Mojave National Preserve HQ opens new visitor center

The new visitor information center at the park's headquarters boasts full color exhibits that highlight activities in the preserve, according to Linda Slater, educational program manager.

By EUNICE LEE
Desert Dispatch

BARSTOW • Tourists and local residents alike will now have access to a new visitor information center that highlights attractions in the Mojave National Preserve.

The new center now offers colorful exhibits featuring maps and photographs of the park, and the public can check it all out at an open house event Saturday afternoon.

The preserve’s headquarters office on Barstow Road opened in 2005, but didn’t have the funds to build an attractive visitor information center at first, said Linda Slater, manager of educational programs. Visitors have always been able to pick up free maps or talk to park rangers, but now they will have more visuals of the 1.6 million acre park located about two hours from Barstow.

“Now we can actually show people some pictures...and get them excited about visiting,” Slater said.

Contrary to what some people may think, said Slater, a preserve is very similar to a national park. It is not an off-limits or reserved space, she said. Hunting is permitted in preserves, she noted. For more information on the Mojave National Preserve, check their Web site at www.nps.gov/moja.

Mojave National Preserve’s new visitor center
Where: 2701 Barstow Road.
Regular center hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Contact: (760) 252-6101

Greens Vs. Solar

EDITORIAL
Investor's Business Daily

Environmentalism: The ditching of a desert renewable-energy project shows just how difficult it is to maintain our standard of living while pleasing the purists. Maybe we shouldn't even try.

Anyone who has set foot on a dry lake bed in California's Mojave Desert knows the meaning of barren. There's not much growing or moving there — just hot sun beating down on parched earth. So why not use it for a solar farm, since nothing else can be done with it?

That train of thought has led a number of solar power companies, backed by utilities and encouraged by the federal government, to propose big energy facilities in the wide-open spaces between Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Huge swaths of that land are under federal ownership, and a law passed in 2005 opened up most of those federal holdings for solar and wind energy projects.

A land rush has ensued, with firms such as Oakland Calif.-based BrightSource Energy staking out sites to develop solar power plants.

The technology to be used is called "solar thermal." Rather than convert sunlight directly into electricity (photovoltaics), solar thermal plants use mirrors to heat water with sunlight and create steam to power electric generators.

Of all the solar technologies in use or on the drawing board, solar thermal is the cheapest per watt. With the right economies of scale, it also seems to stand the best chance of getting the price of its power down to that of coal-fired plants.

But those economies of scale are part of the problem for the dominant left wing of the environmental movement. One activist, Santa Monica attorney Sheila Bowers, told the Los Angeles Times that the new solar power firms "are trying to perpetuate the old Big Energy paradigm into the renewable-energy era ... They have a monopoly agenda."

Then there are the preservationists of the BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) school.

You can always find someone with a passionate argument about building something large and visible on empty land. Often those arguments prevail, not because they make sense but because those who make them have a law or a powerful politician on their side. This is a bicoastal problem, as the aspiring wind farmers of Nantucket Sound will tell you.

BrightSource, despite its green-energy credentials, ran afoul of environmentalists because it wanted to build a 500-megawatt plant at the Broadwell Dry Lake, a basin in the Mojave just north of Interstate 40 and the old Mother Road, Route 66.

That spot was good for many reasons, from the abundant sunshine to the strategic location between two big energy-consuming metropolitan areas, L.A. and Vegas. But it turned out to be politically sensitive.

An environmental group, the Wildlands Conservancy, had bought the land, formerly a railroad right-of-way, and had donated it between 2000 and 2004 to the federal government to be preserved as a wildlife corridor. The conservancy raised a fuss and got into a very public squabble with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who advises a venture capital firm backing BrightSource.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has crusaded for most of her Senate career to preserve much of the Mojave Desert from development, stepped in on the conservancy's side and said she would push for a law to turn the Broadwell Dry Lake area into a national monument, thereby barring all energy development.

BrightSource saw the writing on the wall and announced last week that it had scrapped the project. This editorial page tends to be skeptical about solar energy as a viable replacement for conventional power, so it's not the loss of one desert solar-thermal plant that worries us.

But this story stands as a reminder of how easy it is for groups fighting energy development — be it solar, wind, coal, nuclear, hydro or anything else — to stop progress if they have their hands on the right levers.

America needs more energy from all feasible sources. Without it, we face a very different, far more limited standard of living in our future. The argument that "they can always build it somewhere else" is running thin, because that "somewhere else" is likely to be someone else's pet cause.

Desert monument idea is starting to shine

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

Land around the Old Woman Mountains is part of the area supporters want considered for a monument. (Rodrigo Peña / The Press-Enterprise)

Efforts to establish a national monument in southeastern San Bernardino County appear to be gaining momentum as some solar-energy developers drop plans to build on land targeted for protection.

Oakland-based BrightSource Energy announced late last week that it has stopped pursuing development of a solar plant on about 5,100 acres near Broadwell Dry Lake, east of Barstow, because the land there is being sought for a national monument.

"BrightSource Energy has ceased development activity at the Broadwell site in light of the proposed monument and is looking at other sites within California and out of state," John Woolard, the company's president and CEO, said in a statement.

And an official with Stirling Energy Systems, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company that also has an application to build a solar plant near the dry lake, said Tuesday that the company will put its primary focus on projects outside the monument area.

"We want to a find a solution that will be agreeable to everyone concerned," said Sean Gallagher, Stirling's vice president of marketing strategy and regulatory affairs.

The companies' apparent willingness to avoid some areas in the eastern Mojave Desert has bolstered the hopes of monument backers

"It is very good news," said David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy in Oak Glen. Myers' organization is dedicated to protecting natural places in the desert and elsewhere.

As the energy companies reconsider their plans, the monument idea has been gaining support among some of the nation's leading environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Both groups said they support renewable energy development to combat global warming, but they have agreed with monument supporters that wild areas should be protected.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said last spring that she plans to introduce a bill to create a national monument in the Mojave Desert. She noted her intention to protect thousands of acres of formerly private land that was purchased in the 1990s, largely through the fundraising efforts of The Wildlands Conservancy, and given to the government.

Myers has said he believed the land was to be protected, but the federal government accepted applications from companies that wanted to build solar plants on some of the acreage.

Feinstein has not yet introduced the legislation, but monument advocates said it could cover much of the public land between Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve and include a 70-mile stretch of Historic Route 66. The name "Mother Road National Monument" has been suggested in honor of the highway.

Efforts to protect public land in the area are running up against state and federal efforts to encourage alternative-energy development to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Last month, the Schwarzenegger administration wrote Feinstein, saying a monument "must not" interfere with renewable energy projects.

But monument supporters, including Feinstein, say the desert has room for energy projects that don't destroy what they see as the pristine public lands.

The BrightSource project at Broadwell Dry Lake would have ruined one of the more striking valleys sought for the monument, said Elden Hughes, an environmental activist in Joshua Tree.

"It is really one of the most beautiful vistas in the desert," Hughes said. "I have seen yellow flowers there that went all the way to the horizon."

Hughes said he is encouraged. "This monument is getting much closer," he said.

But 30-year Yucca Valley resident Mike Hawkins opposes the monument idea. It would force energy developers and military base expansions to use land needed for off-road recreation, he said. The monument also would take land that has mining potential.

"We don't need more land locked away," Hawkins said.

L.A. may drop plans for controversial transmission line

The DWP's proposed 85-mile-long Green Path North line through unspoiled desert and wildlife preserves was opposed by community and environmental groups. The agency may focus on other routes.

By Phil Willon
Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles officials said the city may abandon plans to build a highly controversial "green" power transmission line through unspoiled desert and wildlife preserves on a route east of the San Bernardino Mountains, focusing instead on alternative pathways mostly along an interstate highway where high-voltage lines already exist.

The Department of Water and Power's proposed 85-mile-long Green Path North transmission line has faced fierce opposition from more than a dozen community and environmental groups, creating a political chink in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts to cast himself as the leader of the "cleanest, greenest big city in America."

The proposed transmission line, which is about to undergo federal and state environmental review, is designed to bring electricity generated by solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear power to Los Angeles from the southeastern California deserts and Arizona. Villaraigosa in July promised to end the city's reliance on high-polluting, coal-fired power plants and secure 40% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

At the very least, the city utility may shelve the agency's most controversial proposed route for the power corridor, which would cut through Big Morongo Wildlife Preserve north of Palm Springs, Pioneertown near Yucca Valley, Pipes Canyon Wilderness Preserve and a corner of the San Bernardino National Forest before connecting with existing DWP power lines in Hesperia.

"We've heard the concerns of the community and so we're seriously contemplating taking that off the table," DWP General Manager H. David Nahai said recently.

The Green Path North transmission line could be halted altogether -- or postponed -- because of opposition from environmental groups, concerns raised by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the enormous costs, according to City Hall sources familiar with the project. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the proposal.

The Villaraigosa administration appears to have shifted to a policy focused more on developing renewable energy sources closer to the DWP's existing power transmission lines, primarily those that stretch to Owens Valley and east toward Utah.

"We're constantly reviewing and evaluating all of our options," Nahai said.

Environmental groups and community activists were encouraged by Nahai's comments, but remain wary until the proposed transmission line through Yucca Valley is officially scuttled.

"I think that would be really good news if that were the case," said April Sall, conservation director with the Wildlands Conservancy in Oak Glen. "The Yucca Valley route would have really high environmental damage.

"If the DWP wants to validate its claims that they want a more environmental friendly face for L.A. and the DWP, this would be a step in the right direction."

Controversy over the transmission line erupted in December 2006 when the DWP identified the Yucca Valley route as its "preferred alternative," but the agency has since backed away from that statement, saying that there are seven viable routes.

The cost of building Green Path North could exceed a half-billion dollars, according to DWP estimates in 2006.

Nahai said he still firmly believes that the DWP will need new transmission capability to carry power from the Salton Sea and Imperial County, home to vast geothermal power reserves and prime terrain for solar power generation.

The DWP, the nation's largest municipal utility, already has plans for a 55-megawatt "solar farm" on 970 acres it owns near Niland, and the utility also has purchased more than 5,800 acres near the Salton Sea as possible sites for geothermal power plants.

The agency hopes to share a transmission pathway with Southern California Edison Co., which has existing transmission lines along Interstate 10, for most of the route to Los Angeles, Nahai said.

"Our preference would be, to the extent that we have transmission coming out of the Salton Sea, that that be done on a shared basis," he said.

For Green Path North, the first step in the environmental review process is expected to begin within a matter of months, during which a series of public hearings will be held throughout Southern California.

The process is being coordinated by the DWP, federal Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, since the proposed routes traverse federally protected lands.

The DWP hopes to finish construction of Green Path North by 2014.

BLM tackles plethora of solar, wind project applications

Staff sequestered in Desert Discovery Center



By JESSICA CEJNAR, staff writer
Barstow Desert Dispatch



BARSTOW • Biologists, realty specialists and air and water experts with the Bureau of Land Management shut themselves in the Desert Discovery Center for 10 full working days wading through a plethora of solar and wind energy applications.

Out of more than 25 solar and 20 wind project applications proposed for the Barstow area, staff at the local field office were able review 17, said Mickey Quillman, chief of resources at the BLM’s Barstow office. Some of these projects were submitted almost a year ago, Quillman said, and have languished while staff have focused on other BLM business. He sent his staff to the Desert Discovery Center two weeks ago, he said, to get away from the telephones and focus solely on the project applications.

“There are so many other things that are going on in the office, we don’t have the staff to work on these things full time,” he said.

According to Quillman, BLM staff review a project’s design as well as the number of acres needed to build the project. If an application doesn’t include all the necessary documents, the BLM sends the company a letter stating what it needs to do to move its project forward, Quillman said.

Companies are given between 30 and 60 days to respond to those letters depending on how much information is needed, said Greg Miller, renewable energy program manager for the BLM’s California Desert District. If it receives no response another letter is sent, he said. After 15 to 20 days of no response from a company, the BLM may reject or deny its application, Miller said.

Solar and wind projects are scattered throughout the 3.1 million acres of land the Barstow Field Office oversees, Quillman said. Even though he didn’t want to say which companies are further along in the application process than others, Quillman said Granite Wind, a wind project between Apple Valley and Lucerne Valley has progressed into the notice of intent to do an environmental impact study phase.

“There’s another solar plant we’re looking at that’s getting close to there,” he said.

Even though his staff was shut up for 10 days, focusing only on renewable energy projects, Quillman says he gets more applications on a regular basis. He may even order his staff to be sequestered again, he said.

“When the alternative energy projects came in it was added work load and we couldn’t focus on those as we needed to,” he said. “We had 25 solar and almost as many wind and as those (applications) come in we’ll review those as well. It’s an ongoing process.”

Golf Ball Mystery Solved at Joshua Tree

Man pays tribute to fallen duffers

Joshua tree. (Getty Images)

By OLSEN EBRIGHT
nbclosangeles.com

When we first heard that park rangers were finding thousands of golf balls in Joshua Tree National Park, our instincts told us someone was too cheap to pay driving range fees.

Turns out, that's not the case.

Meet Douglas Jones of La Quinta. He has a soft spot in his heart for the golfers of yore.

Jones has spent years throwing golf balls into the park out of his car window. It's his way of honoring fallen golfers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"Sometime around 2007, our rangers began discovering large quantities of golf balls in some turnout areas of the park," park spokesman Joe Zarki told the Times. "We were wondering what was going on here. There were also some tennis balls involved."

On Aug. 17, park officials finally found Jones. He confessed immediately.

"He said he did it because he wanted to honor all the golfers who had died," Zarki told the Los Angeles Times.

Golf balls weren't the only things Jones was leaving behind. Park rangers said they also found cans of fruit and vegetables and some park literature, the Times reported.

The food, Zarki said, was for stranded hikers. The park literature was his way of leaving his mark, Zarki said.

Zarki told the Times the park has spent about $9,000 on cleanup.

Jones was cited for littering, feeding wildlife and abandoning property, the newspaper reported. He faces jail time and a possible ban from the park.

Golf balls in the national park: a subpar tribute?

A Joshua Tree spokesman says a man confessed to throwing up to 3,000 balls into the desert park to honor dead golfers. Rangers, who first noticed quantities of the objects in '07, see it as littering.

By David Kelly
Los Angeles Times

A man claiming he was paying tribute to dead golfers tossed up to 3,000 golf balls into the biggest sand trap he could find: Joshua Tree National Park.

But where 57-year-old Douglas Jones saw commemoration, park rangers saw wholesale littering, and he faces possible jail time and other sanctions.

"Sometime around 2007 our rangers began discovering large quantities of golf balls in some turnout areas of the park," said park spokesman Joe Zarki. "We were wondering what was going on here. There were also some tennis balls involved."

Rangers also found cans of fruit and vegetables left in the desert along with park literature tossed around.

"He would collect permits from backcountry permit boxes and throw them all over," Zarki said. "There was no rhyme or reason to it."

Rangers finally caught up with the La Quinta man Aug. 17, and he immediately confessed.

"He said he did it because he wanted to honor all the golfers who had died," Zarki said. "He left the cans of fruit and vegetables supposedly for the assistance of stranded hikers."

And the park permits and literature? "He wanted to leave his mark," Zarki said.

Contrary to what rangers originally thought, Jones wasn't chipping golf balls into the desert with a club. He was hurling them from his car.

The balls, numbering between 2,000 and 3,000, were unlikely to pose a threat unless an animal mistook one for an egg and tried to swallow it, Zarki said. But the cleanup was a different story.

"We estimate we spent about 373 staff hours, or about $9,000, on this case," he said.

Jones was cited for littering, feeding wildlife and abandoning property. He will appear before a federal judge later this month. If found guilty, he could be fined, sent to jail or banished from the park.

Jones was unavailable for comment Thursday. He lives with his 84-year-old father, Douglas, who didn't know about the incident until a reporter called him.

"It certainly sounds strange," said his father. "He hikes out in Joshua Tree every three months or so, and he golfs maybe once a week. But I don't know where he would get that many golf balls."

He did, however, say that his son works at a local golf course.

Solar energy firm drops plan for project in Mojave Desert

BrightSource Energy's decision ends a battle with environmentalists over a 5,130-acre site in a proposed national monument.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Ending a bitter feud in the rush to develop solar farms, BrightSource Energy Inc. on Thursday said it had scrapped a controversial plan to build a renewable energy facility in the eastern Mojave Desert wilderness that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wants to transform into a national monument.

The proposal pitted companies queuing up to replace imported oil and facilitate a national clean-energy economy against environmentalists strongly opposed to the idea of creating an industrial zone within 600,000 acres of former railroad lands that had been donated to the Department of Interior for conservation.

The acrimony even triggered a nasty public squabble between Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior advisor at VantagePoint Venture Partners, which raised $160 million for Oakland-based BrightSource, and David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which raised $40 million to buy the old railroad lands to protect them from development.

"I commend BrightSource Energy for this action," Feinstein said in a statement. "It's clear that conservation and renewable energy development are not mutually exclusive goals -- there is room enough in the California desert for both."

Of particular concern was BrightSource's proposal to develop a 5,130-acre solar power plant on a portion of the donated lands known as Broadwell Dry Lake, which lies within Sleeping Beauty Valley.

The scenic, near-pristine region near Ludlow is home to a significant herd of bighorn sheep and framed by the Kelso Dunes Wilderness and Bristol Mountains Wilderness on the east and the Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area on the west.

Scientists continue to catalog plants and reptiles uniquely adapted to the scorched terrain in what remains a biological frontier.

For example, botanists recently discovered a species of lupine that features showy purple blossoms in the spring.

Biologists are also studying unusually dark lizards that appeared to have genetically adapted to the volcanic terrain.

On Thursday, BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs said, "We have ceased all activity at the Broadwell site. . . . We will not build inside of a national monument."

The company's announcement came as a welcome surprise to environmentalists.

"This creates an open playing field for the monument to be built," Myers said. "It also could herald a sea change in the solar energy industry in that people will better understand that that there are good and bad places to build."

Elden Hughes, former chairman of the Sierra Club's California-Nevada Desert Committee, described the company's announcement as "fantastic news."

"Broadwell is one of the most beautiful vistas in the desert," he said. "I've seen it covered with yellow flowers to the horizon in all directions."

BrightSource's proposal was one of 19 filed with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

BrightSource's project would have relied on hundreds of mirrors known as heliostats to focus the sun's rays on the tops of 200-foot towers, where water boilers would produce high-pressure steam and run electric turbines.

Wachs said BrightSource ceased activity at the Broadwell site "a few months ago." Around the same time, the company began seeking alternative sites for that project "in and outside of the state," he said.

"That's the best thing I've heard in months," said Gary Thomas, project coordinator for the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep.

"Of all the solar projects being proposed, this is the one that would have driven a stake through the heart of a herd of at least 200 bighorn sheep," he said. "We would have died on the mountains out there to stop it."

Separately, BrightSource is pressing ahead with plans to build a massive solar energy facility in the Mojave Desert's Ivanpah Valley, near Primm, Nev., just south of Las Vegas.

State and federal regulatory and land-use authorities say construction of the Ivanpah Valley project could begin as early as March.

Small white cross in Mojave National preserve is at center of major legal dispute

By James Rufus Koren
Redlands Daily Facts







Easter morning service at the Mojave Cross in 2003. (Eric Reed Photographer)



A small memorial in a remote part of San Bernardino County is at the center of a nearly decade-long legal battle that will culminate next month when the Supreme Court will hear arguments for and against removing a white cross from federal land in the Mojave National preserve.

In advance of the Supreme Court taking up the case, a group of six soldiers drove from Fort Polk, La., to the memorial, gathering signatures on a support petition along the way. They arrived at the memorial Thursday, where they were met by more than 100 supporters.

The memorial is a white cross, about 8 feet tall, along Cima Road in the Mojave National Preserve, closer to the Nevada border than to Barstow. For the past few years, the cross has been covered with a wooden box.

The Liberty Legal Institute, a Texas-based group that represents several veterans groups and supports keeping the cross in place, describes it as a veterans memorial "in the shape of a cross."

In a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court, Liberty Legal says it will argue "the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial does not violate the Establishment Clause, and never did."

The brief notes that many public military memorials and cemeteries are home to crosses or religious imagery and that a ruling against the Mojave monument could endanger other monuments.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which has been fighting to have the cross removed for nearly 10 years, says this is a clear-cut case of the federal government endorsing a religious display.
The Southern California ACLU announced in October 2000 that the National Park Service planned to take the cross down "within the next few months."

The cross was never removed because Congress voted to prevent federal funding to be used for removing it. That decision drew a lawsuit from the ACLU.

In 2002, a federal district court ruled in the ACLU's favor, saying the cross being displayed on public lands violated the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Two years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with that ruling.

In 2002, a clause in the Department of Defense budget called for transferring the land beneath the cross to a local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. But the district court again sided with the ACLU.

"It is evident to the court that the government has engaged in herculean efforts to preserve the Latin cross on federal land and that the proposed transfer of the subject property can only be viewed as an attempt to keep the Latin cross atop Sunrise Rock without actually curing the continuing Establishment Clause violation by Defendants," Judge Robert Timlin wrote in the court's ruling.

The Ninth Circuit agreed once again.

The Supreme Court will take up the case in October.

Alliance to promote Mother Road

By MARJ DARIO
Needles Desert Star

NEEDLES - In the novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck wrote, “(Route) 66 is the mother road, the road of flight,” when referring to the 1930s migration of Dust Bowl refugees who headed west hoping to find jobs in the fields of California. After describing the long journey from the central plains, Steinbeck continued,“There's California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it. Needles, on the river.”

A proposed Mother Road National Monument project may soon regain positive recognition for Needles.

The “driveable monument” concept is all about preserving a 70-mile section of historic Route 66 between Needles and Barstow in the Mojave Desert. It would pass through Goffs, Essex, Amboy, Ludlow and a few other small towns which became neglected after Interstate 40 was built. Needles is expected to be the eastern anchor for the monument road.

Collaboration by several entities including Sierra Club, Nevada Desert Committee, Wildlands Conservancy and Route 66 preservationists has produced an initial plan which is being presented to government officials. Several concerns are expected to be worked out through negotiations among all parties involved.

Designation of a national monument would attract tourism and provide historical preservation, but the purpose is also to protect open desert lands surrounding a number of wilderness areas. Construction of wind and solar plants in the area and expansion of the U.S. Marine base at Twentynine Palms is expected to be carefully considered.

Conservationists are asking that all existing uses be preserved, military expansion be well planned, renewable energy plant placement be prudent and the 189,000-acre Johnson Valley off-highway vehicle area be kept intact. The intent is to promote responsible development to avoid disturbing the area's natural beauty and wildlife.

Senator Dianne Feinstein has been approached about the proposed project. She is introducing legislation to protect former Catellus lands, some 600,000 donated and purchased acres which are sprinkled throughout public trust lands in the Mojave Desert; however, she has not actually endorsed the mother road concept or related plans as detailed.

The Needles Downtown Business Alliance has been energized by the national monument proposal and intends to elevate publicity for the portion of Route 66 which runs through town. The alliance meets on the first Thursday of each month until October, when twice-a-month meetings, on the first and third Thursday, resume.

Meetings begin at 11:30 a.m. in the Wagon Wheel restaurant along Needles Highway. The public is invited. The alliance is dedicated to the preservation and beautification of historic downtown Needles. Send e-mails to needlesdba@aol.com.

Monument plan creates rift

MOJAVE DESERT: The Schwarzenegger administration fears the preserve may interfere with energy projects.

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

A plan to create a national monument across a large corner of the Mojave Desert threatens to "halt all current planned renewable energy projects" there, the Schwarzenegger administration said in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

The senator has not yet introduced the legislation, but advocates of a bill to create the monument have said it could cover much of the public land in southeast San Bernardino County, between Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve.

One supporter said Tuesday that the senator now is working on a more modest plan than initially discussed.

The Aug. 28 letter, signed by state Natural Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman and released Tuesday, said Feinstein's California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act "must not" interfere with renewable energy projects. Schwarzenegger has made renewable energy a priority, and the state has aggressive standards requiring utilities to rely increasingly on solar, wind and other alternative sources.

Feinstein and a spokesman for Chrisman's office both said Tuesday that the legislation is still being shaped. And both said they want to conserve pristine lands while allowing development of solar and other renewable energy.

"We have mutual goals," Chrisman spokesman Sandy Cooney said in a telephone interview.

Feinstein released a prepared statement Tuesday.

"The vast majority of proposed large wind and solar projects on both public and private lands fall outside the boundaries under consideration for the monument," she said.

Earlier this year, preservationists said they sought Feinstein's support to create a 2.4 million-acre preserve to protect public land from military use and energy development. The area would be called the "Mother Road National Monument" because it would include 70 miles of historic Route 66.

15 PROJECTS PROPOSED

Included in the monument would be about 600,000 acres of former railroad land purchased with $40 million in donations raised by The Wildlands Conservancy, based in Oak Glen, along with $18 million appropriated by Congress. Although the land was turned over to the federal government for conservation, about 15 energy projects have been proposed on some of the acreage, according to a Wildlands Conservancy official.

Protecting that land was part of the impetus for Feinstein's move to create a monument.

David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, said Tuesday that when he and his group donated the land, the Clinton administration assured them that the property would be conserved. The Bush administration later allowed energy applications targeting the acreage.

Myers said representatives of several energy companies have told him they are willing to build their projects outside the monument area. But not all are willing, he said.

One company, BrightSource Energy, wants to develop a solar project that involves some of the donated land, near Broadwell Dry Lake, east of Barstow.

Keely Wachs, a spokesman for BrightSource, said the company plans to build there and has been working with Feinstein's office on legislation that would balance conservation needs and energy development.

SMALLER THAN PLANNED

Elden Hughes, a member of the Sierra Club California/Nevada Desert Committee and a Joshua Tree resident, said Feinstein is crafting legislation for a smaller monument than envisioned earlier by conservationists.

He said he hopes the Schwarzenegger administration doesn't stop Feinstein's effort, because a monument designation would protect corridors for wildlife to move between Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve. Such swaths of undisturbed land will be especially important as global warming changes habitat, he said.

"Severing the desert would be a huge mistake," Hughes said. "We need the wildlife and plant corridors to remain open."

Chrisman's letter said Feinstein intended to introduce the monument legislation this month along with another bill support renewable energy projects.

Staff writer Jim Miller contributed to this report.

Reach David Danelski at 951-368-9471 or ddanelski@PE.com

CLARIFICATION:

After this story was posted, a BrightSource Energy spokesman clarified that while the company has filed an application with the federal Bureau and Land Management for a solar development on public land near Broadwell Dry Lake, it will not move forward until questions are resolved about whether land would be included in a national monument. The company spokesman, Keely Wachs, also said Wednesday that BrightSource is considering alternative sites.

Water from the desert?

PODCAST
From KPCC / KUOR
Southern California Public Radio

To meet urban demand for water, Cadiz Inc. is proposing to tap an aquifer in the Mojave Desert. The company could also store water from other sources in the aquifer. Governor Schwarzenegger has praised the project, but environmentalists say it would damage fragile desert ecosystems in nearby wilderness areas and Mojave National Preserve. A similar proposal from Cadiz died seven years ago. Larry talks with supporters and critics of the project.

To hear Scott Slater, General Counsel of Cadiz Inc, Emily Green of Chance of Rain, Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club and Richard Sierra of the San Bernardino Union of Carriers, Building & Construction Laborers, Local 783 discuss the Cadiz groundwater project in the Mojave Desert,

click here.

Slater claims that harvesting groundwater from the desert is now a “conservation” project. Green and Hughes don’t buy it. Sierra wants jobs.

Guests:

Scott Slater, Cadiz General Counsel
Richard Sierra, Business Manager, Laborers Local 783
Emily Green, journalist. She writes the Dry Garden column for the Los Angeles Times and blogs on water at ChanceofRain.com
Elden Hughes, past chair of the Sierra Club’s California/Nevada Desert Committee

Army to move forward with tortoise relocation

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

The U.S. Army has told the U.S. Bureau of Land Management it plans to move 90 imperiled tortoises from Fort Irwin next month, despite the bureau's position that it will not participate in the effort because of uncertainty over how many of the reptiles will survive.

John Wagstaffe, a Fort Irwin spokesman, said the Army will relocate the desert tortoises after it gets an OK from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Army wants the tortoises cleared from 24,000 acres to make way for expanded training with tanks and other military vehicles.

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

The Army suspended a tortoise relocation effort from the same area last fall after about 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 managed by the agency.

One environmental group vowed Friday to take legal action, if necessary, to make sure tortoises are not moved this fall.

The Army is awaiting a determination from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on whether the military can go ahead with is plan to move the reptiles to Army-owned land south of Fort Irwin.

Ray Bransfield, a Ventura-based biologist with the wildlife agency, said Friday that he will consult with wildlife scientists from the BLM and the U.S. Geological Survey who are familiar with tortoise relocations before making a decision by the beginning of October.

A BLM biologist who had been meeting with the Army about the relocation plan said Friday that his agency has decided not to proceed because of uncertainty about the tortoises' safety.

"They have apparently decided they can move the tortoises on their own," said Chris Otahal, who is based in Barstow. "We (the BLM) are not involved. This is strictly an Army action."

Earlier in the summer, the BLM announced plans to move tortoises this fall and next spring from Fort Irwin expansion areas to public land between the training base and Interstate 15.

At the same time, the agency issued an environmental analysis that relied on research by a USGS ecologist that found coyotes were killing and eating tortoises in greater numbers throughout the California and Nevada deserts, most likely because of a prey shortage brought on by years of drought.

The ecologist's work supported the government's conclusion that deaths among the tortoises from Fort Irwin were unrelated to the relocations.

But the ecologist, Henderson, Nev.-based Todd Esque, asked the BLM last month not to use his research until he was able to further analyze his observations, Otahal said.

The BLM decided last week to re-do its environmental analysis, Otahal said. The new work isn't expected to be ready until late October or early November. The tortoises begin hibernating underground in November.

Otahal said he met Tuesday with Army officials, who told him they still plan to move the 89 tortoises from the 24,000-acre training area starting Oct. 1. By moving the reptiles to Army-owned land, the military will not need the BLM's cooperation or approval.

Army officials told Otahal they can move forward under the authority of an earlier environmental analysis of the overall plan to relocate tortoises from areas where Fort Irwin was expanding.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, said her organization will try to the stop a fall relocation, even if it means going to court.

"The Army appears willing to sacrifice another 89 tortoises, using the old translocation plan that has shown itself to be fatally flawed," said Anderson, who is bases in Los Angeles.

She said she's also concerned about moving the animals in the fall, because little food is available for them at a time when they would need energy to find or dig new burrows.

Earlier this year, Anderson disputed government claims that relocated tortoises are no more vulnerable to coyotes than any other tortoises. She said the relocated tortoises were easy targets for coyotes.

Tortoises have natural homing instincts, and many tried to head back to the military property after they were moved, Anderson said.

Roy C. Averill-Murray, desert tortoise recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Friday that Esque and other researchers have found that resident tortoises near Fort Irwin were just as likely to be eaten by coyotes as relocated tortoises.

Regardless of what the Army does next month, the BLM will prepare an environmental analysis on the military's next step: moving 1,100 tortoises from a 70,000-acre expansion area on the west side of the base.

Burning Man and the truest sense of home

Jarl Forsman
Examiner.com





The Burning Man 2009 (Photo by Jarl Forsman)


I’m back from a week at Burning Man. What an amazing and fulfilling week it was! This year’s theme was Evolution. Because my interest lies in consciousness, I sought out community, events, and conversations that addressed the evolution of consciousness. It was also the first time in six years that I elected to join another camp rather than helping to create my own. I participated in a theme camp called Entheon Village. Entheon means, “a place to discover the spirit within."

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to experience Burning Man, let me attempt to describe what really needs to be experienced to be understood. I’m sure it is many different things to different people, but I think everyone would agree that Burning Man is characterized by radical self-expression and self-reliance. For the experience of radical self-expression, artists flock to display art installations and art cars, also known as mutant vehicles, on which they have worked months and sometimes all year long to prepare for this one week of appreciation. With radical self-expression as the raison d'etre, everyone is free to create from the authentic muse rather than from what will sell or fit in. The result is otherworldly, delightful, and sometimes utterly amazing. It is truly awesome to see what we are capable of when the rules are relaxed and the box is expanded just a bit. Several of the larger pieces such as “The Man” and “The Temple” are burned. The psychological benefits derived from the experience of working on ephemeral art, mirror what the Tibetan monks experience when they destroy the sand mandalas after weeks of effort making those beautiful, symbolic works of art. In this Buddhist tradition, mandalas are painstakingly made from colored sand and upon completion are ritualistically destroyed. This process symbolizes Buddhists belief in the transitory nature of material life. It demonstrates an intention to experience the sheer joy of creation along with a detachment of the end result.

Everyone is encouraged to dress completely in alignment with how they feel rather than according to protocol or appropriateness. Actually, the concept of appropriateness doesn't really exist at Burning Man. Anything goes. When anything goes, judgment of others often flies out the window. When judgment of others disappears, self-judgment fades too, and one is left with the feelings of authenticity, acceptance, freedom, and love. It’s a wonderful experience when it happens. When I say, “anything goes,” and “judgment flies out the window,” I’m not talking about discernment or laws. I’m referring to style and personal self-expression. Beauty and goodness is still beauty and goodness.

Burning Man is also about radical self-reliance. The week takes place in an ancient lakebed where nothing lives. There are no bugs, no birds, no creepy-crawlers, no animals, no plants, no nothing. That is, nothing but dust and more dust! Citizens of Black Rock City must bring everything they need, including shelter, food, water, and gear which can protect them from the harsh environment of heat and wind blowing dust so intensely that “white-outs” occur several times a day. The juxtaposition of the periodic harshness of the environment and the gentle attitudes of the citizens toward one another make for an exhilarating experience. Life seems magical and synchronicity abounds.

The only commerce at Burning Man is conducted by the organizers and it is limited to selling high-octane espresso drinks and electrolytes in addition to ice for campers’ coolers. All other forms of commerce are frowned upon and strictly prohibited. What is encouraged in its place is a gift economy. Nothing is to be bought, bartered or sold, but only gifted. To improvise on the words of John F. Kennedy, at Burning Man the theme is: “ask not what Burning Man can give to you, ask what you can give to your fellow burner.” Everyone arrives with something to offer such as art, performance, food, humor, theme camps, drinks, dance parties, some kind of service or just, plain appreciation. Regardless of what you do or do not bring, just by virtue of trekking out to this remote and harsh environment, everybody is a participant.

Most of what is found in a normal US city can be found in Black Rock City. The only difference is that Black Rock City arises out of nothing, lasts for one week, and then disappears back into absolutely nothing, leaving no trace but a memory. Cafés, nightclubs, a skating rink, a post office, films, bars, concerts, bicycle repair shops, yoga, tai chi, and hula-hoop classes, lectures, meditations, a zendo, twelve-step meetings, performances of all kinds, amazing art, a hotel, clothing designers wanting to dress you, people offering to bathe you, massage you, and heal you. You name it. It is available and all in the price of admission: $250 per person and your own participation.

When one is focused on giving, magic truly happens. When a desire or need arises, its fulfillment is almost immediate. With a focus on giving, “wanting” loses its grip, tension relaxes, and fulfillment easily finds its way to you. This is true for tangible, material desires as well as for emotional ones. After experiencing this magic so many times, I began to ask people if they experienced similar phenomenon at Burning Man. The answer was always a resounding yes. I suspect this is the truth about life in general: the Universe provides! But we are usually so focused on the “how” that we miss the fact that what we want is often right in front of us.

The idea of safety doesn’t even come up, at least not for me. This environment is like being on another planet where fulfillment abounds. People treat one another lovingly and with acceptance. No one is a stranger. It’s one big “functional” family. I’m sure there are exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Upon arriving from what Burners call the “default world,” the greeters at the gate greet each person with “Welcome Home!” The feeling I experience at Burning Man is that of being at home in the truest sense of the word: at home with myself, expressing my true nature without the concern of being judged. Home is wherever the heart is, comfortably expressing authentically in an atmosphere of radical self-acceptance.

Renewable energy plan creates rift

Environmentalist David Myers says eSolar does energy right at its Sierra SunTower location, which has not used pristine land. (Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY)

By Andrea Stone
USA TODAY

AMBOY, Calif. — The morning heat hits triple digits as a whiptail lizard darts below a creosote bush near Route 66. Gazing across the desert valley, power company executives, environmentalists and federal land managers stand beneath a cloudless sky and argue over the landscape.
PG&E project manager Alice Harron says she is "comfortable" with the solar power plant her utility wants to build on government land here along 4 miles of the Mother Road that connected Chicago and Los Angeles long before the interstate system.

David Myers of the Wildlands Conservancy is not. Renewable energy projects such as this one — which could power 224,000 homes — sound good in theory, he says, but if they tear up pristine vistas, they're not "green."

President Obama wants a "clean-energy economy" that relies on renewable sources such as solar and wind power instead of coal and oil. He wants to put these new utilities on federally owned lands like this stretch of the Mojave Desert, one of the sunniest places on Earth.

The administration wants to lead the way by taking advantage of its vast holdings, which account for 20% of all land in the USA, mostly in the West.

That idea is creating a rift among environmentalists, who favor renewable energy but are at odds over where to produce it. Some are willing to compromise with utility companies to build large power plants on remote federal lands to accelerate the transition to clean energy.

Purists are dead set against disturbing pristine landscapes.

Obama's goal is to meet 25% of the nation's energy needs from renewable resources by 2025. Today, the figure is 11.1%, according to the Department of Energy.

One purist is Myers, who worries that the government will industrialize the desert with acres of solar mirrors, trampling treasured landscapes. Groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) counter that large, centralized projects are needed to speed the shift to non-polluting energy.

"It's hard, because many of us have fought to protect the very lands" that could be affected, says Johanna Wald of the NRDC.

Starting 'a new beginning'

In a wood-paneled Washington conference room, under the words "America the Beautiful," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he runs "the real department of energy."

After decades of allowing private companies to lease public lands for coal and oil, "we have started a new beginning" to make room for solar mirrors and wind turbines, he says. As with the older leases, operators would pay to use the land.

Salazar has designated 24 tracts in six Western states as possible solar project sites. There is none on federal lands now.

The Interior Department will open offices to eliminate a five-year backlog of applications. There are 158 pending solar projects on 1.8 million acres of public land. If all went through, they could power 29 million homes.

Not all will be approved, Salazar says, because of environmental and other concerns. Still, the White House plans to streamline approval for at least 10 solar plants it hopes will create 50,000 jobs by 2011.

Nearly half the solar proposals are in the Mojave Desert, home to the threatened desert tortoise, Indian petroglyphs and an intact stretch of Route 66, the historic highway dotted with vintage diners and derelict gas stations.

Not far from the iconic Roy's Motel and Diner, PG&E consultant Scott Galati tells environmentalists that surveys reveal no rare plants or threatened species on a planned solar site. A nearby rail line and access road are proof, he says, the land is hardly pristine.

Myers of the Wildlands Conservancy says an abandoned farm farther from Route 66 would be a better choice. PG&E's Harron says it is privately owned and would be difficult to acquire.

The great advantage of government land, she says, is how much of it there is and the relative ease and cost-effectiveness of building projects on public property.

Too easy, says Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. In a letter to Salazar last month, she said she was "deeply concerned" about a "bias under which solar developers believe they are more likely to receive a permit to build their projects on pristine public lands than on previously disturbed private lands."

Myers fears taxpayers are subsidizing inappropriately large-scale projects. He'd prefer a focus on rooftop solar panels and other small-scale solutions in urban areas that would reduce the clout of big energy companies.

Wald, the NRDC lawyer, says the government is taking a balanced approach. She spent 35 years battling the oil and gas industry and now is working with them to find appropriate sites for wind and solar plants. She agrees that energy self-sufficiency is important but says Myers' approach would take too long. "Even if (some environmentalists) don't like it," she says, large-scale projects "are going to happen."

Monumental roadblock?

Feinstein wants to establish a national monument that would bar energy development on hundreds of thousands of acres of desert between the Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park. The area includes former railroad land the Wildlands Conservancy donated to the government a decade ago.

If Congress establishes the monument, PG&E and 22 other companies would have to build someplace else.

Across the border in Nevada, Feinstein's Democratic colleague Harry Reid is taking a different approach. The Senate majority leader supports a proposed wind turbine farm on federal land near Searchlight, his hometown.

That has some of his neighbors livid. Many say they fled to the quiet desert town to get away from California's massive, densely packed wind farms.

They fear the same in Searchlight, where the tallest structure is the 150-foot flagpole at Terrible's Casino.

Duke Energy wants to put up 95 wind turbines with blades that reach 415 feet off the ground. Though few in number compared with older, less efficient wind farms — some with thousands of turbines — that's still too many for some people.

"It's going to ruin our way of life," says Verlie Doing, 85, a friend of Reid's late mother. Doing owns the Nugget Casino.

Twelve miles south in the Nevada town of Cal-Nev-Ari, retired energy company electrician Robert Carty supports the turbines. He sees "the global picture" of climate change and calls opponents "CAVE people — citizens against virtually everything."

Across the Mojave in Lucerne Valley, Calif., where neighbors are arguing over a proposed solar plant on 516 acres, county employee Andrew Silva sighs.

"Folks in the East," he says, "don't necessarily recognize how complex and beautiful and diverse the desert is."

RFK Jr., enviros clash over Mojave solar proposal

RENEWABLE ENERGY



Colin Sullivan
Greenwire



SAN FRANCISCO -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no stranger to hardball politics.

The environmental attorney has confronted polluters of the Hudson River, been arrested in Puerto Rico for trying to block U.S. Navy training operations and scrapped with oil companies looking to drill in remote parts of Alaska.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Along the way, he has worked for environmental groups large and small, lending his famous name to a burgeoning movement fighting to bring attention to macro-issues like climate change while protecting local wildlife habitat. In 1999, he was named a Time magazine "Hero of the Planet" for his work with the advocacy group Riverkeeper.

But in California's emerging battle over renewable energy development, Kennedy has gained new enemies: fellow environmentalists.

Kennedy, the son and namesake of the late Attorney General and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.), is at the center of a nasty dispute among environmental groups, energy developers and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) over the future of federal lands in the sun-soaked Mojave Desert.

The Mojave's 22,000 square miles straddle California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah. Given its elevation, heat, aridity and proximity to population centers on the California coast, the region is viewed by many as the ideal venue in North America for building a new generation of large solar-thermal power plants, especially in a state where utilities are required to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010 and likely 33 percent by 2020.

Among the leaders in a group of aggressive solar prospectors is an Oakland-based company called BrightSource Energy Inc., which has been making a splash lately for its plans to build 2.6 gigawatts of power for California's investor-owned utilities, much of it to be located -- on paper, at least -- in the Mojave Desert.

But some California-based activists are worried that solar developers like BrightSource are getting a free pass in a headlong rush to build clean energy and capitalize on federal stimulus dollars now available for such projects. These activists have enlisted Feinstein to push for the declaration of a national monument in the desert and intend to unveil legislation with the senator in September that would apparently protect 1 million acres in the eastern Mojave to limit development.

Enter Kennedy, who calls the national monument, as it is likely to be drawn, a bad idea. To Kennedy, the instinct to protect local ecosystems has collided with the goals of a progressive national energy policy.

"I respect the belief that it's all local," Kennedy said in an interview. "But they're putting the democratic process and sound scientific judgement on hold to jeopardize the energy future of our country."

But here's the rub: Kennedy has a stake in BrightSource through VantagePoint Venture Partners, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley that was instrumental in raising $160 million in financing for the solar startup. Other investors include Chevron Corp., Google.org and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

That Kennedy is a senior adviser at VantagePoint, and an open promoter of BrightSource in public speeches, is an irony not lost on David Myers, an activist who charges Kennedy with shilling for a company intent on using his political clout. To Myers, the lure of profit if BrightSource makes it big is why Kennedy, a cousin of California's first lady, Maria Shriver, wants to stop the national monument before it ever gets off the ground.

"I'm getting pretty tired of BrightSource using their Kennedy connection," said Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy. "BrightSource [is pursuing] the worst projects in the worst locations, but they have the best PR firm, because Robert Kennedy is involved."

Feinstein's monument

Enter Feinstein, a longtime advocate of desert conservation and lead appropriator for the Interior Department in Congress.

Her office is working on a bill to be released this month that some sources said will cut off 1 million public acres in the desert -- up from a previous estimate of 600,000 acres -- to protect a threatened species of desert tortoise and preserve its habitat.

Feinstein, according to several sources who spoke anonymously, is livid about the pace of development on public lands and has bluntly told the solar developers not to challenge her on the national monument designation. Calls to several solar companies seeking comment seemed to bear this out. None of them would take a position on the measure.

Myers has been instrumental in developing the boundaries of the monument, sparking rumors that he is cozy with Feinstein and is dictating the terms of the legislation. The boundaries would stretch from Joshua Tree National Park to Mojave National Preserve, including nearly 100,000 acres of National Park Service lands and 210,000 acres spread across 20 wilderness areas controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

That area includes lands previously owned by Catellus Development Corp., a real estate subsidiary of the former Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad. Myers insisted that the purchase was made years ago in the name of conservation, a promise that he says Feinstein takes seriously.

And though he would not release details of the bill, Myers said none of the land would come from the federal energy zones marked by the Interior Department for development. Nor does he believe solar companies will have trouble finding land to build on elsewhere in the region.

"The land in the monument is minuscule," Myers said. "There are so many other places where solar is being proposed throughout the state."

But Kennedy disagrees. BrightSource and 19 other companies have petitioned BLM and the California Energy Commission (CEC) to build in an area called Broadwell that would be shut off under the Feinstein bill. Those applications represent about 10,000 megawatts of power, or 30 large-scale solar power plants; and though much of that would never get built, Kennedy says closing down Broadwell is a significant blow to the companies that have invested there under the guidance of federal land managers.

"This area is probably one of the best solar areas in the world," Kennedy said. "All that the solar industry has said is, 'Look, let's respect the robust process in place,' a process that is among the most transparent in the world through the CEC and BLM."

That process is still proceeding. BLM has received 66 applications for solar, totaling 577,000 acres, most of which would be located in the desert, an agency spokesman said. BLM is also processing 93 wind applications, representing 815,000 acres.

Yet the monument bill may have already produced a chilling effect. John White, a renewable-energy policy expert at the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, says the proposal has cast a "shadow" over these projects just as they are vying for financing and federal stimulus dollars only available until 2010. To White, setting aside 1 million acres in the eastern Mojave would mean "less land for solar than for off-road vehicles ... in the very best land that has the highest solar radiation."

"I'm astonished that nobody's said that," said White, who refused to comment further on the political wrangling.

Myers countered that most of those 19 companies have agreed, in private discussions with Feinstein, to build elsewhere. Florida Power & Light Co., Cogentrix Energy LLC and Stirling Energy Systems Inc., among others, have informed Feinstein that they filed "shotgun applications" in the Broadwell area and are more than willing to drop those and find other areas, he said.

"They're fine going outside the monument," Myers said. "BrightSource is the laughingstock of the industry right now."

Kennedy vs. Myers

For his part, Kennedy was unfazed by Myers' allegations or his harsh take on BrightSource, calling the political heat familiar territory, given his family's unique place in U.S. history. In the same breath, he urged Feinstein to take a step back before proceeding with the monument.

"I don't think it does anybody any good to start making personal attacks," Kennedy said. "Let's argue this on the merits. I think if we argue this on the merits, I think BrightSource and 19 other companies are going to win the debate."

Kennedy added that he has a "limited stake" in VantagePoint and denied asking for special treatment through Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) or anyone else in the state government.

"I don't care enough about BrightSource to compromise my integrity or the national interest," Kennedy said. "I've never talked to anyone about choosing BrightSource over anybody else. I've never asked for any favors from any politician or any regulator or any human being, ever."

In the next breath, Kennedy went negative himself and questioned Myers' relationship with a competitor to BrightSource, Pasadena-based eSolar Inc. Like BrightSource, eSolar is a solar-thermal outfit whose business model is built around reflecting radiation from mirrors into a large tower to convert steam into electricity. Unlike BrightSource, eSolar has no stake or planned projects in the Broadwell region.

Myers, Kennedy pointed out, has his own overlap issues with Silicon Valley money through eSolar. A major donor to the Wildlands Conservancy is the venture capitalist David Gelbaum, who has poured his own funds into eSolar and reportedly owns a fat stake in the company. eSolar would stand to benefit from the national monument, several sources said, because it is not involved in the Broadwell area.

Adding to the fire is Myers himself, who recently appeared at an eSolar press event in person to praise the company for siting projects on industrial lands near power lines in Lancaster, Calif. Yet Myers denies an inappropriate relationship and blamed Kennedy and BrightSource for stoking the rumors.

Gelbaum, Myers said, donated $45 million seven years ago to help acquire the Catellus lands. Myers said the donation and pledge to keep the lands off-limits took place well before BrightSource came into being.

Not stopping there, Myers slammed Kennedy for opposing a wind project off the coast of Nantucket, Mass., and questioned his recent environmental credentials. He said Kennedy is hiding behind the local versus national environmental debate when his real motivation is turning a profit through VantagePoint.

"Bobby Kennedy told us they did not want to see windmills in Cape Cod, that they had to put it all in the California desert," Myers said. "The real story here is, Bobby Kennedy is on the side of major industrial development, and he's against distributed generation."

Kennedy responded in kind. "He is very focused on a narrow piece of land, which I respect," he said of Myers. "All I've ever asked for is a rational process that is democratic, that is transparent, that is robust. That process is in place."

View from the bleachers

Spectators on the sidelines were hesitant to comment on the flare-up between Kennedy and Myers or the shape of the monument designation. Most said they could not take a position on the forthcoming Feinstein bill until it is publicly available, which a spokeswoman said has not been finalized.

Officials at BrightSource, who contacted Kennedy for an interview after receiving a call for this article, said the focus had been placed unfairly on their company when the future of the entire solar industry is at stake.

"The debate over renewable development and desert protection is not adversarial," said Keely Wachs, a spokesman at BrightSource. "We all have the same end goal of protecting the environment."

White, whose organization is meant to bridge industry and environmental groups, said "a little bit of land rush" followed the stimulus frenzy and perhaps led to tense feelings on both sides. He urged the players to learn from the experience, even as he cautioned that the political process has yet to play out.

"It's one thing to introduce a bill and another thing to get it through both houses," White said. "I think that this really is the beginning of a long conversation about where and how to put solar in the desert."

Elden Hughes, a former chairman of the Sierra Club's California-Nevada Desert Committee, blamed BLM for promoting lands bought from Catellus years ago and said officials there should have respected a promise that those lands be conserved. He said BLM has only recently changed its tune.

Calling BLM officials "two-faced SOBs," Hughes said, "For some months, they were telling us they were protecting the land, while at the same time they were taking developers out there."

BLM spokesman John Dearing would only say that the agency's job is to process applications. BLM has no right to block any entity from seeking a right of way on the Catellus lands, he said, adding that the agency will pursue "high-level reviews" for any proposed impacts to lands meant for conservation.

"They might want to steer away from that area," Dearing said of the developers. "But they're not prohibited from making an application."

Explorers blazed trails in early Inland Empire

Mark Landis, Correspondent
The San Bernardino Sun

John Charles Frémont, The Pathfinder. (Public Domain)

Beginning in the late 1700s, a succession of legendary explorers and missionaries started to traverse San Bernardino County to map out new overland routes, carry out military missions, and convert the local American Indians to Christianity.

In 1772, Pedro Fages, a Spanish soldier, became the first white explorer to pass through the San Bernardino Valley and cross into the Mojave Desert. For the next 50 years, explorers traveling through the region didn't show an interest in the San Bernardino Valley and their passages through the area was incidental.

The date and leader of the first exploration of the San Bernardino Valley for the purpose of establishing a settlement here has been the subject of controversy for many years. Now, with the upcoming San Bernardino bicentennial celebration, the debate among local historians has been rekindled.

According to a popular history book written by Father Juan Caballeria in 1902, Father Francisco Dumetz, an elderly priest from the San Gabriel Mission, led an expedition in 1810 to the San Bernardino Valley. Caballeria claimed that Dumetz had been sent to search for a good location to establish an inland mission outpost.

According to Caballeria, Dumetz found the area around the Indian village at Guachama to be an ideal location. Guachama was located near the present-day intersection of Hunts Lane and Hospitality Lane in San Bernardino, along the Santa Ana River.

Caballeria cites May 20, 1810, as the date Dumetz set up a crude capilla or chapel at Guachama and bestowed the name San Bernardino upon the site. The name honored St. Bernardino of Sienna, whose Feast Day was on that day. He was an Italian priest, Franciscan missionary and Catholic saint who lived from 1380 to 1444.

In the years following the publication of Caballeria's book, 1810 became the accepted date that the valley was first explored and named. But research by later historians raised questions and doubts.

Prominent San Bernardino Valley historians George and Helen Beattie noted that major American Indian attacks against the San Gabriel Mission in 1810 nearly led to the overthrow of that mission.

Documentation from the 1810 period shows that the Indian unrest halted the establishment of new mission sites beyond the military protection of the San Gabriel Mission.

One possibility is that Dumetz did visit the San Bernardino Valley in search of a good mission site in 1810, but due to the American Indian unrest, nothing was permanently established until several years later. It is well documented that the San Gabriel Mission established "Rancho San Bernardino" in the valley in 1819.

Unless new evidence is discovered, the full story of the valley's first exploration will remain a mystery.

The first American explorer to pass through San Bernardino County was legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith, in November of 1826. The Smith party had traveled south from the Salt Lake Valley and begun crossing the Mojave Desert when they veered west from the Colorado River.

Guided by two Indians who had run away from the San Gabriel Mission, Smith followed the old Mojave Trail that padre Garces used more than 50 years before.

On the last stage of his long overland journey to the Pacific, Smith described the Mojave Desert as a country of "complete barrens." The party traveled from morning until night from water hole to water hole. When Jedediah reached the Mojave River, he called it "The Inconstant River" since it ran both below and above the surface.

Smith followed the Mojave River to its source in the San Bernardino Mountains and then crossed into the San Bernardino Valley on Nov. 26, over the old Mojave Trail, near the Cajon Pass.

Upon reaching the San Bernardino Valley, the exhausted band of explorers turned west and traveled to the San Gabriel Mission where they were welcomed by the padres. Described as being "nearly naked," the tattered Smith party was clothed and treated to a great feast of beef and cornmeal.

Smith and his men were detained by the Spanish authorities who were suspicious of American intrusion into their territory. Smith finally convinced the authorities of his altruistic motives, and the party began moving again on Jan. 18, 1827.

Jedediah Smith made another trip into Southern California in 1827. On this trip, the party was attacked by American Indians along the Colorado River, and more than half of the men were killed.

The seven survivors came back to the San Bernardino Valley to get help for a wounded man and collect supplies. This time, Smith thought better of going to the San Gabriel Mission and departed by the same route across the desert.

Famed explorer John C. Fremont crossed through the Mojave Desert and San Bernardino County on his second great expedition in 1844. The Fremont party included renowned frontiersmen Kit Carson and Alexis Godey.

The weary explorers were on the return trip from their expedition through Washington and Oregon. They had come south through the San Joaquin Valley, crossed the Tehachapi Mountains and were headed east through the Antelope Valley, in search of the Mojave Trail (which was now being called the Spanish Trail, and portions of which later would be called the Mormon Trail).

On April 19, Fremont was greatly relieved to find the trail near present-day Oro Grande, northwest of Victorville. The trail followed the life-giving Mojave River that provided just enough sustenance for the men and animals to cross this particularly harsh section of desert.

Along the way, the Fremont party had a bloody skirmish with local American Indians near Bitter Springs (within the boundaries of present-day Fort Irwin). The American Indians had stolen a herd of horses, and Kit Carson and Alexis Godey led a vicious foray to retrieve the animals.

Fremont left Southern California over the Mojave Trail and returned to Kansas City via Salt Lake Valley and Pueblo Colorado.

Many of the routes used by San Bernardino County's earliest explorers have evolved into major roads and highways and countless names they gave the sites along the way are still in use today. Their trailblazing expeditions eventually opened the way for the great wave of immigrants who settled Southern California.

Burro traps go up in Fort Irwin area this week

Burro trap.

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

The federal Bureau of Land Management this week will begin trapping wild burros at a spring near Fort Irwin used by an array of wildlife.

BLM officials said they expect to capture 30 to 40 burros at Owl Hole Spring, located about 40 miles northwest of Baker on a strip of public land between Fort Irwin Army training center and Death Valley National Park.

BLM wranglers will use what they call a "water bait trap."

It consists of temporary steel-pipe fencing set up around the spring. Burros, lured by hay and water, are expected to enter the trap through a "trigger gate" that doesn't let them out. The trap will be checked daily and captured burros will be taken to BLM corrals near Ridgecrest to be put up for adoption, BLM spokesman David Briery said.

The trapping is part of a larger effort to remove burros that stray onto Fort Irwin and into the national park. Helicopters will be used later this month to round up an estimated 160 burros in the Slate Range east of Death Valley and the Chemehuevi area near Needles.

Burro advocates say the animals are harmless and should be left alone. Instead of rounding them up, the BLM should take water to them, said Linda Lee, of Costa Mesa. The roundups injure animals and the adoptions break up burro families, leaving them depressed, she said.

Burros have roamed California deserts since miners used them in the region more than 150 years ago. Federal land-use plans dating to the 1980s call for no burros in Death Valley and BLM-managed land west of the park.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Friday she supports the roundups because burros drink scarce water and foul sources with their manure. The water is needed by bighorn sheep, deer and other wildlife, she said.

Council halts annexation bid

By Rebecca Unger
Hi-Desert Star


Jim Harvey, president of the Homestead Valley Community Council, speaks for the member associations.


YUCCA VALLEY — The Yucca Valley Town Council voted 4-0-1, Mayor Frank Luckino recusing himself, to withdraw its application to include unincorporated Yucca Mesa in its sphere of influence Tuesday night.

For the past year, the Town has faced increasing criticism by Yucca Mesa residents for what they perceived as Yucca Valley’s secrecy in filing the application with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission.

Mesa resident Elizabeth Karman formed the Stop Yucca Mesa Annexation Coalition and peppered the countryside with red “Stop” signs. She urged the mesa and surrounding communities to fight the application process, winning hearts and minds with images of towering streetlights, cheek-to-jowl housing developments and lanes of 18 wheelers where the two-lane blacktop of Old Woman Springs Road fades into the horizon.

Karman said five years ago she and her husband moved to the mesa to avoid the “urbanization” of Yucca Valley.

“In 2008 we were startled to discover that an effort to extend a sphere of influence on the mesa was already under way,” she told the Town Council. “We were offended that relatively few people knew about this.”

The grassroots organizer told of collecting 2,400 signatures against the application and conducting a survey. Karman stated that per the survey, 99.5 percent of the mesa’s residents do not want to be part of the Town of Yucca Valley.

“We don’t want to share your problems by being forced to help solve them,” Karman said.

“We will never want to be a part of you, and we will always reject you as our government. We love our mesa!” she declared.

Her sentiments were expressed by the next several speakers.

The Homestead Valley Community Council, the umbrella organization for citizens of Yucca Mesa, Flamingo Heights, Landers and Johnson Valley, took up the cause, and President Jim Harvey spoke on their behalf Tuesday.

“We believe that putting Yucca Mesa into the Town of Yucca Valley’s designated sphere of influence would have a far-reaching detrimental effect on the collective interests of the four HVCC communities, and on the established effectiveness and cohesiveness of the council that represents them,” said Harvey.

Local Agency Formation Commission Executive Officer Kathleen Rollings-McDonald gave a presentation explaining the effects of a sphere of influence before the meeting was opened for public comment. She stayed to answer technical questions from the council members when public comment closed.

She gave councilman Bill Neeb the details of the complicated voting process that would have to take place before a true annexation of borders would be possible.

“If Yucca Valley removes its application for sphere of influence, does that mean that LAFCO will stop working in that area?” asked Neeb.

“We have to complete the service review and we are mandated by law to do so. We will evaluate that sphere of influence,” Rollings-McDonald replied.

The Town’s involvement in the sphere of influence began when the county consolidated fire districts and county officials suggested Yucca Valley annex the mesa into its sphere of influence to follow other districts’ boundaries.

The council followed the suggestion, much to some mesa residents’ dismay.

“I believe that quality of life has to do with our relationships with our neighbors,” said councilwoman Lori Herbel.

“I’m hopeful that whatever happens, we will all continue to be neighbors, because we don’t know when we’re going to need each other.”

However, Herbel also understood the Yucca Mesa residents want to be left alone. “With that, I would support the withdrawal of the sphere of influence,” she said.

Sympathizing with the public’s general mistrust of government, Mayor Pro Tem Chad Mayes admitted the Town “didn’t do a very good job” of meeting with Yucca Mesa residents to explain the sphere-of-influence process.

“I think it is appropriate at this time for the Town of Yucca Valley to withdraw its application,” Mayes said in agreement with Herbel.

Luckino was absent from the proceedings, calling it a “perceived conflict of interest.” He is the chief financial officer of the Hi-Desert Water District, and the Town’s sphere of influence would have included the area currently serviced by the water district.

“It’s not illegal; it’s more how it’s perceived,” Luckino said.

Massive desert wildlife refuge effort nears OK

By Stephanie Tavares
Las Vegas Sun

The Desert National Wildlife Refuge Complex is on the verge of becoming a reality.

The complex would consist of more than 1.6 million acres on four wildlife refuges stretching from Las Vegas to central Lincoln County.

The four are: the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, which provides habitat for at least 24 plant and animal species found nowhere else; the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, just north of Las Vegas, prime habitat for desert bighorn sheep and various native plants; the Moapa Valley National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Clark County, home of the endangered Moapa dace; and the Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, in central Lincoln County, which provides nesting, resting and feeding areas for waterfowl, shorebirds, wading birds and songbirds including the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher.

The plan for the massive complex cleared the second-to-last stage of federal permitting last week with the release of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Final Comprehensive Conservation Plan and Environmental Impact Statement.

A final decision is expected some time after Sept. 21.

Under the proposed plan, the fish and wildlife agency would restore thousands of acres of desert spring, riparian and upland habitat for threatened and endangered species, migratory birds and other wildlife. It would also expand efforts to control invasive plants and animals and expand surveys and monitoring of key wildlife species. Additionally, the federal agencies plan significant improvements to visitor services, including new trails, interpretive exhibits, environmental education programs and visitor contact stations.

Existing hunting and fishing programs would be maintained with minor modifications.

For more information go to desertcomplex.fws.gov