his hunting partners, Matt and Debbie Gangola of Glendora, didn't bag a bird - in spite of seeing a covey with 60 or more birds - two young hunters they met near a guzzler north of Goat Springs managed to get seven chukar between them.

Chris Coston of Orange was hunting near Ord Mountain, another popular chukar spot in the West Mojave, and said there were hunters everywhere, but that most guys he spoke with had "one or two birds each."

"There were a lot of birds, a lot of birds," said Coston, who managed to bag two chukar on opening Saturday and then another pair in the same area on Sunday.

Farther north, chukar hunters in the Southern Sierra Nevada, White and Inyo mountains, along with the popular Red Mountain region, all had similar reports: lots of birds but tough hunting conditions. Several hunters complained of chukar flushing well out of range in the Rand Mountains, but the hunting pressure was very high in that area, like the West Mojave, and it was warm.

The Mojave National Preserve had an excellent hatch of quail and chukar this year, but rain apparently scattered the birds and then warm weather made hunting difficult. Most hunters reported seeing birds, but success seemed to be about only a quail per hunter, with the chukar even tougher, flushing out of range.

Ed Tolman, along with his son Andreas and father DeLoy, and Dave Hancock and Ted Werner, all of the Chino Hills area, were out in the preserve Friday and saw good numbers of quail scouting for the opener. But opening day they managed to bag only five quail between them. Werner and Andreas Tolman wore themselves out chasing chukar over some nasty terrain, seeing 120 or so birds but unable to bag a single one.

Jack Ingram of Chino managed to get six Gambel's quail in two days of hunting in the Mid Hills region of the preserve.

"The birds were hard to locate, but I did get into a couple small coveys," said Ingram on Monday.

"I had my shots and I could have taken a limit for the weekend if I were on my game. As it was, I will be grilling six up tomorrow for dinner."

In the Imperial Valley and near the Salton Sea, quail numbers were reported to be well up from the past couple seasons, but the heat made the birds difficult to hunt, especially after the coveys were scattered opening morning.

Along the lower Colorado River, there were generally pretty good reports of quail numbers from Yuma to Needles. Robert Pierce, who managed Walter's Camp south of Palo Verde, said there were a lot of birds in the desert washes this year, and he and his brother-in-law managed to get 11 birds between them on Sunday of opening weekend, after being skunked the day before.

"There were a lot of birds out there, but there are too many guys with quads who chase them on those things and then jump off and shoot them," he said.

"I'm from Texas, where you get out and walk and hunting quail behind dogs, and it's just a shame that quail season was so badly abused.

"On Sunday the quads were gone, the jeeps were gone, and we got 11 birds in four hours of hunting. All the coveys were big, massive, with 20 to 30 birds."

A number of hunters complained about unethical hunters sitting on desert water sources (you can't stay on a water source for more than 30 minutes, so wildlife can come to water) and people on quads who didn't use normal hunter etiquette.

With another warm weekend forecast, it doesn't look like the next weekend of the season will be any better than the first.

HWY 62 Art Tours start Saturday

By Kurt Schauppner
The Desert Trail

MORONGO BASIN — Art and artists will once again be the focus of attention in the Morongo Basin in late October and early November as the open studio art tours, redubbed the HWY 62 Art Tours, return, thanks in part to the Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council.

“We are trying to make this more recognizable,” Twentynine Palms artist Mita Barter said of the tour’s name change. “A lot of people from out of the area don’t know where the Morongo Basin is.”

A lot of them, however, do know where Highway 62, also known as Twentynine Palms Highway, can be found.

“It is the artery of the Morongo Basin. We like to think of it as the ARTery of the Morongo Basin. It is the road that connects us all,” Barter said, comparing Twentyine Palms Highway to Route 66. “This is our mother road.”

The tours, giving residents and visitors a chance to visit local artists in their studios, will visit the west side of the Morongo Basin, including Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley, Pioneertown, Flamingo Heights, Landers and Joshua Tree, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25.

Venues during the first weekend will include the Purple Agave Art Gallery, Water Canyon Coffee Company, the Wishbone Gallery and the Integratron

Tours will take place in the east side of the Morongo Basin, including Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms and Wonder Valley, the next weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Venues during the second weekend will include the Morongo Basin Life Drawing League, 29 Palms Creative Center and Gallery, 29 Palms Art Gallery and the Wonder Valley Labyrinth.

Some venues, including the Hi-Desert Nature Museum, the Red Arrow Gallery, Crossroads Cafe, Studio Godot and True World Gallery, will take part in the tour on both weekends.

Something new for this year’s tours will be a music component, with musicians playing at many of the studios on the tour with help from local musician and sound engineer Ted Quinn.

Maps to each of the tour venues will be available at the Yucca Valley Chamber of Commerce, 56711 Twentynine Palms Highway, the Joshua Tree Chamber of Commerce, 61325 Twentynine Palms Highway, and the Twentynine Palms Chamber of Commerce, 73660 Civic Center Drive, and in the Hi-Desert Star and Desert Trail.

Tour participants will also have the opportunity to purchase full-color programs for $10 online at www.hwy62arttours.com.

The two-weekend event will also see a celebration of Joshua Tree National Park’s 15th anniversary as a national park from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25 at the Starlite Courtyard in downtown Joshua Tree.

The entrance is between Instant Karma Yoga and the True World Gallery.

Admission is free.

Live music will be played all day and beer and wine will be served after 5 p.m.

Food and beverage vendors will be on hand, or participants are invited to bring takeout from one of the local restaurants.

If you go;

What: HWY 62 Art Tours

When: Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24, 25 and 31 and Nov. 1

Where: Artists studios around the Morongo Basin

Information: http://www.hwy62arttours.com/

Did Utah blink in Snake Valley talks?

Water » New documents show Beehive State's position changed after Nevada's threats.

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

About halfway through secret four-year negotiations on how a reluctant Utah could share the Snake Valley aquifer with Nevada, a Silver State official and a Las Vegas water utility threatened they could take the matter to court or to Congress, memos and e-mails show.

The correspondence, released under an open-records request from the Great Basin Water Network, illuminates Nevada's no-surrender insistence that Snake Valley water be split 50-50, even though Utah officials believed that impossible.

The documents also appear to undermine recent assurances from Mike Styler, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, that the proposed water-sharing agreement is as good for Utah as it is for Nevada.

It's not, critics have said repeatedly at public meetings and in comments submitted to the Utah Division of Water Rights since the August announcement of a draft deal with Nevada to plumb the west desert.

"It might be an exaggeration to say we got rolled, but we surely backtracked," said Steve Erickson of the Great Basin Water Network. "I was surprised the state backed down on all those positions and that they're advocating this agreement so adamantly when once they were opposed to them."

Many critics have denounced the agreement as a giveaway to Las Vegas at the expense of an aquifer that can maintain equilibrium only with its current water drawdown.

On Monday, Styler acknowledged that the correspondence with Allen Biaggi, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, showed he and other Utah negotiators believed their neighboring state's demands spelled trouble for Utah.

Styler also said he agreed with many of the nearly 200 or so critical comments his department has heard since announcing a tentative agreement with Nevada to divide evenly an estimated 132,000 acre-feet of Snake Valley water a year.

"It makes me smile to see those comments," he said, because those are the very points we've been hammering at all this time."

Nevada negotiators "were dead set they had to come up with a 50-50 [split]," Styler said. "We were saying there was no way, when we're already using more than half that."

A key problem was a U.S. Geological Survey study that estimated Snake Valley's aquifer could yield up to 132,000 acre-feet of water a year. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, enough to irrigate an acre of ground with a foot of water or supply water to one or two households.

But Styler said a sustainable drawdown would be only 105,000 to 111,000 acre-feet per year. The proposed agreement would divvy 108,000 acre-feet, with Utah getting 60 percent. The remaining 26,000 acre-feet of "reserve" water, Styler said, couldn't be tapped unless both states agree, "if it's even there."

Even if it is, said Snake Valley resident Kathy Hill, "I think 108,000 acre-feet may be on the upper end of realistic."

In a Sept. 30, 2006, memo to Biaggi, Styler said the Southern Nevada Water Authority, frustrated with the pace of the negotiations, had threatened to take the matter to its congressional members, who could try to change a 2004 law requiring both states to agree on a water split.

And letters from two years ago make it clear Utah didn't want to base a 50-50 agreement on the USGS estimate, which the federal agency said was only 67 percent reliable and included water used by the plants that now keep Snake Valley soil from blowing straight to the Wasatch Front.

"The harder Utah looks at that criteria, the less reasonable it looks to Utah," Styler wrote to Biaggi on July 31, 2007. "We are unaware of any reasoning that would lead us to conclude a 50/50 split is equitable or based on any scientific or legal grounds."

Hill and her husband, Ken, have a farm in Partoun in Juab County and work in Tintic School District. Kathy Hill said she has studied the documents and finds them both reassuring and frustrating.

"The Utah negotiators," she said, "were saying exactly what we're saying now."

She disliked the tone of Biaggi's 15-page correspondence of Oct. 9, 2007, which said Utah's refusal to negotiate in good faith causes Nevada "injury" -- a key component of any lawsuit -- and that after Utah added a new negotiator the previous spring, the discussion "regressed from its earlier movement toward common ground."

That negotiator is Dean Baker, a Nevada rancher who has spent millions of dollars fighting Nevada's plan for the Las Vegas pipeline.

"I was so outraged when I read that," Hill said.

Biaggi said Monday he wouldn't apologize for the letter's tone.

"At the time, the negotiations were not going well," he said. The letter "lays out the state of Nevada's position and what was at stake for both states ... if the two states could not get an agreement."

The proposed deal

The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to build a 300-mile pipeline that would siphon 50,000 to 60,000 acre-feet of water from the Snake Valley to support current and anticipated growth in Las Vegas.

An acre-foot supplies up to two households for a year.

A draft water-sharing accord, advanced as a hedge against court battles, would divide a presumed 132,000 acre-feet a year between Utah and Nevada.

But the agreement doesn't authorize pumping. Nevada's state engineer would make that decision in 2019 if the deal becomes final or in 2011 if it does not.

Opponents include Salt Lake, Utah, Millard and Juab counties, west desert ranchers, Utah and Nevada conservationists, the Utah Medical Association and the National Park Service.

The Utah Department of Natural Resources backs the proposed accord as do the Washington County Water Conservation District, Ivins City and the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The many meanings of a cross

Opinion

The dispute over a cross in the Mojave points to how entangled religion and culture are.

By Gregory Rodriguez
Los Angeles Times

I'm all for the separation of church and state. I believe that government endorsement of any particular religious sect or tradition has a corrosive effect on both the state and the faith in question. But I also think the attempt to separate religion from government is veering toward a foolish, parochial and ultimately impossible quest to separate religion from culture.

Last week, the ACLU of Southern California's Peter Eliasberg argued the case of Salazar vs. Buono before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, which involves a cross that has stood, in various forms, for 75 years as a memorial to World War I veterans in the Mojave Desert, elicited a heated exchange between Eliasberg and Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a debate over whether the cross, which is on property surrounded by the Mojave National Preserve, violates the 1st Amendment ban on the establishment of religion, Eliasberg argued that a cross "is the predominant symbol of Christianity" that "signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind from our sins." Therefore, it shouldn't be allowed to "stand alone" as a war memorial in a national park. Scalia offered a different definition. "The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead," he said. The Times reported that Scalia "sharply disagreed" with Eliasberg.

Eliasberg responded: "I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew," he said.

Scalia wasn't persuaded: "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

I see Eliasberg's point, but Scalia's notion that the cross has become a generalized symbol of memorial strikes me as true too. Sure, you might suspect that Scalia, a practicing Roman Catholic and a well-known conservative, is simply seeking an argument that would allow the cross in this case to pass constitutional muster, but he's also accurately pointing to how entangled religion and culture are.

Eliasberg's reading that the cross has a specialized religious significance symbolizing the son of God who died for mankind's sins seems way too narrow an interpretation. Does it mean that? Yes. Does it have other significance? Absolutely.



Consider another common symbol, the Star of David. It is a symbol of Judaism, but it is also an ethnic, national and political symbol. It'd be hard, then, to say that its significance is entirely spiritual or theological.

Sometimes, religious symbols have historical significance that in some contexts can transcend their theological meaning. Five years ago, under threat of a lawsuit by the ACLU, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to remove a cross from the county seal. In the iconography of the seal, which had a number of symbolic images on it, the cross stood for the Catholic missions whose founding in the late 18th century signaled the dawn of modern Los Angeles history. But the ACLU claimed it represented "an impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the county government." The supervisors didn't fight it, but they should have.

In his 1996 book, "The Truth of Broken Symbols," philosopher and theologian Robert C. Neville observed that in predominantly secular societies, religious symbols often lose their theological specificity and become broadly generalized. In fact, he points to the American military cemetery in Cambridge, England, where a "sign explains that a Star of David on a tombstone signifies the grave of a Jewish soldier whereas a cross signifies 'all others.' " Likewise, he notes that "clergy blessing governmental ceremonies are performatively invoking divine aid by their very presence but are likely to pray in terms so general as not to be specific to their own religion's symbol system."

Culture is moving toward greater syncretism, something you can see in the increase in interracial marriage and the election of a black president. As for religion, a recent survey found that Americans who don't identify with any religion -- now 15% overall and 22% of all adults ages 18 to 29 -- make up the fastest-growing religious "tradition" in the country.

The problem with the ACLU's approach to religious symbols is that it's zero sum and old school -- it is, dare I say it, puritanical. Its narrow vision could rob the public sphere of symbols we need to understand who we are, what we're about and where we came from.

The truth is that even as we become a more secular country, religion will continue to be an integral part of our society, history and culture. Indeed, our very notions of politics and good government are the legacy of zealously religious people. Even our ideals of religious freedom and church/state division have roots in the theological convictions of Colonial and Revolutionary-era Baptists and Presbyterians as much as in the Enlightenment. Even if we don't as a nation profess one faith or another, religion is at the core of American identity. To seek to root it out of civic life and culture altogether is not only impossible, it's silly.

15th Anniversary Celebration of the California Desert Protection Act

by Michael Gordon

Please join the National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association to celebrate this historic anniversary at Mojave National Preserve’s Kelso Depot Visitor Center in Kelso, California. Entertainment, education, food, and an incredible line-up of speakers will add to your enjoyment of our celebration, located at the Historic Kelso Depot in the heart of Mojave National Preserve. Only a few miles from the 700-foot tall Kelso Sand Dunes.

Signed into law on October 31, 1994, the California Desert Protection Act designated 7.8 million acres of land as wilderness, changed areas previously designated as national monuments into Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks, and established Mojave National Preserve. This bill was the single largest land protection bill in the history of the lower 48!

The California Desert Protection Act is important because it established Mojave National Preserve and expanded Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks," said Mojave Superintendent Dennis Schramm. "Before its passage in 1994, Death Valley and Joshua Tree were designated as National Monuments."

Activities during the event include guided hikes and tours, distinguished speakers, children's activities and more.

The Fort Mojave Tribal Band and Needles Select Choir will perform, and Cowboy Poet Rob Blair will recite poems inspired by his life in the Mojave.

Lunch can be purchased at The Beanery lunch counter inside the Kelso Depot. Kelso Depot was built in 1924 and served as a Union Pacific station until 1986. The building was renovated and re-opened in 2005 as Mojave National Preserve's visitor center. The spectacular mission-revival style building now houses a museum, information center, bookstore, lunch counter, and art gallery.

The bookstore operated by Western National Parks Association will be open, and many regional authors whose books are on sale will be available for book signings.

Western Artist Susan Altstatt has a solo show in the Desert Light Gallery of the Kelso Depot Visitor's Center beginning October 10th and running through January 3rd, 2010. Twenty-two pieces of Susan's work focused on the East Mojave will be displayed, and selected prints will be available. Susan has been painting off and on for the past 50 years. Her media is primarily acrylic on canvas.

• Visitor Center open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Activities begin at 10 a.m.
• Susan Altstatt, Western artist
  solo show in the lower gallery
• Kelso is 34 miles south of I-15 at Baker on Kelbaker Road
• Celebration event at 1 p.m.
• Lunch concessions available

The Turtle Mountains by Susan Altstatt

This event is free and open to the public!

For more information call 760-252-6100 or visit us online at www.nps.gov/moja

You can download a flyer for this event here.

Environmental concerns delay solar projects in California desert

Several companies seek to build renewable-energy facilities on public land -- a goal backed by the White House -- but the slow permit process and fears over imperiled species have hindered construction.

UC Riverside scientist Jim Andre looks for a rare cactus in the Ivanpah Valley, near the site where BrightSource Energy has proposed building a solar-energy facility. (Mark Boster / September 15, 2009)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from El Centro, Calif. - Across the desert flatlands of southeastern California, dozens of companies have flooded federal offices with applications to place solar mirrors on more than a million acres of public land.

But just as some of those projects appear headed toward fruition, environmental hurdles threaten to jeopardize efforts to further tap the region's renewable energy potential.

The development of solar-power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation's dependence on fossil fuels and curb global warming. In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged that the state meet one-third of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.

Companies are racing to finalize their permits and break ground by the end of next year, which would qualify them to obtain some of the $15 billion in federal stimulus funds designated for renewable energy projects. At stake is the creation of 48,000 jobs and more than 5,300 megawatts of new energy, enough to power almost 1.8 million homes, according to federal land managers.

But the presence of sensitive habitat, rare plants and imperiled creatures such as desert tortoises, bighorn sheep and flat-tailed horned lizards threatens to stall or derail some of the projects closest to securing permits.

"There are significant environmental issues involved in the California gold rush-like scenario unfolding in the desert," said Peter Galvin, conservation director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "We are not going to just roll over when critical wild lands and last habitats of endangered species are in the mix."

Beyond the environmental issues is a bureaucratic one: State and federal regulatory agencies are hobbled by mandatory work furloughs and a lack of experience in processing utility-scale renewable energy project applications.

Removing that obstacle has become a top priority, with Schwarzenegger and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signing an agreement last week to help state and federal authorities expedite renewable energy development in the desert.

"The California process, our state process, is slow, the federal process is slow," Schwarzenegger said. "And this is why it is important that we go and create this kind of partnership so we can move through that and get rid of the red tape."

Salazar characterized the effort to facilitate a rapid and responsible move to large-scale renewables on public lands as a preeminent conservation issue of the 21st century. "If we fail, the rest of the world will move ahead of us," he said. "There is no reason for the U.S. to come in second on this agenda. And we won't."

One of the biggest projects is slated for 6,500 acres of public and private land just north of Interstate 8 near El Centro. Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems said its Solar Two facility would create 700 jobs.

In a surprise setback, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in June to reconsider its decision not to list the flat-tailed horned lizard as an endangered species.

Stirling is investing heavily in strategies to minimize potential conflicts. Sean Gallagher, Stirling's vice president of marketing strategies and regulatory issues, said the company recently reduced the size of the project from 900 megawatts to 750 to avoid an area strewn with Native American artifacts.

The company also plans, with help from the Bureau of Land Management, to identify and buy 6,500 acres of flat-tailed horned lizard habitat elsewhere in Imperial County to help conserve the species. "That won't be an inconsiderable expense," Gallagher said.

In a worst-case scenario for the company and community boosters, the Fish and Wildlife Service could decide that the project threatens the lizard's existence and shut it down.

Peninsular bighorn sheep became an issue in March 2008 when company surveyors spotted two adult females and two lambs ambling down a dry wash in the heart of the Stirling site, miles from their usual mountain haunts.

Company officials and federal land managers have dismissed the incident as an aberration, speculating that the sheep were accidentally driven into the area by hunters or off-road vehicles. But some environmentalists are concerned that the federally endangered sheep may have followed a previously unknown migration corridor.

A coalition of environmental groups sued the Fish and Wildlife Service this month for slashing critical habitat designations for the sheep.

That worries Andy Horne, chief of natural resources development for Imperial County.

"We have the highest unemployment rate of any county in the state, so this [project] is very important to us," Horne said. "We've pegged our future on it."

As for the threatened reptiles, he mused, "If I were a flat-tailed horned lizard, I'd welcome the chance to get under the shade of one of those solar mirrors and take a little nap."

Even further along in the permitting process is BrightSource Energy, which plans to start construction in March on a 6-square-mile solar facility in eastern San Bernardino County's Ivanpah Valley.

BrightSource says the site is ideal, in part because it has been used for cattle grazing and off-road vehicles. It also has a major gas line and two major transmission lines.

Ivanpah is "a showcase of world-class technology and environmentally friendly development, and serves as a catalyst for economic growth," said company spokesman Keely Wachs.

But environmental groups say it would destroy what they see as a relatively pristine habitat that is home to a colony of about 30 threatened California desert tortoises. It is also studded with endangered cactuses, including varieties of cholla, a ground-hugging species also known as "horse tripper."

Of particular concern are BrightSource's plans to move the California desert tortoises. Environmentalists say the tortoises often die as a result of attempts to relocate them.

The Sierra Club has recommended that the company instead develop its facility in wide open, ecologically disturbed areas a few miles to the east, next to Interstate 15.

"We believe there is room for solar energy development in the California desert," said Joan Taylor, chairwoman of the Sierra Club's California/Nevada desert energy committee. "But there is no reason to put it in the wrong place."

BrightSource is "very concerned about the welfare of the desert tortoise," Wachs said, adding that the company has worked extensively with regulators and environmental groups to come up with a strategy that protects the species.

State and federal regulatory agencies are reviewing BrightSource's tortoise relocation plan, but one state official was critical of the project's location.

"BrightSource did not choose an ideal site. They are going to have to do some serious mitigation," said Dan Pellissier, Schwarzenegger's deputy secretary for energy and development.

He said the state energy commission and Bureau of Land Management "are working on a plan" that would require the company to buy three acres of habitat elsewhere for each acre developed. "It looks like we'll get them through" the permitting stages, he said, "and we'll end up with a responsible process that will keep us from ever allowing this to happen again."

Meanwhile, pressure to approve solar plants continues to mount in Bureau of Land Management offices throughout Southern California.

"Bullying us to step up the pace won't help," said Greg Miller, head of a new team created to speed up the bureau's permitting of renewable energy projects. "We're going to do this right; this land belongs to the American people."

County looks to save Victor Valley Museum

Apple Valley may pitch in up to $15,000 per year to support Victor Valley Museum

By Brooke Edwards
Lucerne Valley Leader

APPLE VALLEY • San Bernardino County is working on a plan to take over the struggling Victor Valley Museum, with intentions to remodel the site and expand its representation of High Desert history.

“One of my priorities as supervisor has been to bring a county museum to the High Desert,” 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said Friday, “so this idea brought to me by the Victor Valley Museum seemed like a natural partnership.”

The nonprofit museum approached Mitzelfelt in July with concerns over its ability to stay open, with donations reportedly down some 75 percent.

“We’ve knocked on every door in town,” said Doug Shumway, president of the museum’s board. “Even our biggest donors just couldn’t do it. They’re having to lay off people from their own staff.”

Without help, Shumway told the Apple Valley Town Council, the museum would be out of money and possibly forced to close its doors this month.

The museum offered to transfer its title to San Bernardino County in order to keep the 33-year-old community resource intact.

An estimated $250,000 to update the facility would be paid out of Mitzelfelt’s district funds. Ongoing operational costs would be borne by the County Museums Department and be offset by fundraising, with eligibility for more grants as the museum is brought in line with accreditation requirements for its displays.

Discussions are also under way with local cities to help fund operations, which Shumway said average $6,000 per month. On the agenda for yesterday’s council meeting was a plan for Apple Valley to commit up to $15,000 per year in support.

Mitzelfelt worked with the San Bernardino County Museum and County Administrative Office to develop a plan for a seamless transition.

In the first phase, the county would refurbish and upgrade existing exhibits, expand outreach programs and remodel the exterior and interior of the facility. This would result in a temporary partial closure, officials said, where residents could use portions of the facility on a limited basis.

Phase two would be intended to attract existing patrons and new ones through new exhibitions, programs, lectures, travel programs and other outreach events.

As more visitors flow to the museum through these upgrades, the county also plans to re-examine staffing levels, hours of operation and programs, to ensure the viability of the museum for years to come.

The museum was created in 1976 in the halls of the Victorville courthouse as a bicentennial project, Shumway said. It was moved to its current site, 11873 Apple Valley Road, in 1992.

“I have long admired our Victor Valley Museum and the dedicated patrons and volunteers who have kept it a viable amenity for our community,” Mitzelfelt said. “I am also glad to be able to step in at a time of need and secure the future of the museum.”

California metal mine regains luster

Fears of a shortage of rare-earth minerals used in high-tech applications has bolstered an effort to reopen production at the Mountain Pass Mine in the Mojave Desert.

The pond that fills the bottom of the Mountain Pass rare-earth metal mine reflects the terraces. Digging is expected to resume by the second half of 2011 after the water is pumped out. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

By Martin Zimmerman
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Mountain Pass, Calif. - Fear of a shortage of rare-earth metals used in high-tech military and industrial products has spawned global efforts to reopen abandoned mines, including the formidable Mountain Pass Mine in California's Mojave Desert.

Discovered in the 1940s by uranium prospectors, Mountain Pass contains an array of rare earths, including cerium and lanthanum, in concentrations almost double those found at the world's biggest rare-earth mine, China's Bayan Obo.

"You're looking at the greatest rare-earth deposit in the world," says operations manager John Benfield as he ushers a visitor around the 2,200-acre site 60 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

Benfield's employer, Molycorp Minerals in Colorado, has just begun a two-year effort to restore Mountain Pass to its former role as a leading global producer. Those plans were given a boost recently amid fears that China was poised to ban exports of some of the scarcer rare-earth metals and to sharply limit shipments of others.

Although the Chinese government has sought to allay those concerns, a possible ban served as a reminder that the Asian nation is nearly the sole source worldwide for rare-earth metals and is likely to remain so for at least the next two years.

"You always want multiple sources for your raw materials," said Jim Hedrick, commodity specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "There could be a natural disaster that significantly disrupts the supply, or there could be geopolitical issues. . . . All it takes is for one person to antagonize another."

The reopening of the mine and related processing facilities would create about 900 jobs at Mountain Pass -- about 100 people work there now -- and provide U.S. companies with a reliable source for many key rare-earth metals.

These minerals, such as samarium and neodymium, are prized for chemical properties that make them indispensable in a variety of industrial and military uses including polishing glass, oil refining and manufacturing missile guidance systems.

They also play a crucial role in the development of "green" technologies such as hybrid cars, wind turbines and compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Heat-resistant magnets made with rare-earth alloys are key components of the electric motor in the Toyota Prius, for example. And lanthanum, one of the most abundant rare earths found at Mountain Pass, is used to make the car's nickel-metal hydride battery.

Mining operations ceased at Mountain Pass in 2002 amid environmental concerns and cut-rate competition from China, though processing of previously dug ore continues.

On a recent Friday, as the weekend traffic flowed on Interstate 15 toward Las Vegas and the temperature hovered around 110, the ore processing facilities hummed with activity. But the crushing mill and the conveyors that fed it with rock from the mine were silent.

The mine itself is about 1,500 feet across -- impressive to the uninitiated but smallish compared with the mile-wide behemoths around the globe where copper, gold and other minerals are excavated.

There's no giant earthmoving equipment rumbling about. Most of it was sold off when the mine was shut down. A small pump floats on the surface of the brackish green water 300 feet below. The only other signs of life in the pit are red-tailed hawks circling the mine's terraced sides in search of lunch.

Molycorp hopes to generate big profit at Mountain Pass by building an integrated manufacturing chain that starts with raw ore and ends with finished products ready for market.

"We don't want to be just a supplier of basic materials to other industries," said Benfield, the operations chief. "We want to develop our own technologies so we can determine our own destiny rather than rely on others. We're not just a mine."

The U.S. was once the world leader in rare-earth metal production. But low-cost competition from China has given that nation a near monopoly on rare-earth exports. In addition, China is becoming a key producer of rare-earth magnets.

That worries some analysts who fret that China could dominate the market for next-generation clean-energy technology in much the same way that a handful of oil-rich nations now control the bulk of world oil supplies. The fact that China and the U.S. are currently engaged in a trade tiff over tire imports hasn't soothed matters.

"They've been reducing exports of rare-earth metals for years," commodities analyst Jack Lifton said. "A few years ago, they exported 50% of their production. Now they're down to 25%. They could be down to zero by 2015 because their own demand is going up."

Rare-earth anxiety has spurred a global hunt for the minerals and is bringing back into production mining operations that have been closed for years, such as Mountain Pass.

Toyota Motor Corp. and other big users of rare-earth metals, such as Hitachi Ltd., are exploring ways to reduce their dependence on Chinese exports. They're using smaller amounts of rare-earth metals, recycling more, testing alternative materials and looking for new sources of supply.

Most of the rare-earth metals aren't all that rare. "Almost any rock you pick up has rare-earth elements in it," noted Thomas Monecke, a geology professor at the Colorado School of Mines.

The most common, cerium, is more plentiful than copper. The two rarest, thulium and lutetium, are 200 times more common than gold.

But unlike coal, iron and other industrially useful minerals, they are difficult to separate and can be mined profitably only when found in dense concentrations, such as at China's Bayan Obo mine and in clay deposits in that country's southern region.

The only other place on earth known to harbor such dense concentrations is Mountain Pass.

Molycorp, a former Chevron Corp. subsidiary, was sold to a group of private equity investors last year. Chevron had acquired the mine when it bought Unocal Corp. in 2005 and is still responsible for cleaning up some wastewater spills from past operations.

The mine's new owners are in the midst of an ambitious plan to pump out the millions of gallons of water at the bottom of the open-pit mine and resume mining by the second half of 2011.

Once ore is again coming out of the ground, Molycorp wants to install advanced extraction processes that will enable the company to achieve purities as high as those found in Chinese rare-earth metals but at a lower cost. They are also looking for joint venture partners to begin producing their own rare-earth magnets.

It will cost $100 million to $400 million to make that plan a reality. Molycorp Chief Executive Mark Smith said the company was exploring a variety of financing options including issuing debt or selling stock.

He also would consider investments from foreign investors, including Chinese.

The goal is to achieve a production rate of 20,000 tons of rare-earth products a year by January 2012, Smith said. That would meet about 20% of global rare-earth demand, based on last year's total worldwide production of around 124,000 tons, he said.

While Mountain Pass prepares to restart mining operations, mining companies are pushing to develop other known rare-earth deposits, such as those in Canada, Brazil and Australia.

The Chinese also are hunting for overseas sources, though worries about the country's control of world supplies is hampering those efforts. A Chinese mining company recently pulled out of a deal to expand its ownership stake in Australian rare-earth miner Lynas Corp. after the Australian government protested.

Although efforts to diversify the world's sources of rare-earth metals are welcomed in many quarters, Lifton notes that, as at Mountain Pass, these new locations won't become significant producers overnight.

"Until then," he said, "we'll just have to tiptoe through the Chinese tulips."

Justices weigh constitutionality of war memorial cross

By Bill Mears
CNN Supreme Court Producer



A judge ruled that the Mojave Cross must be covered until a First Amendment issue can be resolved.



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court offered conflicting concerns Wednesday over a cross, erected as a war memorial, that sits on national parkland in the Mojave Desert and whether it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

Conservative members of the bench suggested that Congress acted properly when it tried to transfer land around the Mojave Memorial Cross to veterans groups, an effort to eliminate any Establishment Clause violation. A federal appeals panel had blocked that land swap.

"Isn't that a sensible interpretation" of a federal court injunction banning the display on government property, Justice Samuel Alito asked.

But Justice Stephen Breyer was adamant that the government had not acted in good faith. "You are violating this injunction" that ordered removal of the cross, he told the government's lawyer.

The swing vote -- as he is in many hot-button issues -- may be Justice Anthony Kennedy, who questioned attorneys on both sides but did not indicate how he was leaning.

At issue before the justices is whether the display violates the first 10 words of the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

More specifically, can one individual who protests the cross have legal "standing" to take his case to court and prevail? And do congressional efforts to minimize the appearance of a constitutional violation carry any weight? Find out more about the other cases before the court »

The 6-foot Latin cross was erected by the local Veterans of Foreign Wars in a remote part of the California desert in 1934 to honor war dead. It has been rebuilt several times over the years, and Easter services are held on the site every year.

The land now is part of the Mojave National Preserve, a unit of the National Park Service, encompassing 1.6 million acres, or 2,500 square miles.

A former Park Service employee brought suit, saying that such symbols represent government endorsement of the Christian faith. A federal appeals court ultimately agreed and rejected a move by Congress in 2003 to transfer a tiny portion of the land where the cross sits back to the VFW as a privately held national memorial.

The area in question is a prominent outcropping known as Sunrise Rock.

The appeals court noted that the land-transfer effort singled out the VFW for special treatment and that officials had rejected a proposal to erect a nearby Buddhist "stupa," or shrine. Jewish and Muslim veterans groups complain that the Mojave Cross symbolizes the sacrifice of Christian veterans, excluding other faiths.

The oral arguments focused almost exclusively on the congressional action to transfer the cross to private hands. That suggested a very narrow ruling in coming months, which would not produce a sweeping statement on when religious symbols on public land represent state "endorsement" of a particular faith.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, defending the continued presence of the cross, said it was "a sensible action Congress took" to cure any First Amendment violation.

Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to support the government but did note the danger of Congress "singling out someone, a private property owner, who's using his property in a particular a religious way." When Kagan suggested that the government could put up a sign noting the cross was privately owned and operated, Roberts was unconvinced.

"But it hasn't done anything like that. It doesn't say for other property owners that have a ramshackle shack, that they want people to know this isn't the government's property," Roberts said. "Under your hypothetical, it would be only religious property that would have these special warning signs."

The ACLU is representing Frank Buono, the former Park Service employee who raised his objections in the original lawsuit. Attorney Peter Eliasberg told the court that "the government had favored one party to come on, contrary to the government's own regulations, and erect a permanent symbol while not allowing others."

Scalia scoffed at that suggestion. "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

Several hypotheticals were offered by members of the bench, possibly indicating how broadly or narrowly their ruling will be applied.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wondered whether the donated Argonne Memorial Cross at Arlington National Cemetery should be dismantled. Eliasberg thought not, because a range of religious symbols appear on nearby individual gravestones.

What if a cross went up on the National Mall, next to the Lincoln Memorial, Stevens asked.

How about selling only a square foot around the Mojave Cross to private hands, Roberts asked. The legislation would have permitted one acre to be sold.

Some veterans groups have come out strongly in support of the cross.

"The real goal of the veterans group is to stop this really disgraceful conduct of having war memorials that have been up for 75 years be coming under attack because of political correctness or whatever mood of the day," said Kelly Shackleford, director of the Liberty Legal Institute, representing the VFW. "This was not put up by the government. It was put up by veterans. This is the symbol they chose."

Eliasberg took a more personal stand after the arguments. "My father is a Jewish war veteran, my grandfather was a Jewish war veteran in World War I, and to say that a cross represents the sacrifice of the 250,000 Jews who fought for this country in World War I is simply not true, and it's very rare that the government chooses the predominant religious symbol of one religion and puts it forth and says this honors us all."

The case is Salazar v. Buono (08-472). A ruling is expected early next year.

Mojave's contentious cross

EDITORIAL

Will the Supreme Court stand up for the 1st Amendment?

Los Angeles Times

Christian crosses and other religious symbols are common sights in a military cemetery, and appropriately so. But the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked today to approve a war memorial in California's Mojave National Preserve that consists entirely of an 8-foot-high cross. It would offend the 1st Amendment if the court endorsed this discriminatory display in a public space. Even worse would be a broad decision opening the way for other such displays.

In 1934, the Veterans of Foreign Wars erected a cross along with a plaque commemorating the "Dead of All Wars" on an outcrop called Sunrise Rock. In 1999, the National Park Service rejected a request to place a Buddhist shrine near the cross. In 2001, a former National Parks Service employee, a Catholic, filed suit, claiming that the cross violated the 1st Amendment's ban on establishment of religion. In order to evade a court order, Congress voted in 2003 to transfer control of the land on which the cross stood to the VFW in exchange for another parcel.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, that maneuver removes any constitutional problem. Solicitor General Elena Kagan also argues that Frank Buono, the former park service employee who complained about the cross, lacks standing to bring a lawsuit because he hasn't been subjected to "unwelcome religious exercises, indirect coercion or exclusion from the political community." Neither objection is persuasive. The administration takes a narrow view of standing that would put some unconstitutional displays beyond legal challenge. As for Congress' land swap, because the cross will be situated in what the appeals court called a "little donut hole" in a vast tract of land, an observer would have a hard time distinguishing public from private.

This case poses an even greater danger to the 1st Amendment. The court has seesawed confusingly on the constitutionality of religious displays on public property. In separate 5-4 decisions on the same day in 2005, it struck down the posting of the Ten Commandments in courthouses in Kentucky but upheld a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol. Stephen G. Breyer, the only justice to vote for both results, wrote that the latter monument was permissible because it had stood on public land for 40 years without protest. That loose standard could be used to justify the Mojave cross.

In both of the 2005 cases, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor voted to strike down the displays. Her replacement, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., seems less supportive of the idea of a wall of separation between church and state. If Breyer and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- a swing vote in religion cases -- don't stand up for the 1st Amendment, this case could blow a gaping hole in that wall.

Cross comes before court

MOJAVE PRESERVE: Some argue that the sacred salute to soldiers is not constitutional.


By BEN GOAD
Riverside Press-Enterprise



A cross was erected atop Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve years ago to honor the war dead. (AP photo)

For three quarters of a century, a cross has stood high atop an outcropping of rocks in a far-flung and sun-blasted expanse of San Bernardino County's High Desert.

It was erected by a band of veterans as a tribute to the nation's war dead. It was protected for decades under a solemn promise made to the last living member of the group that built it. It was preserved by acts of Congress orchestrated by Inland Rep. Jerry Lewis.

But should a cross be allowed to stand above public land in the Mojave National Preserve?

That question, the root of a years-long fight over the constitutionality of the cross, may soon be answered. The U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case Wednesday. Their ruling could have far reaching implications on similar memorials around the country and could signal the newly refigured court's position on the constitutional provision prohibiting the federal government from endorsing any religion.

The justices could choose to limit their scope to the Mojave cross in particular. Previous court rulings found the cross is a violation of the Constitution and must come down.

The Supreme Court will address whether a land swap between the government and private landholders that transferred ownership of the land under the cross to a veterans group fixed that violation.

But the court could also revisit the question about whether religious symbols are permitted on public land, said Peter Scheer, executive director for the California-based First Amendment Coalition.

"The law in this area is anything but clear," Scheer said. "This could be huge."

A pledge kept

The white 7-foot cross is simple in its construction: four-inch diameter iron piping lashed together, welded and bolted to rock. Under court order, it stands shrouded within a plywood box. Pending the outcome of the case, either the cover will be removed, or the cross will come down.

The original memorial was constructed in 1934 by a small group of World War I veterans working as miners in the area. Among them was John "Riley" Bembry, a butcher by trade who settled after the war in a cabin in what now is the Mojave National Preserve.

Bembry made it his job to maintain and preserve the cross. The High Desert is home to the Fort Irwin military training center and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms. Gen. George Patton trained his troops in the Mojave Desert and some say tracks from their tanks can still be found.

The cross became a meeting place for military men and their families who made the desert their home, said Lewis, R-Redlands, who became acquainted with the cross about 40 years ago when he was elected to the state Legislature and represented the area. Beyond Easter services, a longstanding tradition at the site, people would routinely gather there for meals served out of an old boxcar, he said.

"It was a way that veterans could come together and tell war stories," Lewis said.

It was over one such meal in 1972 that Bembry met Henry and Wanda Sandoz, who then lived in Mountain Pass. Henry, a miner, and Wanda, a school bus driver, grew close to Bembry, who became a grandfather figure to the couple's children.

Near death in the early 1980s, Bembry broached the subject of the cross in a conversation with Henry Sandoz.

"He knew that his time was short and it was important to him that it be looked after," Wanda Sandoz said. "And he knew Henry was a man of his word."

In the 25 years that followed, vandals more than once tore down various wooden incarnations of the cross. Each time, Sandoz, now 70, replaced them, finally erecting the current metal cross.

Neutrality needed

Frank Buono had just become the first assistant superintendent of the newly created Mojave National Preserve. It was 1995. Until the year before, the sprawling 1.6 million acre territory had been known as "unreserved federal land." ." Such had been the case since it was ceded by Mexico to the United States in 1848.

Buono was driving, taking stock of the reserve, when he spotted the cross looming above the formation known as Sunrise Rock. After some thought, he said, it didn't seem right to have a religious symbol on public land.

"I'm not offended by a cross, per se -- I'm a Christian and I have crosses in my house and in my church," said Buono, 62.

Rather, he said, he felt the cross' very existence on national land amounted to an improper endorsement of a single religion.

Soon after, Buono made a call to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The organization agreed and, together with Buono, filed a lawsuit seeking removal of the cross.

The cross' defenders say it honors all Americans killed on the battlefield. Peter Eliasberg, the attorney who on Wednesday will argue the case on behalf of the ACLU and Buono, described the government's endorsement of the cross as clear favoritism.

Eliasberg said many Jewish soldiers fought for the U.S. military in World War I.

"To pretend that you can say 'this represents all of you -- this honors all veterans,' when it (the cross) is the pre-eminent symbol of Christianity, is not what the government should be doing," Eliasberg said. "We should be honoring all veterans, not some veterans."

Led by Lewis, Congress in 2001 designated the cross a National Memorial. The designation has been awarded to fewer than 50 memorials around the country, including Mount Rushmore and the Lincoln Memorial.

That the cross remains the only national memorial to World War I further shows the government's endorsement of the symbol, Eliasberg said.

Legislative manuevers

Eliasberg will attempt to convince the court that the question of whether the cross should stand on public land is outside the parameters of the case now before the Supreme Court. That issue, he said, is already resolved.

In 2002, the United States District Court Central District of California ruled that Buono was right and that the cross must come down. A federal appeals court later backed that decision.

But while the appeal was pending in 2002, Congress passed a spending bill to which Lewis had added an amendment prohibiting the government from spending any money to remove the cross.

Lewis acted again in 2003, brokering a land exchange under which an acre of land on which the cross stands was transferred from the federal government to a Barstow post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. In exchange, Sandoz, who now lives in Yucca Valley, agreed to give to the government five acres of land within the preserve.

While the case is known as Buono v. Salazar, for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, it is Lewis who has led the government's defense.

"Congressman Lewis did everything in his power, to his credit or his discredit, to preserve this cross," Buono said.

In 2007, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the land swap didn't solve the problem, concluding that merely "carving out a tiny parcel of property in the midst of this vast preserve -- like a donut hole with the cross atop it -- will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement" of a religious symbol.

It is that question that the Supreme Court has agreed to consider, Eliasberg said.

Much at stake

But the government maintains that the 2007 ruling was improper because there was nothing wrong with the cross' presence in the first place, an argument that opens the door for a broader discussion of the laws relating to the separation of church and state.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who will argue the case on behalf of Salazar, also contends that Buono had no right to sue since he is not offended by the cross itself and has not suffered any injury.

If the court agrees, the ruling could curb all future lawsuits from citizens challenging government-sponsored nativity scenes, displays of the Ten Commandments outside courthouses, or any other religious imagery, Scheer said.

But if the cross is ordered down, the decision could lead to the removal of treasured memorials on historic battlefields or national cemeteries around the United States, according to a coalition of veterans groups rallying behind the Mojave cross.

"If a 7-foot cross in the middle of the desert can't be allowed to stand, what do you do with the 24-foot cross in the Arlington National Cemetery?" asked Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel for Liberty Legal Institute, a Texas-based firm that filed a brief in the case on behalf of the veterans groups.

Weighty as those questions may be, for Henry and Wanda Sandoz, the small plywood-encased cross in the middle of the desert is precisely what's at stake when arguments begin Wednesday morning.

"That stupid ugly box -- we hate that box," Wanda Sandoz said. "But in our mind's eye, we can still see what's inside."

The divisive Mojave cross

OPINION

Even as a war memorial, the Mojave cross only serves to undermine the sacrifices of soldiers of other faiths.

By Israel Drazin
Los Angeles Times

Deep in the Mojave National Preserve, 125 miles northeast of Los Angeles, an 8-foot-tall metal structure juts upward from a rocky outcrop. The structure is a Latin cross -- the preeminent symbol of Christianity -- that the National Park Service has boarded up with plywood pending a decision on its future by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case, known as Salazar vs. Buono and slated to be taken up by the court on Wednesday, is the culmination of a nine-year legal battle over whether the cross is a religious symbol or a secular "commemoration" of soldiers who died in World War I. Like many legal cases, this one has grown more complicated over the years. At issue now is not whether a cross on property owned by the federal government represents improper government endorsement of religion, thus violating the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits governmental favoritism of any particular religion. Lower courts have already decided that it is a violation of the 1st Amendment, and the government did not ask the Supreme Court to review this decision.

What the justices will consider instead is whether that favoritism is meaningfully eradicated by the government's proposal to transfer ownership of the patch of land on which the cross stands to a local veterans group, even though the cross will remain designated a national memorial.

It's clear to me and many other former military officers that the proposal does not live up to the government's obligation not to favor any particular religion. The cross is unquestionably a sectarian religious symbol that, as a congressionally designated national memorial to veterans, would convey the message that the military values the sacrifices of Christian war dead over those of service members belonging to other faiths. This would be true even if the property were to be transferred to private owners.

Furthermore, such a memorial -- one of only 49 national memorials in the country -- would be harmful to the military as an institution. It would strike at the heart of what makes the military function, promoting social divisiveness while undermining unit cohesion and esprit de corps.

The U.S. military is a religiously diverse institution -- 11% of current active members of the military say they belong to a non-Christian faith, while 21% are atheists or report no religion. Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and Muslims serve in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters, and Jews and Muslims have fought in the U.S. military in every war, including the Revolutionary War.

It's essential for the military to reach out to members of minority faiths and to recruit and retain them. Such individuals often possess language and other skills that are vital to the military's mission. But a war memorial that is made up of a large cross, standing by itself, would undermine these efforts.

Its message would not be, as the memorial's defenders claim, one of commemoration for all war dead and veterans, or for all veterans of World War I. At best, the cross would say nothing at all about the sacrifices of non-Christian soldiers. At worst, it would suggest that those sacrifices are not remembered, honored or valued, driving a wedge between Christian and non-Christian soldiers.

Military cohesion can easily be imperiled by discrimination and prejudice. After World War II, powerful racial divisions in our military endured for decades, particularly between more diverse enlisted personnel and the nearly all-white officer corps. These divisions persistently undermined effectiveness. Religious preference and exclusion harm military cohesion in similar ways.

Not all war memorials that include religious symbols convey the same starkly sectarian message as this cross. When the symbols of several religions are displayed together, for example, or when religious symbols are accompanied by nonreligious monuments, it's generally clear to all that no particular faith is being promoted above all others and that the contributions of all fallen soldiers and veterans are equally honored. Similarly, crosses that mark the graves of individual service members do not express governmental endorsement of religion, but an individual's faith.

For all these reasons, I signed a brief in this case -- along with many other former high-ranking military officers -- in support of the American Civil Liberties Union's position that the Mojave cross is unconstitutional and that the transfer does not remedy the problem. A high-court decision against the transfer of the cross and the land beneath it would be in the best interests of our nation, and our military.

Israel Drazin is a retired Army brigadier general.

Vegas forges ahead on pipeline plan

Great Basin pumping project is closer to reality

by Matt Jenkins
High Country News

When Marc Reisner updated his landmark book Cadillac Desert in 1992, he mistakenly referred to the "forceful woman" who heads the Las Vegas-based Southern Nevada Water Authority as Patricia Mulwray. Her name is actually Patricia Mulroy.

Reisner's mistake might have been a Freudian slip: Hollis Mulwray is a character in the movie Chinatown who is based on William Mulholland, the powerful founder of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Mulholland occupies a special place in the pantheon of Western water honchos, as both visionary and villain. He is best remembered for his audacious, and very secret, plan in the 1920s to buy up water rights in the Owens Valley and ship the water to L.A.

Mulroy understandably bristles at any reference to Chinatown. Yet she has achieved a degree of power that might even make Mulholland envious. Mulroy has largely set the terms of Western water over the past two decades. She has challenged what she calls the conservative "belt-and-suspenders" mindset that has traditionally prevailed among Colorado River water bosses. And, most controversially, she has led a two-decade-long effort to build a massive groundwater project that will tap huge aquifers lying beneath the Great Basin in eastern Nevada and pipe billions of gallons of water to Las Vegas.

This August, the state governments of Nevada and Utah announced that they had put one more piece of the project into place. They released an agreement that divides the water beneath the Snake Valley, on the Nevada-Utah line, between the two states, and that also delays for a decade the legal formalities needed to complete that final part of the groundwater project.

The announcement touched off a furor in Snake Valley. "We only got about a week's notice, and it left us scrambling to try to understand the agreement," says Mark Ward, an attorney for the Utah Association of Counties.

The agreement apportions the remaining water in Snake Valley 7-to-1 in Nevada's favor and "practically eliminates future development in Snake Valley," says Kathy Walker, the chairman of the Millard County Commission. Since the agreement was released, she says, "we've been racking up some serious miles" in an effort to change the terms of the deal.

Some pipeline opponents, however, see the agreement as a reprieve of sorts. Denys Koyle, who owns the Border Inn casino on a lonely stretch of Highway 50 on the Nevada-Utah border, says, "When I saw it, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh: We've got 10 more years.' I've been saying every day we buy is a big victory."

The hoopla over the most recent development in the groundwater saga obscures a larger reality. Patricia Mulroy has tackled the groundwater project with far less secrecy than William Mulholland would have used. Still, over the past three years, she has moved to lock in the water she needs for the project with remarkable finesse. The Southern Nevada Water Authority now has at least 37 billion gallons of water lined up for the project, which will span seven valleys on the east side of Nevada, from Coyote Springs Valley to Spring Valley, and Snake Valley on the Nevada-Utah line.

"We already have the necessary water rights to go all the way to Spring Valley," says Mulroy.

But even as the Water Authority has amassed the permits it needs to fill the pipeline with water, unsettling questions have emerged regarding the project's impacts on desert springs ecosystems. And one of Mulroy's own scientists says her agency is hiding the effects that groundwater pumping will have on the Great Basin.

When Mulroy announced her plan in 1989, the proposal drew a round of more than 4,000 legal protests from ranchers, as well as from the federal government. Since then, the Water Authority has adroitly moved to head off many of those challenges. Mulroy has spent $79 million in eastern Nevada buying up ranches and related water rights. (The Water Authority acquired several thousand cows and sheep as a result of those deals, and now has a sideline called Great Basin Ranch, and its own cattle brand.)

In 2006, Mulroy neutralized the most significant source of opposition when she struck a deal with the U.S. Department of the Interior, which was worried that the project could harm springs in three national wildlife refuges and Great Basin National Park. The government agreed to drop its protests in exchange for a promise from the Water Authority to fund a program that is now monitoring groundwater levels and the project's potential effects on wildlife.

In Snake Valley, another potential source of opposition came from the state of Utah, which shares the aquifer there with Nevada. But the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act, introduced by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and approved by Congress in 2004, required Nevada and Utah to negotiate a division of the water in Snake Valley.

That's the agreement released this August. "The purpose of the agreement is to build some kind of cooperative management of Snake Valley so we don't have a pumping war in the West Desert," says Boyd Clayton, Utah's deputy state engineer.

The deal is also an important part of a bigger bargain between Utah and Nevada. In the past, Mulroy has said that if Utah doesn't support her quest for groundwater from the Great Basin, she would respond by monkey-wrenching Utah's plans to build a pipeline from Lake Powell to St. George, the fastest-growing part of the state. Boyd Clayton, the deputy Utah state engineer, says that the recent Snake Valley water-sharing agreement reduces the risk of interference. "Clearly, if Nevada perceives that we're not trying to deal with them equitably on this issue," he says, "they're less likely to be helpful and equitable as Utah tries to develop the Lake Powell pipeline."

That has left Millard County in a delicate position. "Sen. (Bob) Bennett's (R-Utah) office has contacted us a few times, saying we need to be a little careful," says Walker, the Millard County chairman. "We're sort of stuck in the middle."

But with its potential hurdles out of the way, the Water Authority has received approval from the Nevada state engineer, the state's top water regulator, for 114,755 acre-feet of water from Delamar, Dry Lake, Cave, Spring and Snake valleys -- enough for more than 1.5 million people in Las Vegas.

Tim Durbin is a former United States Geological Survey hydrologist who for about a decade did contract work for the Water Authority. In 2001, he began designing a model that the Authority could use to predict the effects of pumping on the Great Basin aquifers. The computer model was a crucial piece of evidence presented to the state engineer during hearings about whether to grant water rights for the project. Yet when Durbin ran the model, he says, it became clear that any amount of pumping would have an effect.

"Southern Nevada Water Authority, for years, has been claiming that somehow they can Pipeline develop this with no impacts, and that is just absolute total nonsense," he says. "There is absolutely no way of developing groundwater in these valleys without having impacts."

But when Durbin testified before the state engineer in 2006, "A lot of pressure was put on me to, in some ways, disown my own work," he says. "The report I prepared was, in effect, taken away from me and rewritten by (the Water Authority) to remove anything that suggested impacts."

Durbin no longer works with the Water Authority; he now has a contract with the National Park Service to help analyze the project's potential impacts. The only way that the project's impacts can be reduced, he says, is to pursue targeted pumping that avoids the most sensitive springs. "The extractions can be designed to focus the impacts on certain parts of the hydrologic system and away from others," he says.

For her part, Mulroy says that Durbin's model was less sophisticated than another one that the Water Authority is now developing. And, she says, her agency will finesse its pumping to minimize impacts on the desert springs. "If you follow Durbin's line of thinking, no groundwater can be touched, period," says Mulroy. But a more flexible approach can prove more sustainable. "You change your pumping strategies, year to year. You move pumping around. You let basins rest. And you artificially recharge."

Under an artificial recharge program, annual snowmelt from the mountains can be channeled into infiltration basins in the desert valleys to "recharge" the aquifer with water. "That's why we bought the ranches," says Mulroy. "If you put infiltration basins at the base of those mountains, you can get that runoff into the ground rather than have it run off and evaporate on the playa."

The one thing that could derail the project now is money. Four years ago, the price tag was pegged at $2 billion. Today, that number stands at $3.5 billion. And when it comes to how the Water Authority will finance the project, Mulroy is keeping her cards close to her vest. "At this point, we're spending only the money that we absolutely have to spend," Mulroy says. "The combination of a very effective conservation plan" -- with correspondingly reduced water sales -- "and a crashed economy with no connection charges" -- the hookup fees for new homes through which the Authority generates most of its revenue -- "have left revenues pretty stressed."

Even if the Water Authority is in a thrifty bent of mind right now, Mulroy says her agency is prepared to reach for the underground water when the moment is right. Much depends on the now-more-than-decade-long drought on Colorado River, and on yet another agreement. Three years ago, the seven states that draw water from the river negotiated a set of ground rules for how to share shortages if Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the river's two main reservoirs, continue to shrink.

Thanks to those rules, 1,075 is now the most important number in Vegas. The water level in Lake Mead -- one of the key indicators of the state of the system -- is now at 1,093 feet. When it drops below 1,075 feet, the first round of shared shortages will kick in on the renewed series of negotiations between the seven states -- and, Mulroy says, the Water Authority will launch construction of the groundwater project.

"We need to start," she says, "the minute we hit 1,075."

Army won't move tortoises this fall

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

U.S. Army officials have scrapped plans to move about 90 desert tortoises from Fort Irwin this month, saying they will wait for a larger relocation effort expected in the spring.

"For now, they are going to stay put," Army spokesman John Wagstaffe said.

Environmentalists criticized Army officials last month when they said they intended to go forward with an October relocation, even without the cooperation of the federal Bureau of Land Management. The BLM withdrew from the effort because of uncertainty over how many of the reptiles would survive the move from the training center north of Barstow to public land nearby.

The about-face is great news, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity. The group had threatened to sue to stop the October move.

"I am glad the Army came to its senses and decided to not move tortoises in the fall, when they have little food and water resources with hibernation and winter approaching," Anderson said.

The Army wants to remove the tortoises from 24,000 acres to make way for expanded training with tanks and other military vehicles, Wagstaffe said. That training is on hold for now, he said late Friday. Clearing tortoises from three expansion areas at Fort Irwin will cost the government millions of dollars, according to figures released last year.

Desert tortoises are threatened with extinction, and questions remain about whether moving them makes them more vulnerable to coyote attacks.

Last fall, the Army suspended a tortoise relocation effort in the same area after at least 90 of 556 tortoises moved in spring 2008 died, most of them killed by coyotes. The BLM participated in the previous relocation because many of the animals were moved to public land the agency oversees.

Last month, BLM officials backed away from helping the Army with the October move because of problems with research used to justify the operation. The research suggested that the relocated tortoises are just as likely to be killed by coyotes as other tortoises. But the biologist, Todd Esque with the U.S. Geological Survey, told BLM officials in August that his work was incomplete and needed more analysis, BLM officials have said.

Without the BLM's cooperation, the Army could not move the reptiles to BLM-managed public land and decided instead to relocate the tortoises to Army-owned land south of Fort Irwin, provided the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved. A spokeswoman for the wildlife agency said this week that the agency was still evaluating the Army's request.

The BLM is preparing an environmental study on plans for the spring to capture and move 1,100 tortoises from 70,000 acres targeted for expanded training on the west side of Fort Irwin. The tortoises would be relocated to BLM land near the Army base.

Now, tortoises from the smaller expansion area would be included in that effort.

"We decided it would make more sense to move them with the larger translocation," Wagstaffe said.

Judge rejects U.S. management plan for California desert

Bureau of Land Management's proposal for the West Mojave 'does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives' to limit off-road-vehicle routes in the sensitive habitat, the ruling states.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

A federal judge has rejected key provisions of a plan for managing millions of acres in the California desert, saying the U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated roughly 5,000 miles of off-road vehicle routes without properly taking into account their impact on public lands, archaeological sites and wildlife.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston on Monday ruled that the West Mojave plan, which the bureau approved in 2006 after a decade of development, is "flawed because it does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives" to limit the number of miles of off-road routes.

She also determined that the bureau's analysis of the routes' impacts on air quality, soils, plant communities and sensitive species such as the Mojave fringe-toed lizard was inadequate, pointing out that the desert and its resources are "extremely fragile, easily scarred, and slowly healed."

"The court recognizes the complexity of the issues presented in this case," Illston said, "and that defendants have been given the difficult task of addressing the interests and needs of OHV [off-highway vehicle] recreationists while at the same time protecting listed species as required by law."

The ruling came in response to a legal challenge brought in late 2006 by a coalition of conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and Desert Survivors.

The bureau's "planning was backwards," Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club said in a statement. "They should first analyze the resources, natural, cultural wildlife etc., and then plan the route network. They put the route approvals first."

U.S. Atty. Charles R. Schockey, who represented bureau in the matter, declined to comment on the ruling. However, Illston said she plans to schedule a case management conference to discuss possible remedies.

The plan was designed to provide a comprehensive strategy to conserve and protect sensitive species and their habitats on public lands administered by the bureau, including the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.

"We believe the plan didn't go far enough in terms of protecting resources," said Lisa Belenky, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Off-road-vehicle use in the west Mojave is very prevalent and increasing, so having the proper protections in place is very important."

"We hope that in light of this decision," Belenky added, "the bureau will rethink and limit the number of routes in these sensitive areas."

The Old Secular Cross?

High Court to Consider Issue of Church-State Separation

Henry and Wanda Sandoz are the unofficial caretakers of the Mojave cross, which is covered in a plywood box, near Cima, Calif. (Robert Barnes - The Washington Post)

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. -- It would be easy to miss among the yucca and Joshua trees of this vast place -- a small plywood box, set back from a gentle curve in a lonesome desert road. It looks like nothing so much as a miniature billboard without a message.

But inside the box is a 6 1/2 -foot white cross, built to honor the war dead of World War I. And because its perch on a prominent outcropping of rock is on federal land, it has been judged to be an unconstitutional display of government favoritism of one religion over another.

Whether the Mojave cross is ever unveiled again -- or taken down for good -- is up to the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Next week, it will get its first major chance to divine the meaning of the First Amendment command that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

If the court reaches the constitutional issues at hand, all sides agree it could provide clarity to the court's blurry rules on church-and-state separations. It could also carry important implications for the fate of war memorials around the country that feature religious imagery -- the Argonne Cross in Arlington National Cemetery, for instance, or the Memorial Peace Cross in Bladensburg.

The Mojave cross's protectors, which include veterans groups and the federal government, say the symbol is a historic, secular tribute; its original plaque from the 1930s said it was erected to honor "the dead of all wars." They argue that Congress has taken the steps to distance itself from any appearance of endorsing a religious display.

But the American Civil Liberties Union, Jewish and Muslim veterans, and others say government actions have only deepened the problem. In an effort to avoid the lower courts' rulings that it must come down, Congress has designated the site the country's only official national memorial to the dead of World War I, elevating it to an exclusive group of national treasures that includes the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore.

Congress's actions ensures that "the cross necessarily will reflect continued government association with the preeminent symbol of Christianity," the ACLU said.

It seems an improbable importance for this piece of desert land, where temperatures regularly hit three digits, an hour can go by without a passing car and somewhere nearby is likely to be a Mojave Green, the desert's own highly lethal variety of rattlesnake.

"It's just a little cross in the middle of nowhere," said Wanda Sandoz, who with her husband Henry is the cross's unofficial caretaker. Henry built the cross that currently occupies the spot -- there have been three -- and the Sandozes say they are fulfilling a WWI veteran's dying request to look after things.

Hiram Sasser, a lawyer with the Liberty Legal Institute, which represents the Veterans of Foreign Wars and assists the Sandozes, agreed.

"I always say you have to risk life and limb to be offended by this cross," he said.

It is unlikely the veterans who erected the cross knew or cared that Sunrise Rock was on federal land. World War I vets had flocked to the desert, either for mining opportunities or because doctors had suggested the climate for those with "shell shock" or respiratory problems from the war.

The men started VFW chapters throughout the region, and apparently were drawn to this particular granite outcropping because some looked at the rock's shadings and conjured up the silhouette of a WWI doughboy. The original cross had a plaque, complete with a misspelling:

"The Cross, Erected in Memory of the Dead of All Wars, erected in 1934 by Members Veterans of Foregin [sic] Wars, Death of Valley Post 2884."

That cross is gone, replaced first by a wooden one, and then by one Henry Sandoz erected in 1998, which he copied from studying old photographs.

Despite what supporters say was its secular birth, the cross for years has been the scene of Easter sunrise services, and the challenges began in 1999, when the U.S. Park Service denied an application from a Buddhist to build a shrine nearby. Frank Buono, an assistant superintendent, informed his boss that the presence of the cross violated the Constitution's establishment clause.

Buono is Catholic, but he said he was offended by the religious display on federal land. "The cross is important to me because it is the indispensable symbol of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ," Buono said in an interview. "But it isn't right that the symbol of my religion, or any religion, be permanently affixed to federal land."

Park officials agreed to take down the cross, but before they could act, Congress and the courts got involved. Congress forbade the Park Service from using any funds to remove the display. A district judge agreed with Buono that he had standing to bring his complaint and that the cross violated constitutional standards. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the decision.

Then Congress declared the site a national memorial, and proposed to cure any constitutional problems by transferring one acre on which the cross stands to the VFW in exchange for five acres owned elsewhere in the preserve by the Sandozes.

But Buono and the ACLU went to court again, and the courts agreed that such a plan would not resolve the constitutionality question. The deal "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve," the appeals court said.

While the fighting has gone on, the cross has remained in place. But to comply with the court's ruling, it was covered first by a tarpaulin bag and now by the plywood box.

The Supreme Court has had trouble coming up with an easily followed guideline on religious displays on government land. Instead, it has opted to issue opinions based on the specifics of a case. Thus, the court in 2005 ruled 5 to 4 that a large, granite Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Texas capitol, in place for decades and surrounded by other historical markers, could remain. The same day, the court ruled by the same margin that recently installed framed copies of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional.

But changes on the court could make it more difficult for those challenging religious monuments. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor voted to find both displays of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional, but she has been replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who seems more sympathetic to the other view.

"I can't see many votes for removing the cross," said Charles Haynes, an expert on the establishment clause at the First Amendment Center. Justices could short-circuit the constitutional issues by deciding the lower courts were wrong in granting Buono standing to challenge the cross.

President Obama's new solicitor general, Elena Kagan, inherited the case from the Bush administration and intends to argue it herself. She told the court in her brief that Buono no longer lives near the preserve and his objection to the cross -- that it was on federal land -- is remedied by the land swap.

Buono's lawyer, Peter Eliasberg of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, said Congress's efforts to avoid taking down the cross make it even clearer that it the cross is endorsed by the government. He rejected arguments that the image of the cross was a historical, rather than religious, symbol of sacrifice.

"When the government chooses a cross to recognize the veterans of World War I, which included 250,000 Jews, which included my grandfather, that is an important message and an inappropriate message for the government to send," Eliasberg said.

Wanda Sandoz, meanwhile, is surprised by the legal battle over the monument. "I suppose I can see the point, if I was Jewish or Buddhist," she said recently, as she walked around Sunrise Rock. "But the thing is, we didn't choose the cross -- the veterans did. I guess if they had picked a Star of David, that's what we'd be taking care of today."

The court will hear arguments in Buono v. Salazar on Oct. 7.