Clark County commissioners challenge desert tortoise impact fee

Clark County commissioners plan to check with other jurisdictions and see whether they have concerns about the desert tortoise’s threatened status. (Jessica Ebelhar/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

By BEN BOTKIN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Clark County commissioners made it clear Tuesday that they think there are better ways to spend the nearly $16 million that has gone toward conservation efforts to aid the desert tortoise since 2001.

In stark contrast to their view is that of the county’s former environmental manager, who attributed the concerns over the tortoise to a lack of both institutional knowledge and understanding about the county’s habitat species conservation plan.

The tortoise is a threatened species under the federal Endangered Species Act, and has been listed since 1989. The nearly $16 million is part of $95 million that has gone to projects aiding 78 species of animals and plants under the county’s multi-species habitat conservation plan.

That plan, started in 2000, requires developers to pay $550 for every acre that is developed. That money goes toward mitigation efforts to help animals and plants affected by development, whether it’s a modest apartment complex or a sprawling hotel-casino.

The county can’t just take the tortoise off the list. For now, county officials plan to check with other jurisdictions affected by the desert tortoise’s threatened status and see if they have similar concerns. They also plan to contact members of the congressional delegation and voice their concerns.

“This just boggles my mind,” commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said.

Other commissioners, including Chris Giunchigliani and Susan Brager, noted that the money would do a lot for efforts such as helping youth and improving mental health. At the same time, commissioners also say they care about animals and believe in protecting the environment.

The tortoise money, on the other hand, pays for such things as fencing, population studies and habitat restoration.

The issue, like the tortoise, will be slow to disappear into the horizon.

Under the county’s permit, it likely won’t be delisted until at least 2031.

Rob Mrowka, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, doesn’t share the same sense of outrage about how the system works. Mrowka worked as the environmental manager for the county from 2003 to 2008.

The money from the fees is a dedicated source of revenue for tortoise mitigation work under state law, Mrowka said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. He wasn’t at the meeting.

Noting that the commissioners in office now weren’t around when the plan began, he said the concerns are misguided.

“That institutional memory has faded and now they’re coming up with things that are absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

The county’s plan was needed to aid development, he said, noting that without the $550-an-acre fee, developers would have to get federal permits and do their own mitigation projects to make up for the impact to the tortoise.

The federal government needs to monitor it and have a generation of data — 25 years’ worth of tortoise information. That work will take until 2026.

Nearly 295,000 adult tortoises are estimated to live in the 25,900-square-mile range of habitat across Nevada, Utah, Arizona and California. Up to 91,000 of those are estimated to live in Nevada.

That’s another source of angst for county commissioners, who wonder exactly how threatened the species really is.

Mrowka disagrees.

“First of all it’s got a very vast territory, and you have to look at the trend,” he said.

Marci Henson, assistant director of comprehensive planning for the county, told officials that applying for delisting would be expensive and require gathering data with hired biologists in other jurisdictions.

Tortoises live in blackbrush and Mojave desert shrub. They have brown shells that can grow longer than 14 inches. They spend much time in burrows, venturing out to eat wildflowers and other plants.

Stinky L.A. smell tied to dead fish in the Salton Sea, officials say

Dead fish along the Salton Sea shoreline in southern California. The South Coast Air Quality Management District acknowledged the possibility that dead fish at the Salton Sea are partially to blame for the rotten-egg smell reported all day Monday. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Los Angeles Times

Regional air-quality managers on Tuesday said that the rotten egg odor that hit Southern California on Monday came from dead fish in the Salton Sea.

Air samples collected in the Coachella Valley, near the Salton Sea and elsewhere clinched inspectors’ suspicions of the 376-square mile, murky body of water as the source of the pervasive smell. Atwood said AQMD inspectors collected air samples which contained hydrogen sulfide.

Inspectors found concentrations of the gas, a product of organic decaying matter, heaviest close to the Salton Sea, with a pattern of decreasing concentration farther away.

“We now have solid evidence that clearly points to the Salton Sea as the source of a very large and unusual odor event,” said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

How unusual? As late as Monday night, AQMD officials weren’t even sure it was scientifically possible for a malodorous scent to trek the distance the Salton Sea’s fumes did. So they asked an air-quality modeler to use sophisticated computer modeling to find out if it was “theoretically possible” for a stench to travel that far.

“I think we’ve shown it was theoretically possible,” said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the AQMD. “But this is just something we did not expect.”

Inspectors ruled out landfills, oil refineries and a natural springs site as possible sources.

“The air samples were the final piece of the puzzle,” Atwood said. “Our inspectors did go out to the Salton Sea and did smell some very strong odors at the sea, as well as at the locations leading up to it.”

But it took the might of a powerful storm blowing from the southeast to bring the stench of the Salton Sea to L.A. All in all though, L.A. got lucky, compared with the town of Mecca, just north of the Salton Sea, and Indio, which received larger doses of the gaseous, funky odor.

“The storm originated in the Gulf of California and the Sea of Cortez and hit the Imperial Valley and Salton Sea,” said Tim Krantz, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands. “We had huge squalls and pretty heavy winds in the Coachella Valley. The winds pull the surface layers of the sea off from the southeast to northwest, and that surface water is replaced from the depth.”

And those depths are all kinds of stinky.

Experts said the winds from the Sunday night storm unsettled the fetid layers of water near the bottom of the sea, bringing them to the surface.

Andrew Schlange, general manager of the Salton Sea Authority, said that in the last week, a large number of fish died in the body of water, likely exacerbating the problem. But he said the fish die-off, which is a normal occurrence, was not significant enough on its own to explain the well-traveled odor.

Rather, he said, the storm upset an anaerobic—or oxygen-deprived—lower layer of the sea, where organic material lays decomposing, releasing the noxious hydrogen sulfide gas, with its distinct rotten egg smell.

The good news was that by Tuesday the odor had greatly diminished. As of about 5:30 p.m. Monday, there had been 235 complaints about the smell, Atwood said. Since then, there have been less than 10, though the “sulfur-type” odor still lingered in some parts of the region.

Atwood said a meteorologist for the AQMD has looked at the thunderstorm reports, and that along with wind-measuring instruments in the Coachella Valley, they determined that winds of more than 60 mph blowing from the southeast probably blew the rank odor to the L.A. Basin.

“That’s unusual because usually the winds are blowing in the opposite direction,” he said.

The Salton Sea has lost much of its depth. It's about 50 feet at its deepest point, with an average depth of about 30 feet, Schlange said. That means it doesn’t take as potent a weather event as it did in the past to cause an upswell that sends the water near the bottom to the top.

Schlange said the Salton Sea is losing much more water through evaporation than is being replenished through agricultural runoff and other sources. If water wasn’t flowing into the sea, it would lose a depth of about 4 to 6 feet a year through evaporation.

If something isn’t done to better replenish the Salton Sea, Schlange said issues with far-flung odors could be more common in the future. He said there’s a plan to do mitigation work on the sea, but money to fund it is lacking.

“All of a sudden Sunday evening, we had all these conditions that came together to allow something like this to occur,” Schlange said. “It’s occurred before, but not at this magnitude.”

$20 million tortoise habitat deal in the works

An aerial view of the construction of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which is scheduled to be completed in 2013. The project’s three solar fields — sited on 3,600 acres of U.S. Bureau of Land Management territory — will be able to generate about 392 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 140,000 homes. (Jamey Stillings/New York Times)

BY DAVID DANELSKI
Press-Enterprise

State fish and game officials and the BrightSource Energy Co. are considering a $20 million land deal that would allow the Oakland-based solar energy developer to make up for desert tortoise habitat losses from its solar plant now under construction in northeast San Bernardino County, state officials said.

BrightSource would pay into a state habitat land-bank fund and the company would get credit for preserving about 7,100 acres of desert tortoise habitat that the state has preserved since 2010 by funding grants to conservation land trusts, said Armand Gonzales, a special advisor for the California Department of Fish and Game.

Roughly half of the $20 million would cover the state’s land grant and administrative costs, Gonzales said. The other half would be used to create an endowment to pay for managing and monitoring land as wildlife habitat.

These habitat parcels are scattered about in the western Mojave Desert, with some parcels more than 100 miles from the company’s “power tower” solar energy plant now under construction in the Ivanpah Valley off Interstate 15 near the Nevada border.

The habitat land includes a checkerboard of parcels northeast of Kramer Junction between U.S. 395 and Harper Lake; an area north of Joshua Tree National Park just east of Yucca Valley; and the Hidden Valley area between Barstow and the Mojave National Preserve.

The deal would allow BrightSource to meet its state obligation to preserve 7,164 acres of desert habitat that was required in October 2010 when the California Energy Commission approved its 5.6-square-mile project on public land.

The state has since rejected a proposal by the company to meet the requirement by acquiring mining interests in the Castle Mountains in the eastern Mojave, because the area was not robust tortoise habitat, said Eric Knight, manager of an environmental protection office for the energy commission.

BrightSource declined to comment on any of the specific aspects of the deal.

“We’ve placed $34 million into an escrow account and continue to work on finalizing an agreement,” said an email from company spokeswoman Kristen Hunter. “Until a formal agreement is reached, the negotiations remain confidential.”

BrightSource also is working separately with federal officials to help tortoises by fencing roads and enhancing habitat on federal land, said a Bureau of Land Management spokesman.

BrightSource initially had until April of this year to acquire tortoise habitat, but energy commission staff have twice extended the deadline, which is now set for January of next year, Knight said.

Desert tortoises are listed as threatened with extinction, and the habitat acquisitions were required to offset habitat loses from the project and to help species survive.

Before BrightSource broke ground in the Ivanpah Valley, surveys commissioned by the company found only 16 tortoises in the project area, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently issued a permit to move a maximum of 38 tortoises.

But the company had to temporarily stop construction last year after many more reptiles than expected were found in the path of heavy machinery. Federal officials had to reassess the situation and issue a new permit before work resumed.

So far 75 adult and about 50 juvenile tortoises have been captured at the site, and another 50 babies have hatched in captivity, said Larry LaPre, a wildlife biologist for the federal Bureau of Land Management.

David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said habitat lands in the proposed state deal need to be preserved, but he added that conservation is needed in the Ivanpah Valley, where more solar development, an airport and high speed train line are planned.

The Ivanpah reptiles are genetically unique and are needed to help the species survive, he said.

“We need to go into this with eyes wide open about the trades we are making, and (see) whether we are ultimately dooming the important, biologically diverse Ivanpah Valley,” Lamfrom said.

BrightSource's 392 million-megawatt project will consist of thousands of mirrors focused on three central towers where heat will be used to generate power. The first phase is expected to produce power by early next year.

President Barack Obama has hailed the project as a step toward reducing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels and cutting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. It is one of several alternative-energy projects in California approved by the administration under a “fast track” policy that expedited environmental review.

Mojave solar-power project sacrifices the desert for the Earth

Industrial-scale solar development is well under way in California's Mojave Desert, where more than 3,500 acres of public land are being covered with BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar-power project. In the fight against climate change, the Mojave is about to take one for the team.

BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar-power-plant construction site is bathed with the light from sunrise as cranes loom over the Mojave Desert and crews work to build one of facility's giant "power towers." (MARK BOSTER / MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS)

By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times

IVANPAH VALLEY, Calif. — Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket.

Clustered nearby are hangar-size assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 public acres. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will become six square miles of gleaming reflectors, sweeping from Interstate 15 to the Clark Mountains along California's eastern border.

BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah solar-power project will soon be a humming city with 24-hour lighting, a wastewater-processing facility and a gas-fired power plant. To make room, BrightSource has mowed down a swath of desert plants, displaced dozens of animal species and relocated scores of imperiled desert tortoises, a move some experts say could kill up to one-third of the reptiles.

Despite its behemoth footprint, the Ivanpah project has slipped easily into place, unencumbered by lasting legal opposition or public outcry from California's environmental community.

The public got its chance to comment at scores of open houses, but the real political horse trading took place in meetings involving solar developers, federal regulators and leaders of some of the nation's top environmental organizations.

Away from public scrutiny, they crafted a united front in favor of utility-scale solar development, often making difficult compromises.

"I have spent my entire career thinking of myself as an advocate on behalf of public lands and acting for their protection," said Johanna Wald, a veteran environmental attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "I am now helping facilitate an activity on public lands that will have very significant environmental impacts. We are doing it because of the threat of climate change. It's not an accommodation; it's a change I had to make to respond to climate."

That unusual collaboration — along with generous federal subsidies and allotments of public land — has sparked a wholesale remodeling of the American desert.

Industrial-scale solar development is well under way in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration in the past decade: 21 million acres, more than the area of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties put together.

If only a few of the proposed projects are built, hundreds of square miles of wild land will be scraped clear. Several thousand miles of power-transmission corridors will be created.

The desert will be scarred, and no amount of mitigation will repair it, according to scores of federal and state environmental reviews.

"The scale of impacts that we are facing, collectively across the desert, is phenomenal," said Dennis Schramm, former superintendent at neighboring Mojave National Preserve. "The reality of the Ivanpah project is that what it will look like on the ground is worse than any of the analyses predicted."

In the fight against climate change, the Mojave Desert is about to take one for the team.

Not cheap energy

For decades, America's Western deserts have been dusty storehouses for government scrap, a lode for minerals, a staging ground for tanks and military maneuvers.

But the thrum of industry is afoot, bringing Space Age technology and a sense of urgency.

The BrightSource solar plant stands as an exclamation point in the desert.

The $2 billion plant is an amalgam of gadgetry designed to wring the maximum energy from the sun. Computers continually focus the field of mirrors to a center tower filled with water, which will heat to more than 1,000 degrees. The resulting steam drives an array of turbines capable of generating 370 megawatts, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes during peak hours.

Capturing a free and clean source of energy is not cheap. Solar is the Cadillac of energy, with capital costs and other market factors making it three times more expensive than natural gas or coal.

Ratepayers' bills will be up to 50 percent higher for renewable energy, according to an analysis from the consumer advocate branch of the state Public Utilities Commission.

What has opened the way for such a costly source of energy is the dramatic turn in federal policy. As early as 2005, the Bush administration established generous programs to reward renewable-energy developers. The Obama administration sweetened the pot, offering $45 billion in federal tax credits, guaranteed loans and grants.

On the state level, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger freed large solar plants from property taxes and handed out $90 million in exemptions from sales and use taxes. Under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state invested more than $70 million in clean-energy research last year, paid for by a ratepayer surcharge.

The money has sparked a land rush echoing the speculative booms in mining, railroad construction and oil and gas on Western federal land.

One of the first firms out of the gate was Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, which received $1.6 billion in federally guaranteed loans in addition to hundreds of millions in private investment.

By taking advantage of the available government subsidies, shrewd solar developers can get taxpayers to cover close to 80 percent of a multibillion-dollar project. The rest comes from investors, attracted by what amounts to a tax shelter.

Federal and state officials have used job creation to partly justify their subsidy of solar companies. During the two to three years of a solar plant's construction, most new jobs will go to union tradesmen. But after a plant is built, employment opportunities are limited.

BrightSource's Ivanpah facility is expected to employ 1,000 workers at the height of construction, but that will shrink to 86 full-time maintenance and facility workers once it is up and running.

"What troubles me is that the public has bought the whole solar expansion hook, line and sinker because it's 'renewable,' " Schramm said. "The public would be up in arms if someone was building Disneyland next to a national park."

The environmental cost

Larry LaPre, the Bureau of Land Management's wildlife biologist for much of the Mojave, said some aspects of the project have been carefully considered and painstakingly done. Other approaches, however, are "complete nonsense," among them BrightSource's experimental approach of shearing the tops of desert plants so they fit under elevated solar mirrors. The company calls it "gentle mowing."

"To get another barrel cactus, even a small one, takes 100 years," he said, driving around the Ivanpah construction site. LaPre peered through the windshield and ticked off what living things might be left after the developers finish.

"The birds are already gone. They're outta there," he said. The site "will have plants, short plants, and it will have mice and kangaroo rats and some lizards. That's it. Maybe some more common birds. The insects are an unknown, because you could have massive losses of pollinators because you have all these insects getting burned in the mirrors."

Mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been largely mute, having traded the picket line for a seat at the table when development plans were drawn.

The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nation's most aggressively litigious environmental groups, has not challenged the Ivanpah project. It signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the project in exchange for concessions for the desert tortoise, mandating that BrightSource buy land elsewhere for conservation.

Some 24 environmental groups signed statements largely supporting the aims of solar developers.

Federal officials, solar companies and environmental groups argue that the urgency brought on by climate change has forced difficult trade-offs.

"We did the best we could," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said.

Land speculators see silver lining in solar projects

Remote, inhospitable desert land gains new value as developers seek sites for renewable energy. Industry observers caution that not every owner is going to make a fortune.

Land Ownership in the Mojave Desert Region

By Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Ripley, Calif.— For Sale: 3,400 acres in the desert.

• No paved roads. Check.
• Isolated. Ideal.
• Land not suitable for farming. Perfect.
• Blistering sunshine. Jackpot.
• Asking price: $34 million. Deal.

As large-scale solar development has spooled out into Southwestern deserts, the modern-day gold rush is about more than renewable energy. Solar companies and land speculators are gobbling up scarce private land in the California deserts, driving prices up 10- to 20-fold, or even higher.

Desolate acreage that a few years ago might have sold for less than $500 an acre can now fetch as much as $20,000 an acre, according to land brokers in the region. Farmers are also getting in on the action. Alfalfa and cotton fields are being converted to solar and wind farms as the industry's big players put together mega-deals.

"It's mind-boggling what's happening," said Jean Laborde of Bakersfield, a former farmer who has been selling agricultural land in the Mojave and adjacent Colorado deserts for 45 years.

Laborde has made a killing lately. About 10 years ago, one of his clients listed 750 barren acres near the town of Mojave, but Laborde couldn't sell it. He finally bought the land himself for $350 an acre. "There's no water, the wind blows all the time," he said. "Everyone said this was a Godforsaken place."

Laborde held on to the property, then sold it a few years ago to someone who intended to build a solar power plant. Laborde won't disclose what the developer paid, but the price today would be $10,000 an acre, he said. "Turned out to be the best deal I ever made."

Real estate specialists warn that not all desert landowners will enjoy a similar payday, but try telling that to old-timers who hear about deals that have turned farmers into millionaires. A recent example is the family of alfalfa growers in Gila Bend, Ariz., who sold 3,000 acres of cropland to a consortium of investors, who then sold the land to Spanish solar giant Abengoa for $45 million.

Earlier this year Ari Swiller, who heads a Los Angeles-based renewable energy company, quietly gathered up 11,000 acres near Blythe — the largest aggregation of separate parcels the Riverside County assessor's office has seen in 15 years. Although the property hasn't been resold, Riverside County Assessor Larry W. Ward said land in the area that typically sells in "the low hundreds" per acre is now going for $2,000 to $3,000 an acre.

That part of the state offers what solar developers require: mostly flat land near transmission lines, and reliable sunshine. Depending on the size of the plant, companies may need a few hundred or a few thousand acres.

Most of the utility-scale solar farms sprouting in the desert are on federal land, which companies lease for a nominal yearly rate. But some developers prefer private property, even at high prices, because public land carries a thick sediment of bureaucracy: a snarl of federal and state environmental laws that requires time-consuming and expensive analysis before the first shovel of dirt is turned.

Private land carries few similar impediments. As long as the parcel holds no cultural resources or protected species, a solar developer can move quickly and avoid costly construction delays.

Solar companies covet private land for another reason. If a renewable energy project on public or private property compromises habitat for endangered species, the developer must buy biologically suitable private land to account for that loss. The Ivanpah Solar Project, for example, requires that Oakland-based developer BrightSource buy 7,000 acres to replace habitat for the threatened desert tortoise.

Solar companies are reluctant to speak publicly about land prices, partly out of fear that they will inflame an already overheated market. Developers try to fly beneath the real estate radar, often buying contiguous parcels under different names or through third parties to avoid igniting a land rush.

Most hire brokers or land scouts who bump along dirt roads trolling for cheap land. They, too, operate quietly and seldom disclose whom they represent.

John Reeder, a land broker with Sperry Van Ness in Ontario, said the market has spawned speculators, "investors who have purchased or control options on land, whose only plan was to sell to a solar company."

The high-priced sales have longtime landowners salivating. But despite the talk of a land rush, most are still waiting to score.

In 1948, Russ Roberts' great-grandfather bought 565 acres of desert scrub near Baker. Roberts said his ancestor was convinced that with the growth of Las Vegas, land along the highway from Los Angeles would become prized.

The gamble hasn't really paid off for Roberts' family, although now, with renewable energy developers calling, they have hope. The family is asking $7,000 an acre.

"We get a lot of tire-kickers," Roberts said. "Calls from big companies in Germany. Nothing solid yet, though."

Bobby Miller handled the $45-million transaction in Gila Bend, a farming outpost in the Sonoran Desert southwest of Phoenix. But he is dismissive of the idea that everyone with a few acres of dusty ground is going to get rich selling to big solar.

"The sale gave everyone the hope that their parcels would be like this," said Miller, who has trademarked the nickname "Dr. Dirt" and has the seen-it-all weariness of someone who has surfed dozens of boom and bust cycles. "I think they are dreaming. I can sell you lots of bulk acreage at $800 an acre."

Other real estate specialists warn that many sales collapse at the last minute as solar developers find that their projects don't pencil out, often because government incentives or power purchase agreements don't come through.

To meet the exceptionally high front-end costs, solar developers are dependent on federal loan guarantees, tax rebates and other subsidies to finance construction of multibillion-dollar solar plants. Renewable energy subsidies have been accelerated by the Obama administration, and the land-buying frenzy is in part caused by the approaching end of some federal incentives.

The complexities involved in solar projects have made for an uncertain market. Larry Cullinane, who has been selling land near Hesperia since 1975, estimated that 90% of all solar land deals fall apart in the first year, leaving the seller to start over with little more than a deposit.

"One of my clients has had close to $200 million fall out of solar contracts for various reasons," he said. "In most cases it's a financial scenario. Some of the owners get fed up with dealing with the solar developers."

Buyers, too, have reason for skepticism. As California homeowners know from painful experience, runaway real estate prices carry a risk. Prices have risen so sharply and sales have been so spotty that establishing the true value of raw desert land is difficult.

Cullinane said two of his clients, brothers in their 80s, own 640 acres they have farmed and grazed since 1940. The men bought the property for $10,000, and are today asking $3.5 million.

The plot is good for solar, but it is 21/2 miles from the nearest transmission line. Cullinane thinks the price is about double its true value — although a naive buyer or a speculator might think otherwise.

Cullinane and some of his peers in the Mojave have also spotted a niche in the solar market: desert tortoise mitigation land. Cullinane now judges land according to how suitable it would be to relocate the tortoise. Class 1 mitigation land goes for $1,200 an acre, he said, while the best-quality habitat might bring $3,000 to $5,000 an acre.

"Just in the Mojave, I've got 20,000 acres, and in Kern County I've got about 15,000 acres for potential mitigation property," Cullinane said.

If large-scale solar projects continue to proliferate in the heart of the tortoise habitat, and with companies required to find two to three acres of habitat for each acre they displace, a reasonable question becomes whether enough private land exists in the Southern California desert to cover the loss.

Less than 17% of the Mojave's 20 million acres is private property.

Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Lands Project, calls this the elephant in the room of the tortoise mitigation program.

"Just take a look — there just isn't enough land for them to find and buy," she said. "It's the fatal flaw."

Developer to pay $753 per acre for tortoise mitigation

By MARK WAITE
Pahrump Valley Times

Corrections Corporation of America will pay a fee of $753 per acre for disturbing desert tortoise habitat, in a biological opinion for the federal detention center approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

That would amount to $51,957 for 69 acres of disturbed habitat in an agreement approved Oct. 9. The check will be paid to the Clark County Desert Tortoise Conservation Program for habitat enhancement and acquisition for desert tortoises in the wild.

The agreement was released after the filing of a Freedom of Information Act request by the Pahrump Valley Times.

A tortoise-proof fence will be required around the perimeter of the project, including the detention center water storage tank and drainage ditch. Another 51 acres of the 120-acre property will not be disturbed, the opinion said.

The issuance kicks off an 18-month period in which CCA is expected to construct and have ready for occupancy a federal detention center to house up to 1,500 inmates awaiting trial in federal court or deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The fee is much higher than the $550 per acre for a high-habitat zone and $250 in a low-habitat zone proposed in a habitat conservation plan covering up to 150 acres in Pahrump Valley -- a plan that was rejected by Nye County commissioners.

After months of haggling with the Fish and Wildlife Service, county officials balked at paying a fee suggested by consultant Julene Haworth to submit the plan after being told the plan would be free.

"I think there is definitely still a need because there are still species affected on private land," said Amy LaVoie, U.S. Fish and Wildlife deputy assistant field supervisor. "The urgency may have dropped a little bit because of the economy. I know there were a lot of planned developments in the Pahrump area."

County Commissioner Gary Hollis said he was belatedly engaging in discussions on desert tortoise mitigation plans so state USFWS Director Bob Williams "didn't send his storm troopers" down to Pahrump.

County Commission Chairman Joni Eastley had concerns the agency could stop construction in Pahrump if contractors didn't have the necessary agreement for an accidental take of desert tortoise.

"We have not decided whether to enact any enforcement at this time, especially with some of the developers coming forth and wanting to do their own plan," LaVoie said.

Pahrump is awaiting a desert tortoise habitat conservation plan for the 426-acre site on Highway 160 just southeast of Dandelion Road formerly planned for a fairgrounds and now being considered for a water park and western theme village.

In March 2007, the USFWS said the desert tortoise was a species that may be present at the proposed federal detention center site at 2250 E. Mesquite Ave. in Pahrump. A site visit on Nov.12-13, 2007, found 13 desert tortoise burrows but no actual tortoises. The service estimated the site would have very low densities ranging from zero to 10 tortoises per square mile.

"Human activity in the area may result in tortoise mortality from vehicle encounters, increased predation from ravens, illegal collection of tortoises and degradation of the habitat from disturbance, fragmentation and the spread of non-native plants," the opinion said.

However, the USFWS concluded that based on mitigation measures, already increased levels of disturbance in the area and the small area of disturbance proposed for the center, "The project, as proposed and analyzed, is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the threatened desert tortoise."

A qualified biologist will be required to direct the placement of temporary fencing along East Mesquite Avenue during construction, in areas next to desert tortoise habitat, a recommendation made by the Fish and Wildlife Service to the consultant for the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee.

That was the result of a site visit and past observations of tortoises crossing the road, Williams wrote.

A field contract representative approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service would be hired to implement an education program for construction workers; conduct a pre-construction clearance survey flagging any burrows, feeding sites or nesting sites; define disturbance areas and install desert tortoise exclusion fencing before construction.

A biologist will be on call during construction to move any desert tortoises out of the project area.

If the installation of the tortoise proof fence occurs during their active period from March to October, an authorized biologist will be present to ensure no tortoises are harmed. The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates two tortoises could be killed during construction. The fencing would be monitored daily.