County should say no to Soda Mountain solar

COMMENTARY

By Jacob Overson
Desert Dispatch

Growing up in one of the California desert’s last remaining ranching families instilled in me a deep love of open spaces, wildlife and the independent people who call the desert home. My family taught me to work hard, make decisions carefully and steward the fragile desert ecosystem.

As manager of the Baker Community Services District (Baker CSD) I call on 1st District Supervisor Robert Lovingood and the other San Bernardino County Supervisors to oppose the Soda Mountain Solar Project.

The Soda Mountain Solar Project undermines our county’s interests, harms communities, jeopardizes a national park unit and contradicts our county renewable energy ordinance. Thousands of San Bernardino County residents and numerous local organizations, businesses, scientists, recreation groups, and gateway communities vocally oppose the project.

Soda Mountain Solar has been forced on the County and local communities by outside interests seeking their own political and financial goals, while we deal with the environmental consequences.

Political appointees from the Department of Interior’s Washington office railroaded this through approvals despite the agency’s local desert staff saying “no.” San Bernardino County was thrown under the bus so that the Obama Administration could claim progress on their renewable energy development goals.

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Bechtel Group, a multi-national corporation, capitalized on the motivations of the Interior Department and rammed the project through a federal environmental review process. We recently found out they immediately plan to sell it to another San Francisco company, Regenerate Power.

Once again, our county and local communities have to pay the price as we watch San Francisco companies play “Monopoly” and literally manipulate our landscape and way of life. Luckily we can stop this game right here at home before the company passes go and collects hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

The National Park Service (NPS) remains opposed to the project as it would irrevocably harm the Mojave National Preserve. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has expressed grave concerns related to the irreversible harm to wildlife corridors and bighorn sheep. Those who live in Baker are concerned about how the project’s groundwater pumping will impact our community’s water resources.

Finally, our community is concerned that the project’s degradation of national park resources will harm the local economy. According to NPS statistics, in 2015 there were almost 600,000 visitors to the Mojave National Preserve who spent over $33 million and their economic contribution directly and indirectly created 486 jobs throughout the region. We have a vested interest in protecting the Preserve’s resources and ensuring that it continues to be a destination for tourists who love wildlife and wilderness.

The manner in which the Interior Department has recklessly pushed this project forward raises fundamental questions about how they will implement the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP).

San Bernardino County Supervisor Lovingood and the rest of our Board of Supervisors can support sound renewable energy policy by rejecting Soda Mountain Solar’s water permit and refusing to certify it. The county should seize this opportunity to take back control from Washington and San Francisco interests on behalf of their desert residents.

Jacob Overson grew up ranching in the California desert and is currently the manager of the Baker Community Services District.

Mojave Desert at stake in far-reaching federal energy plan

By Carolyn Lochhead
San Francisco Chronicle

In its final months, the Obama administration is racing to complete a far-reaching environmental initiative that could forever alter one of the wildest places left in California.

A giant energy plan for the Mojave Desert attempts to reconcile two contradictory goals: fast-tracking big solar and wind installations across 10 million acres of public lands to reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change, and preserving the region’s natural beauty and ecological integrity.

Solar and wind developers say they will need broad expanses of public land to build their big installations. But scientists say those large-scale developments will permanently scar the desert landscape, destroy native plants and wildlife, and, to top it off, may not do for the environment what they were intended to do.

More than seven years in the making, the joint state-federal Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan is driven by President Obama’s promise to install 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy on federal land, and by the state’s ambitious new effort to get half of California utilities’ electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

The administration’s goal is to deliver the equivalent of nearly a quarter of California’s current daily electrical generating capacity. That’s enough to provide power to 3.28 million homes, according to solar industry estimates.

The plan attempts to correct mistakes made early in the Obama administration, when the California desert was opened to large-scale solar development by the Bureau of Land Management, the current plan’s chief architect, without taking into account the broader environmental impacts on the desert. Unlike the National Park Service, whose mission is conservation, the bureau encourages multiple use of public lands, including mining, hunting, recreation, logging, grazing, oil and gas drilling, and renewable energy production.

The bureau’s plan is to set aside 388,000 acres, or more than 600 square miles, of public land in the Mojave for renewable energy development and make another 842,000 acres available if needed. In all, nearly 2,000 square miles of desert could be developed.

The plan also sets aside 5 million acres, or 7,812 square miles, for conservation.

Administration officials are expected to sign off on the plan this summer. After that, only litigation or an act of Congress could prevent it from going forward. While the state is a partner in the effort, only federal land will be developed.

The California desert plan is “an environmental story in the United States that hasn’t received the attention that it’s owed,” said Rebecca Hernandez, an earth systems scientist at UC Davis. It “has really gone under the radar.”

Outside its three national parks at Death Valley, Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve, the desert has been long considered a scrub wasteland. For decades it’s been a repository for sprawling military bases, off-road vehicle playgrounds and booming desert cities, divided by three interstate highways. It’s been mined and grazed for a century and a half. And with a solar intensity that rivals the Sahara, the California desert is now seen as a natural place for renewable energy development.

Despite these human incursions, the desert remains one of the most intact ecosystems in the continental United States.

Scientists have come to understand that the desert is a major carbon sink, whose ancient, deeply rooted plants are a slow-motion machine for drawing carbon from the air and burying large stores of it underground in stable form.

They have shown that deeply rooted desert plants suck huge amounts of carbon from the air and bury it in the earth, where it interacts with soil calcium to form the white desert crusts known as caliche. When these soils and plants are disturbed, this natural process of carbon sequestration is disrupted.

In other words, critics say, building big solar and wind plants on undisturbed desert soils to fight climate change could backfire.

“Globally there’s probably about as much carbon bound up in (desert soil) as there is in the atmosphere,” said soil biologist Michael Allen, director of UC Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology and a pioneer in studying desert carbon sequestration. “It’s a very large pool.”

Opposition to the administration’s plan also comes from the solar industry. In a last-ditch effort to make changes, industry groups warned in a memo this month that the initiative will make it “impossible” to achieve the administration’s climate goals — including those that came out of last year’s landmark Paris climate accord — because it leaves too little public land available for development.

“California is home to the best solar radiance in the world,” said Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-Scale Solar Association, and the Bureau of Land Management “is on the threshold of locking it off against development in perpetuity.”

Environmental groups that support the administration’s plan fear the desert will be under significant threat from solar development without the government’s protection of 5 million acres.

Without such protection, said Kim Delfino, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, “the public lands will yet again be the place a lot of these large projects go.”

The plan was designed to avoid a repeat of actions taken in the Obama administration’s early days, when it handed $50 billion in subsidies to renewable energy developers as part of the economic stimulus that followed the 2008 crash. The initiative set off a desert land rush by those hoping to cash in on the government money and the vast tracts of available public land, which in turn overwhelmed federal agencies, causing them to approve projects without considering their broader environmental impacts.

“The state and the federal permitting agencies were scrambling to do a good job of analyzing projects in the desert on a site-by-site basis, but without the benefit of a broader plan that would help us really begin to see the big picture of how these different projects might together affect the desert environment,” said Karen Douglas, a member of the California Energy Commission who has taken a leading role for the state in the current plan.

One project that environmentalists point to as an epic mistake is BrightSource Energy’s solar-power farm at Ivanpah (San Bernardino County), built to provide power for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Constructed just north of the Mojave National Preserve on 6 square miles with $1.6 billion in federal loans and $600,000 in tax credits, the plant has fallen short of its production goals.

Construction turned up many more endangered desert tortoises than expected, and thousands of birds have been incinerated in the light beams that reflected off the plant’s nearly 350,000 mirrors to three 45-story-tall towers. The plant has burned so much natural gas that it has needed to buy carbon credits to comply with the state’s greenhouse gas emissions program. BrightSource, an Oakland firm, says the plant has vastly improved its solar power output this year.

With the new plan, the administration is trying to look at entire landscapes when planning for renewable energy. In a speech in April, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the effort would “determine where it makes sense to develop, where it makes sense to protect the natural resources, and where we can accomplish both.”

Barbara Boyle, head of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign, called the plan “a really important milestone ... that looks at the big picture of development and conservation.”

“We take a very pragmatic view of this, recognizing that some development is going to happen in this desert, and it’s not going to be possible to stop it all,” Boyle said. “We are pushing as hard we possibly can to put it in the least damaging places and to limit how much is done.”

Three factors are driving the push for large-scale solar and wind development: a law passed by the California Legislature last fall requiring half the energy provided by utilities to come from renewable energy sources within 14 years; the Obama administration’s targeting of public lands for such renewables; and Congress’ decision in December to continue a lucrative solar tax credit.

But common sentiment among local environmental activists, business leaders, county officials and scientists living in the desert is that solar should come from panels on the rooftops of homes and businesses where electricity demand is. Putting solar on rooftops would encourage more small-scale advances in renewable energy production and reduce the need for sprawling desert projects, they say.

“If the state of California was really smart, they would do a Google search and look at all of the parking lots and rooftops in Southern California — the Walmarts, the Targets, the humongous shopping center areas,” said Chuck Bell, head of the pro-business Lucerne Valley Economic Development Association, who joined local environment activists to protest the desert plan.

Hernandez, the UC Davis scientist, worked with Stanford University researchers on a study last year that found that rooftop and other solar systems in developed areas “could meet the state of California’s energy consumptive demand three to five times over.”

“When you have so many other places that are already disturbed, especially across the whole of California, it just doesn’t make sense to destroy any remaining natural habitat we still have left intact,” said Hernandez, whose joint study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

But Douglas, the California Energy Commission member, insists the state needs large-scale renewable energy to provide reliable electricity, and the desert so far has been instrumental to building the capacity to do that.

“Rooftop is a really important part of the portfolio,” Douglas said. “It will get more important, and it is getting more important, but we have big goals. Large-scale projects, they also get you scale. They are located in areas with very good resources, and when they come online they can increase our renewable energy generation as part of our statewide portfolio very quickly.”

In its planning, the Bureau of Land Management said rooftops are outside of the agency’s authority and that its orders were to evaluate renewable energy projects only “on federally administered land.” Planners focused solely on the desert.

Rex Parris is the Republican mayor of Lancaster (Los Angeles County) in the western Mojave. His focus on renewable energy has resulted in the placement of solar panels over parking lots, on city buildings, schools and even the city’s baseball stadium. He wants to make Lancaster the first city to require solar panels on all new housing. His aim, he said, is twofold: to battle climate change and save money.

He invited a Chinese company to manufacture electric buses in Lancaster, which, under his leadership, also bought the city’s streetlights from Southern California Edison when the utility refused to switch the bulbs to LED lights. Parris is pushing large-scale solar installations on some of Antelope Valley’s 56 square miles of abandoned alfalfa fields.

There’s no reason to bulldoze desert wilderness, the mayor said. Gesturing to his city of 150,000 people, he said, “We have the land here.”

A timeline of the desert tortoise’s slow and steady decline

Fish and Wildlife and the San Diego Zoo experimentally translocated juvenile tortoises from the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center to the former Nevada Test Site in 2011. (Courtesy San Diego Zoo)

By Emily Green
High Country News

Kristin Berry's khaki hat flaps in the wind as she bends to inspect the skeleton of a desert tortoise. Remnants of its head and neck are still attached to the carapace, and bleached bones protrude from it. It's been dead for about four years, she suspects, and "appears to have died in a relaxed position," she says, "with its legs out." That suggests starvation and dehydration, but the 70-year-old biologist can't be sure.

It's the second week of April, when wild tortoises typically emerge from hibernation to forage on the spring wildflowers that briefly brighten the Mojave Desert. Berry –– who does long-term research on the desert tortoise for the U.S. Geological Survey –– is the acknowledged authority on where the now-threatened reptiles once thrived.

Because the desert tortoise's Mojave range is largely on federal land, conservationists believe the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) should have better managed the animal's recovery once it was listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1989. Instead, the species has steadily declined.

1976 Bureau of Land Management establishes 40-square-mile Desert Tortoise Natural Area in Kern County, Calif.

1980 Beaver Dam Slope colony of desert tortoises near St. George, Utah, listed as "threatened" with 26 square miles designated "critical habitat."

1984 BLM tortoise biologist Kristin Berry releases a report showing an up to 90 percent decline in tortoise numbers across the Mojave in the last century. Causes include military bases, housing, roads, off-road vehicles, predators, fire, invasive plants, guns and pet collection.

1989 Fish and Wildlife lists the species as "endangered" after an outbreak of upper respiratory tract disease, caused by a Mycoplasma bacterium, kills more than 600 animals at the Desert Tortoise Natural Area in Kern County.

1990 Entire Mojave population is listed as "threatened." "Incidental take" permits are granted to Clark County, Nev. developers in exchange for mitigation funding through a habitat conservation plan and creation of the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, a 222-acre Las Vegas holding facility for displaced tortoises.

1991 USFWS opposes expansion of Fort Irwin National Training Center near Barstow, Calif., due to habitat incursion.

1994 USFWS designates 6.4 million acres in Mojave Desert as "critical habitat" for tortoise: 4,750,000 acres in California, 1,220,000 in Nevada, 339,000 in Arizona and 129,000 in Utah, but most types of development are not prohibited. It also releases a recovery plan that discourages relocating tortoises and urges protecting areas throughout the Mojave to preserve genetic diversity.

1996 26,000 BLM acres near the California border are designated as the "Large Scale Translocation Site" for Las Vegas' Desert Tortoise Conservation Center to begin releasing displaced tortoises.

2001 Congress authorizes Fort Irwin's expansion into 87,000 acres of critical habitat.

2003 Fish and Wildlife's 1994 recovery plan is reviewed and scientists who promote translocation and downplay danger of disease are charged with drafting a new plan.

California produces three habitat conservation plans that include 12 million acres in the Mojave to comply with the Endangered Species Act.

2005 The Federal Energy Policy Act calls for 10,000 megawatts of solar, geothermal and wind energy generation on public lands, including much of the Mojave, by 2015.

2008 Fort Irwin moves 571 desert tortoises to 13 sites. California's habitat conservation plans are superseded by a new "Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan."

2009 Fish and Wildlife asks the San Diego Zoo to help clean up over-crowding at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center, with plans to release all of its animals if it's closed.

The desert tortoise species Gopherus agassizii is split into two species. Tortoises east of the Colorado River are now designated Gopherus morafkai. This concentrates 70 percent of the federally protected species, Gopherus agassizii, west of the Colorado in California, where the greatest declines are reported.

2011 Fish and Wildlife and the San Diego Zoo experimentally translocate juvenile tortoises from the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center to the former Nevada Test Site; survival rates will be monitored.

2012 BLM field offices in California circulate the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan. Fish and Wildlife's Desert Tortoise Recovery Office joins San Diego Zoo in starting to translocate adult tortoises onto BLM land near Las Vegas, anticipating the Center's closure in 2014 but promising to monitor recovery for the next five years. Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey's follow-up study of 158 tortoises relocated from Fort Irwin in 2008 shows a five-year survival rate of less than 50 percent.

Huge solar power plants are blooming in California's southern deserts

By Dana Hull
San Jose Mercury News

MOJAVE DESERT -- At first glance, California's vast Mojave Desert seems barren: mile after mile of dust, sand and scrubby creosote bush under a blistering sun. But the huge desert, which spans an area larger than West Virginia, is becoming speckled with gigantic solar power plants that are creating hundreds of construction jobs and, when complete, will generate electricity for millions of homes.

California's solar Gold Rush is under way, fueled by billions of dollars of federal stimulus funding and a new state law that requires utilities to buy a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. While the collapse of Fremont solar manufacturer Solyndra has dominated the news in recent weeks because it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, several other solar companies that received loan guarantees appear to be thriving.

The project furthest along is BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which has been under construction for one full year and is currently being built on federal land near the California-Nevada border with the help of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee. BrightSource, which is based in Oakland, uses mirrors to concentrate the sun and turn turbines that generate electricity. When complete in 2013, Ivanpah will be the largest solar thermal power plant in the world, generating enough electricity for 140,000 homes.

Currently, more than 800 construction workers are on the sprawling 3,600-acre site, which covers an area half the size of Los Gatos. The steel shell of a massive tower that eventually will be taller than coastal redwood trees is rising from the dust near a parking lot filled with cars, trucks and construction vehicles. Most of the workers arrive before dawn to beat the searing late-afternoon heat, and engineering managers pore over plans in air-conditioned trailers.

Ivanpah is one of nine solar thermal power plants approved by the California Energy Commission last year. In addition, scores of other solar projects are in the pipeline. In August, the federal Bureau of Land Management was processing applications for 17 solar power plants in California's deserts.

Solar currently accounts for less than 1 percent of the state's electricity, most of which comes from natural gas, two nuclear power plants and hydropower. But advocates -- including Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown -- want solar to play a key role in the state's energy future, in part because each project generates hundreds of construction jobs. Brown hopes to add 20,000 megawatts of renewable generation -- about one-third of the state's current power needs -- to California's electric grid by the end of the decade.

"We use a lot of energy in California, and we have aspirations to electrify our vehicle fleet, our ports and to develop high-speed rail," said Commissioner Karen Douglas of the California Energy Commission. "We need significant amounts of utility-scale renewable electricity."

Public land at risk?

However, critics and grass-roots organizations such as Solar Done Right fear the West's last remaining tracts of pristine public lands are being industrialized by "Big Solar" in the name of clean energy, bringing irreparable harm to native plants and threatened species. They want "smart from the start" planning that allows renewable energy development in some parts of the desert while protecting the rest as conservation land. They want residents in the Bay Area and elsewhere to know that California's deserts are as beloved to some residents as its beaches, parks and redwood trees are to others.

"There's plenty of desert out there -- just put it in the right place," said Jim Lyons, senior director for renewable energy at Defenders of Wildlife, a national organization that opposes the proposed 4,613-acre Calico Solar Project east of Barstow because of its effects on desert tortoises, burrowing owls and bighorn sheep. "It's a lot like real estate: location, location, location."

Solar's potential

The Ivanpah facility embodies many of the hopes and fears of solar power plants in the desert. It will generate 370 megawatts of electricity, which BrightSource says will displace 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the plant's 30-year life. Google (GOOG) has invested $168 million in the project, while PG&E and Southern California Edison have signed long-term contracts to purchase the electricity.

"Solar thermal technology projects like Ivanpah are playing a vital role in helping us meet our state renewable goals while providing for a secure and sustainable energy future," Fong Wan, senior vice president for energy procurement at PG&E, said in a statement.

Unlike rooftop solar panels that directly convert sunlight into electricity, solar thermal plants concentrate the sun's rays with mirrors or lenses to boil water to create steam; the steam then turns turbines that generate electricity. Ivanpah consists of three separate power plants, each with a 459-foot-tall "power tower" and tens of thousands of mirrorlike "heliostats" -- 173,500 in all. While land has been cleared for the construction site, BrightSource has taken pains to leave much of the native vegetation intact. Thousands of pylons protrude from the ground amid vegetation that has been trimmed, but not plowed.

"This has the lowest environmental impact of any project in solar," BrightSource CEO John Woolard said in remarks to media members who toured the project. "We're using a minimal amount of water, and there is low impact on the soil and terrain."

But Jim Andre, a botanist and plant ecologist at UC Riverside, says native plants will not survive under the newly created shade.

"You're altering the conditions that the species have evolved in," he said. "It goes against conservation biology 101."

Concern about tortoise

The biggest environmental controversy at Ivanpah is the endangered desert tortoise. Though BrightSource expects to spend at least $45 million on everything from salaries for biologists to the purchase of thousands of acres of conservation habitat, activists worried about the tortoise protested outside the company's Oakland headquarters.

While alienating some environmentalists, Big Solar has many supporters among the ranks of the state's unemployed. Ivanpah is a welcome source of jobs in San Bernardino County, which has been hit hard by the housing crash.

Iraq War veterans Ross Bowlin and Kenneth Platten carpool more than 200 miles from their homes near Riverside to get to Ivanpah, and they share an inexpensive hotel room in Nevada during the workweek. Both obtained their jobs via "Helmets to Hardhats," an apprentice program that helps veterans transition to careers in the construction trades.

"Before this job I had no construction experience at all, and I was on unemployment for a while," said Bowlin, a former Marine who served two stints in Iraq. "But this job reminds me of being in the military, in that we have a job that's bigger than ourselves. We're facing an energy crisis."

Platten, who served in the Army, misses the adrenaline rush of war but says the sheer scale of Ivanpah gives him a different kind of thrill. The good wages -- about $35 an hour -- help make up for the long drive. In addition, he's used to the desert heat: The deserts of Iraq are even hotter than the Mojave.

"We're building the biggest solar thermal power plant in the world," he said, as he surveyed the power tower. "To see this going up is amazing. I can look out and know that I hauled some of that iron, and that's cool."

Sprouting like weeds

Ivanpah is not BrightSource's only project. The company has filed applications with the California Energy Commission to build two other large solar power plants: the 500-megawatt Hidden Hills project, in California's Inyo County, and the 750-megawatt Rio Mesa project in Riverside County.

"There's so many companies submitting plans and filing for permits that it's hard to keep track," said Laura Cunningham of Basin and Range Watch, a volunteer group fighting "energy sprawl."

"You basically have a few dozen activists trying to protect this huge desert," she said. "Each solar project is on a different type of ecosystem, and there hasn't been a lot of planning. It's been, 'There's sun, let's build a power plant.' "

Cunningham grew up in the Bay Area and moved to a rural mining town in southern Nevada 10 years ago. A biologist and reptile expert, she has grown to love the desert, and the sense of calm and wonder it inspires.

"You can go into the desert and feel like you are the only person in the world," she said. "And yet it's teeming with life: jack rabbits, burrowing owls, rattlesnakes. In the spring, we have the most spectacular wildflowers, and the whole desert erupts in blossoms."

Conservation plan

In an effort to resolve conflicts between solar companies and conservationists, California is developing a Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan to decide which parts of the desert will be open for renewable energy development and which parts will be protected.

"Initially, all of these big solar projects were being crammed down our throats," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity who is active in the conservation plan's process. "But now the state is realizing that you can't just bully projects into being -- you have to take a close look at where they are sited. Climate change is real, and we have to transition to renewable energy. But let's do it without driving species to extinction."

Mapping California deserts for projects, protection

JAKE HENSHAW
Desert Sun

State officials are mapping the California desert to identify what to designate for renewable energy projects and what to protect.

At the direction of the governor, energy and wildlife experts are trying to get ahead of potential solar, geothermal and wind projects that could lead to acres of solar panels and miles of transmission lines.

Protected areas such as those in the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan are in the review area, but state staff members expect them to benefit from the state effort.

‘‘We think this can help local entities reach their conservation goals sooner,'' said Kevin Hunting, who oversees the work for the state Department of Fish and Game.

He added: ‘‘I think there is a nice fit with the Coachella Valley plan and the (state) desert plan.''

The work on the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan generally is welcomed in the local area, where it's seen as a way to avoid haphazard development that could undermine the desert quality of life.

‘‘It's going to happen,'' Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson said of renewable development. ‘‘We want it to be well-planned.''

He, Supervisor Marion Ashley and local Sierra Club representative Joan Taylor agreed that habitat planning is important before major new generating plants or transmission lines are built.

Initial assessments indicate potential renewable sites for 6,748 gigawatt hours per year in the region that includes Palm Springs, Twentynine Palms and eastern Riverside County, and there are dozens of applications for renewable projects on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land in the desert.

‘‘Basically, if they are put in the wrong places, it could be a disaster for the desert ecosystem,'' said Taylor, who lives in Palm Springs.

But Ashley added that he also is looking at ways to tap energy projects to help finance the rescue of the Salton Sea, where wildlife and the sea are threatened by increased salinity and diversion plans for some water now flowing into the sea.

‘‘There should be a fee for restoration of the Salton Sea,'' Ashley said.

The goal is to speed up the development of renewable energy to help the state reduce greenhouse gas and switch to cleaner fuel by predetermining the best sites for renewable energy development.

Developers wouldn't have use these sites, but those that do would save time by capitalizing on environmental reviews done for those spots.

‘‘It dramatically reduces the time it takes for an applicant on a renewable energy project to get from drawing board to generating electricity,'' Hunting said.

The review, which covers the Colorado and Mojave desert regions, was ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Nov. 17 executive order that called for a third of the state's electricity to be produced by renewable power by 2020.

Now it's about 12 percent.

In his proposed 2009-10 budget, the governor recommended spending $5.6 million on this effort by the two agencies.

While the budget has yet to be approved, work has already begun on the desert plan with existing funds.

It is being coordinated with an older state project, the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative, that is primarily focused on ensuring adequate transmission for renewable energy projects needed to meet state targets.

The desert plan is meant to provide environmental reviews of the best sites for renewable projects based on such issues as their value for energy production and access to transmission lines, while designating environmentally sensitive sites for long-term protection.

The executive order calls for the draft plan to be done by the end of 2010 and the final plan by June 1, 2012. The goal is to cut the processing time of permits for projects in designated areas by at least 50 percent.

With 80 percent of proposed solar development on federal land, the desert planning project also includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

All together, Hunting said 24 local, six federal and a dozen state agencies have some say in energy development.