BLM rapped for silencing citizens

by David Danelski
Press-Enterprise

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has decided to allow members of the public to speak during meetings held to gather public comments.

A brouhaha developed after an Aug. 31 meeting in Primm, Nev. The point of the meeting was to gather public input on environmental concerns related to a planned solar development. But people, some of whom drove hundreds of miles to express their views, were not allowed to speak and instead were told to write their thoughts on pieces of paper and submit them.

On Tuesday, after public criticism and media calls, BLM leadership decided to return to a process that lets people "listen to what each other has to say," said David Briery, a spokesman for the agency's California Desert District, headquartered in Moreno Valley.

"We thought we had a process that worked, but it didn't," he said by telephone.

At the Aug. 31 meeting, the BLM sought public input -- as required by federal law -- to identify topics to cover in environmental reviews of a planned 2,000-acre solar project on public land in northeast San Bernardino County.

But after representatives of Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar gave a presentation about their plans, no one in the audience of about 50 people was allowed a turn at the microphone.

Instead, BLM officials told people they could fill out a form that gave them space for about 75 words of handwritten comments, said Chris Clarke, a Palm Springs resident and member of a group called Solar Done Right. He was among those who attended the meeting, at Primm Valley Golf Club.

Some audience members were flabbergasted and shouted at BLM officials. Dozens of people left frustrated, witnesses said.

"I had some people come from as far as Long Beach, and that's two tanks of gas," said David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. "They gave the impression that a decision (on approving the project) was predetermined."

The meeting spurred official letters of complaint and critical Internet postings on media websites. First Solar responded to the flap by scheduling a meeting for Monday in Barstow to give people "an opportunity to provide input and ask questions about the project in an open forum discussion," according to a company email. The meeting is at 6 p.m. at the Hampton Inn, 2710 Lenwood Road.

The meeting format that last month irritated members of the public is not new.

In recent years, BLM officials considering solar and wind energy developments and military officials wanting to expand the Marine Corps training center at Twentynine Palms also have avoided giving the public a forum. People could walk from table to table to meet individually with various officials and were allowed to submit written comments. The meetings did not give people a chance to pick up a microphone and address an audience.

Briery, the BLM spokesman, said the Desert District officials adopted that meeting format because they had to get through numerous public meetings, a result of the dozens of wind and solar energy projects proposed on public land.

"We were looking for the most efficient way to get substantive comments from the public, and that's why we had gone to written comments only," Briery said.

Rob Mrowka, a former U.S. Forest Service manager who is now a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said some federal officials have been concerned that allowing people to speak at meetings might lead to grandstanding by those who could then encourage a crowd to become unruly.

But Mrowka, who attended the Aug. 31 meeting, faulted the BLM for not even letting people ask questions about the project.

"A large number of participants traveled great distances to the middle of nowhere for the meeting and deserved the right to have questions answered," he said in an email to BLM officials.

Clarke and other meeting participants said the BLM's meeting format suppressed public discourse, because no one could hear what other citizens had to say. The situation made it difficult for like-minded people to find each other and for those who may disagree about the project to find common ground, he said.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said citizens should be given a choice of speaking or submitting written comments.

"Sometimes freedom speech can be a little bit messy, but it benefits us in ways that outweigh the cost," he said.

Accelerated solar site review includes Mojave Desert acreage in the Inland region

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise

The U.S. secretary of the interior on Monday declared 676,000 acres of the Southwest -- half in Riverside and San Bernardino counties -- as prime areas for large-scale solar energy development.

The action means that applications to build projects in the 24 solar study areas, including vast sections of desert in the two counties, will be fast-tracked to meet federal energy goals, Secretary Ken Salazar announced at a news conference in Las Vegas.

President Barack Obama has ordered that 10 percent of the nation's power come from renewable sources by next year and 25 percent by 2025.

The streamlined review and approval process would take one year, instead of three to four years, Interior spokesman Frank Quimby said.

Three of the study areas are in the Mojave Desert: one off Highway 40, northwest of the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base, and two east of Joshua Tree National Park.

The federal proposal includes four times as much land as environmental groups wanted.

The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity and other groups had recommended 85,000 acres in the Mojave, said Steve Borchard, district manager of the Bureau of Land Management's California Desert District.

But the newly announced priority areas cover about 338,000 acres. The government estimates that if that land is fully developed, the solar energy plants could produce 37,500 to more than 67,500 megawatts of electricity, enough to provide power to millions of homes. Not necessarily all of the land will be developed, Salazar said.

Currently, 31 of the 35 projects already in the works in the study areas, which span six states, are in the California desert, Borchard said. The BLM and Department of Energy are drafting environmental studies for the solar development zones, which will save time on the permitting process.

Joan Taylor, California-Nevada desert energy chairwoman for The Sierra Club, called the declaration "a knife through the heart of the desert."

The territories the government selected cover much more land than what's needed to reach renewable energy goals, she said. They also cross wildlife corridors that connect the Mojave Desert ecosystems and are too close to the Joshua Tree National Park, she said.

Taylor and other environmentalists said the government should start closer to urban centers, where energy transmission lines already are in place, rather than focusing on core desert areas.

Only lands with the most sunshine, suitable slope, proximity to roads and transmission lines or designated energy corridors, and containing at least 2,000 acres of BLM-administered public lands were considered for solar energy study areas. Important wildlife habitat and wilderness as well as lands with conflicting uses were excluded, according to a government news release.

The highest priority will be given to 13 projects that are furthest along in planning and will be able to meet a December 2010 deadline for funding and the creation of 50,000 jobs through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, said Greg Miller, renewable energy program manager for the California desert district.

Ten of those projects are in his district. They include Stirling Energy's Solar One near Barstow and Solar Two in El Centro; Britesource near Primm, Nev.; three Chevron projects, one near Barstow and two along Interstate 10 between Desert Center and Blythe; a First Solar project in Desert Center; Nextera near Blythe; and Solar Millennium in Ridgecrest, Miller said.

The BLM still is considering 92 solar project applications in other areas of the desert.

BLM seals abandoned mines in the desert

From Staff Reports
Barstow Desert Dispatch

The Bureau of Land Management is moving to seal abandoned mines in the Mojave desert.

Working with a new public/private partnership called Fix a Shaft Today!, the BLM recently sealed a mine shaft in the Mojave National Preserve near the Nevada border and one on BLM land near Ludlow, according to a release from the bureau. The Mojave National Preserve, California Department of Conservation Mine Reclamation, 4Granite Inc., and PUF-SEAL partnered with the BLM on the projects.

Before closing the mines, the BLM surveyed them to make sure they were not being used as habitat by bats or other wildlife, according to the release. The California Department of Conservation Abandoned Mine Lands Unit has identified about 165,000 mine features on 47,000 abandoned mine sites in the state.

BLM spokesman David Briery said that the bureau expects to get funding for abandoned mine closures from the stimulus package, but have gotten no official word.

The BLM California Desert District is kicking off a public scoping period for an assessment that will address safety hazards associated with abandoned mines. For more information, contact Sterling White at 951-697-5239.

Group sees 'violation of trust'

WILDLANDS CONSERVANCY: It brokered a BLM deal to protect the desert acres that are now being opened to development.

David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, says he thought the Mojave Desert’s open spaces would be preserved after the conservancy brokered a deal to sell thousands of acres to the Bureau of Land Management. Proposed renewable energy projects will ruin the view from mountains such as Sheephole, Old Woman and Turtle, Myers says. 2004/The Press-Enterprise

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise

A land conservancy from Oak Glen spent years amassing $45 million in private donations and negotiating the purchase of more than a half-million unspoiled acres in the California desert so it could be turned over to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for protection.

Now, the BLM is considering applications for wind turbines and solar-energy arrays on thousands of those acres.

The proposals on the donated Mojave Desert parcels have riled residents, visitors and members of The Wildlands Conservancy, which orchestrated the land deals involving a broad scattering of parcels in eastern San Bernardino County.

"It's a violation of trust, not only for Wildlands, but for the public. That's part of how we got so much diverse support, including hunters and off-roaders, because this was about public access and enjoying the Mojave Desert," said April Sall, manager of the conservancy's Pioneertown Mountain Preserve near Joshua Tree.

Steve Borchard, the BLM's district manager, said his agency did not commit to preserving land donated by The Wildlands Conservancy.

The BLM has to balance multiple missions on public land, including energy, oil, gas and coal development, livestock grazing, habitat management, and recreational opportunities, he said.

"That is land that belongs to the American people that has been designated by Congress for multiple use by the American people," including renewable energy generation, Borchard said.

Renewable energy now provides about 12 percent of the state's energy needs.

By 2020, state law requires that investor-owned utilities get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, a move to reduce dependence on foreign oil and ease climate change caused in part by traditional coal-fired plants.

The BLM is considering 162 applications for large-scale solar and wind projects on more than a million acres in its California Desert District.

When the conservancy-government land deal concluded in 2004, no one saw the renewable energy rush coming, Borchard said.

The land transfer was the largest of its kind in state history.

It involved 160-acre parcels laid out like a checkerboard along either side of the railroad tracks from Barstow to the Colorado River, the result of a grant from the government in the 1800s to spur development.

If the land had been sold to private parties, access to hundreds of miles of roads and public lands could have been restricted.

Conflicting Uses

The conservancy's purchase from Catellus Development Corp., a spinoff of the Santa Fe Railway, tapped $18 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, intended to preserve and develop access to outdoor recreation facilities, a congressional report says.

Now conservancy leaders are lobbying for a Mother Road National Monument south of the Mojave National Preserve to protect the lands from development, a 10- year-old idea that became more urgent with the "feeding frenzy" of energy applications, Sall said.

After The Wildlands Conservancy donated the land to the government for public use, the BLM dubbed the parcels "some of the most pristine and scenic areas in the California desert," valuable for their sand dunes, cinder cones and habitat for the endangered desert tortoise and bighorn sheep.

The land is also "some of the most valuable for solar development on earth," Borchard said recently.

The BLM already has pre-empted from energy development more than 8 million acres of wilderness and critical habitat, he said.

A 40-mile stretch of Route 66 near Amboy also has been deemed too historically valuable to build on, he said.

Borchard said wind and solar projects under consideration cover only 19,546 acres, or 8 percent, of the donated Catellus land.

More than half the projects probably will never be built, he said.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was instrumental in the Catellus land deal, vowed this week to ensure that the federal government honors its commitment to protect the property.

Conservationists said they don't oppose renewable energy, but they prefer rooftop solar units, or larger projects on land that already has been disturbed, such as abandoned farms.

They say transmission lines needed to carry the energy through the desert should be along existing corridors, such as Interstate 10.

Gary Thomas, of Upland, a board member of the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, said he fears the effects of widespread desert development on the habitat of the 3,000 or so bighorn sheep in the greater Mojave.

His group builds and maintains watering holes for large game in the desert.

Habitat corridors linking open space are needed to preserve the genetic viability of sheep populations; without such diversity, the populations could die off in 60 years, Thomas said.

"Those (energy) farms are nothing more than an open pit mine without a pit," he said. "They are going to go in and clean everything out to bare dirt, then they fence them and everything that was living in that place will be gone."

The BLM's Borchard said conservationists are overstating the habitat-corridor issue. Bighorn sheep travel miles, not tens of miles, he said, and applying the issue of connectivity on such a large scale is "bunk."

David Myers, executive director of The Wildlands Conservancy, has vowed to maintain the Mojave's wide open spaces, a job he thought had been taken care of with the Catellus deal.

The renewable energy projects will ruin the view from mountains such as Sheephole, Old Woman and Turtle.

"You would climb a peak in an island in the sand to have this vista, and the higher you climb, the more industry you would see," he said.

Land In Question

592,847 acres of former railroad land donated to the government

19,446 acres of those proposed for wind and solar-energy development

Southern California utilities eye Inland desert as energy goldmine

By LESLIE BERKMAN
The Press-Enterprise




Inland Southern California's desert backyard is ground zero in the state's efforts to cut back on polluting fossil-fuel-burning power plants and lead the nation's conversion to renewable energy.

For decades the region has been recognized for its rich renewable resources, from wind in the Coachella Valley and Tehachapi Mountains to the Salton Sea's underground reservoir of geothermal power to some of the most intense desert sunshine in the world.

Spurred by a state-imposed renewable energy requirement, now all of the major utilities in California -- Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric -- are scrambling to sign contracts to purchase electricity from new projects planned in the Imperial Valley and Mojave Desert.

"Because the California desert, particularly the Mojave Desert, is such a great place to develop solar and because of the proximity of large urban areas, there is probably more solar development going on in Southern California than anywhere else in the world," said Terry O'Brien, the California Energy Commission's deputy director of siting, transmission and environmental protection.

The task of transforming the state's energy structure to accommodate renewable power is huge and can't be done quickly. "We are transforming the electricity system in a way that hasn't been done before," said O'Brien.

Renewable energy provides about 12 percent of California's energy needs. State officials do not expect that investor-owned utilities will meet a legislated mandate to supply 20 percent of their customers' power needs with renewable energy by 2010.

"We should get close in 2012," said Dave Hawkins, lead renewable power engineer for the Independent Systems Operator, the agency responsible for maintaining the reliability of the state's energy grid.

Still, the push to renewable energy is intensifying with a state and national campaign to fight global warming and forge energy independence from foreign oil producers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order calling for 33 percent renewable energy in California by 2020 and said he will sponsor legislation to make that target a legal requirement for public and private utilities.

Currently, municipal utilities are exempt from the state renewable energy portfolio mandate and have set their own goals.

Andy Horne, Imperial County's deputy chief executive for natural resources development, hopes jobs generated by a burst of renewable energy development will trim that county's 23 percent unemployment.

Horne said in the past he has seen corporate interest in renewable energy investment track with oil prices. Rising oil prices kindled interest in renewable energy that quickly dimmed when oil prices fell, making renewables less competitive with conventional coal and gas generation.

But this time as oil prices fall, the interest in renewable generation is holding strong because utilities must continue buying to comply with the law. "I think this is a different ball game," Horne said.

Economic Constraints

Meeting a 33 percent renewable goal by 2020 will require adding 20,000 megawatts of renewable power to the state grid -- enough to supply about 15 million homes.

That calls for the construction of $60 billion in generation facilities and $6 billion in new transmission, more than half of that in Southern California, said Dave Olsen, coordinator of the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative

Olsen said that task force of stakeholders, including state regulatory agencies, the energy industry and the Sierra Club, is determining the most effective and least environmentally destructive places to locate renewable energy-generation projects and the transmission lines to serve them.

Environmental concerns about protecting the desert are making it difficult to get these projects built. Also a freeze in the financial markets already has prevented at least one geothermal company from obtaining capital to start construction on an approved project in the Imperial Valley.

"The economy is working against what we are trying to do," said Robert M. Doyel, lands branch chief with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Many Applicants

California is fielding a deluge of renewable-energy proposals. The federal Bureau of Land Management has 154 applications from prospective solar, wind and geothermal power developers requesting access to almost 1.5 million acres in its California Desert District that includes parts of San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, San Diego and Kern counties.

Not all the applications will become operating power plants. Greg Miller, the bureau's renewable-energy program manager for that district, said many wind companies want only to test the resource.

Miller said besides, the process of getting approval is so daunting that it is likely some applicants will give up. Part of the delay, he said, stems from the bureau's inexperience with vetting solar projects planned for federal lands.

"Because solar energy development on BLM land is so new, there are many issues cropping up that we have to address on the fly," he said. The myriad of issues, he said, range from the impact on desert tortoises to potential desert erosion. Also, he said the bureau is not staffed to deal with the flood of applications.

In an effort to weed out speculators, the Independent System Operator late last year required a hefty deposit from applicants waiting for transmission connection -- with the result that about half the projects dropped out.

Simplifying Steps

The governor and state legislators are trying to speed the development of renewable-energy projects by consolidating the approval process, which is now fragmented among numerous state, federal and local government agencies.

"Simply setting a goal isn't sufficient unless we aggressively remove barriers to siting and transmission and actively encourage the industry here in California," said State Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank.

Krekorian is co-sponsor of Assembly Bill 64, which would, among other things, establish a single state agency in charge of approving renewable-energy generation and transmission projects.

Schwarzenegger in November ordered state agencies to work together in reviewing renewable-energy projects. He also signed a memorandum of agreement with the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for state and federal agencies to jointly streamline the approval process for such projects in the Mojave and Colorado deserts.

Transmission arguably remains the biggest obstacle to the development of renewable energy because of the need to carry electricity many miles from remote areas where it is produced to population centers.

Larry Grogan, a former Imperial County supervisor and longtime energy industry consultant, said "the first ones (renewable projects) with resources and financing will get onto the transmission lines and the rest will have to wait."

O'Brien of the California Energy Commission said clearly more lines will have to be built for all the new generation planned by 2020.

Sunrise PowerLink, a $1.9 billion, 120-mile transmission line designed to bring wind, geothermal and solar power from the Imperial Valley to San Diego won approval last month from the Public Utilities Commission after a three-year struggle by the developer, San Diego Gas & Electric.

That transmission line was approved after it was rerouted around a state park. It is expected to go into operation in 2012.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also faces opposition to its plans to route transmission from the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles.

Geothermal Gem

"In my opinion, Imperial County will be the renewable capital of the country," said Vince Signorotti, vice president of land management for Terra-Gen, a renewable-energy development company looking for solar and geothermal sites in the area.

The Imperial Valley's most valuable resource, the experts say, is a rich underground reservoir of hot water near the Salton Sea. Steam extracted from briny water is pushed through turbines to produce electricity.

Currently about 400 megawatts of geothermal electricity is produced in the Imperial Valley and an estimated 2,000 megawatts of additional power remains to be tapped.

Mark T. Gran, vice president of Cal Energy, the largest geothermal plant operator in the Imperial Valley, said in anticipation of the new transmission the company plans to double its current geothermal energy production at the Salton Sea, building an additional 50-megawatt plant each year for the next dozen years.

Southern California Edison is a major customer of geothermal energy produced at the Salton Sea. The company is also building a $2 billion transmission project, with anticipated completion in 2013, to spur development of up to 4,500 megawatts of wind power in the Tehachapi region.

Southern California Edison Vice President Stu Hemphill said the company is relying on a provision in the state mandate that allows utilities that can't deliver 20 percent renewable energy to its customers next year to make up the shortfall by contracting to buy power from projects still on the drawing board.

"The question is how many of them will actually deliver and when," Hemphill said.

Solar panels could come to Lucerne Valley

Proposal part of power trend


Lauren McSherry
Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun


Lucerne Valley was named after the acres of alfalfa farmed by the city's founders. Now, under an application to develop 21 square miles of the valley, rows of glossy solar panels could redefine the area.

The Cannon Power Corp. in Rancho Santa Fe submitted an application last month to the Bureau of Land Management to construct photovoltaic panels in the Lucerne Valley Dry Lake bed, according to Bureau of Land Management documents.

Lucerne Valley, which is located about 20 miles east of Apple Valley, is situated in the Mojave Desert of western San Bernardino County.

The Cannon proposal is the latest project to garner attention in what is being characterized as the desert's latest "Gold Rush" - only this time it's a race to scoop up land for renewable-energy projects.

BLM, which is entrusted with the stewardship of 6.1 million acres of public land in the county, is fielding more than 100 applications for renewable-energy projects, said San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who represents the 1st District.

Two of the largest proposed solar projects, one for 59 square miles and another for 82 square miles, could be built in Ward Valley, north of Twentynine Palms, according to BLM documents. The applications to construct solar projects of 20 square miles or more exceeds the number of wind power projects of the same size, documents show.

The BLM's California Desert District, which encompasses the High Desert, saw a rapid increase in the number of renewable-energy applications in 2006, following a renewable-energy policy rolled out by the governor and the passage of the federal Energy Policy Act, said Al Stein, deputy district manager.

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors adopted a memorandum of understanding with BLM last week, setting guidelines to jointly review the environmental impact of photovoltaic and wind power projects. The agreement is expected to ensure there are more opportunities for the public to weigh in during the environmental review process.

"That's what a lot of this is about, giving the public a chance to comment," Mitzelfelt said on March 18 before the board adopted the agreement. "I want to make sure the benefits at least balance or outweigh the costs."

The projects have environmental consequences and their sheer size means less land will be left for other uses, such as hiking and ranching, he said.

Last month, the regional branch of the Sierra Club estimated roughly 110 square miles of the Mojave Desert could be developed for renewable-energy projects, based on the applications submitted to BLM.

Project applicants and BLM officials contend that only a fraction of the land they apply for is actually developed. Further complicating the situation, some companies submit multiple applications for the same locations.

"It's very difficult to put a number on it," Stein said. "We've tried to avoid that because it doesn't accurately reflect anything."

Environmental group seeks to limit mining near protected lands

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

An environmental group is pushing for federal legislation that would restrict mining within 10 miles of a national park, wilderness or other protected lands, a change that could affect thousands of California mining claims.

Congress is considering updates to the nation's 135-year-old mining law.

In San Bernardino and Riverside counties, 525 mining claims lie within 10 miles of Joshua Tree National Park, which straddles both counties, according to the Environmental Working Group. Of those, 207 claims have been filed since 2003. At Mojave National Preserve in eastern San Bernardino County, 2,486 claims are within 10 miles; 670 have been filed since 2003.

Statewide, 21,365 claims are within 10 miles of federal public lands, the group said.

Bill Walker, vice president of the environmental group's West Coast office in Oakland, said Monday that the group analyzed data from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees mining activity.

Legislation has been introduced to update the Hardrock Mining Law of 1872, and the group wants the buffer zone to be included and land managers given power to weigh whether the mines would be harmful to the environment. The buffer zone is needed, Walker said, to protect the landscape and reduce the chance of damage to wildlife habitat and water sources from toxic waste.

The House Resources Committee is scheduled on Thursday to mark up the legislation, introduced by the committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W. Va.

Joe Zarki, chief of interpretation at Joshua Tree National Park, said park officials aren't aware of any current claims that are a threat. He said the Bureau of Land Management typically allows the National Park Service to comment on anything nearby.

"We're always concerned about issues along our borders that might possibly impact resources, whether it's the air, wildlife or vegetation," he said.

Robert Waiwood, geologist with the bureau for the California desert district, said most claims are for gold and that most don't become active mines. The district's only large, open-pit operation, he said, is in Imperial County.

Walker said he's concerned about the few claims that do become active.

"If just a few did," he said, "they would have quite an impact."

Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added the Formosa Mine in Oregon to the nation's Superfund list. Mining activities released copper, zinc and other metals into the headwaters of two creeks and severely degraded 18 miles of stream habitat, the EPA said.