Enviro Group Sues to Block New Desert Solar Projects Over Threat to Tortoises

Adult desert tortoise with four juveniles. (Lake Mead NRA/Flickr/Creative Commons License)

by Chris Clarke
KCET.org

The environmental activist group Defenders of Wildlife filed suit today to overturn the Interior Department's approval of two large solar projects planned for the Ivanpah Valley in the Mojave Desert south of Las Vegas, saying that the projects were approved without enough consideration of the damage they'd cause the federally Threatened desert tortoise.

The Stateline and Silver State South solar projects, which would straddle the California-Nevada line not far from the Mojave National Preserve, were approved by the Interior Department on February 19. Defenders of Wildlife had previously said it would sue Interior if the projects were approved.

According to the language in Defenders' complaint, the two projects "collectively threaten the survival of the tortoise in the Ivanpah Valley, which, in turn, poses grave risks to the survival and recovery of the entire Mojave population of the Tortoise."

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The Tempe-based firm First Solar would build each of the projects with its proprietary cadmium telluride photovoltaic panels. First Solar would operate Stateline, but it sold Silver State South to the Florida firm NextEra Energy Resources in October 2013. In 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that the two projects would displace or kill as many as 2,115 desert tortoises, many of them hatchlings and juveniles.

Defenders' suit charges that the Interior Department failed to address the cumulative impacts to the tortoise of building both of the plants, with each project's Environmental Impact Statement omitting consideration of the other plant's impact. The group further points out that USFWS issued a Biological Opinion (BiOp) approving Silver State South despite the agency's earlier urging that the plant not be built because it would effectively seal off a critical genetic connectivity corridor for the tortoise.

The group is asking the court to vacate the projects' approval by the Interior Department and send agencies back to square one in the Environmental Impact Statement process.

The Stateline project would convert 1,651 acres of tortoise habitat in California, near the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Silver State South would occupy 2,388 acres on the Nevada side of the valley. Together with the nearly 4,000-acre ISEGS and the already existing Silver State North project, Stateline and Silver State South would create a band of industrial development across one of the most important migration and connectivity corridors for the desert tortoise, potentially affecting the species' survival into a warming 22nd Century.

"The combined Silver State South and Stateline Solar projects are examples of the kind of renewable energy development that does not take wildlife into account, or properly plan to have the least impact possible on imperiled wildlife," wrote Defenders' Courtney Sexton in a Thursday blog post. "They are a body blow to the threatened tortoises and habitat in the region. The result will essentially be an impenetrable wall of development cutting across the heart of the Ivanpah Valley."

"We don't have to choose between protecting imperiled wildlife and encouraging clean, renewable energy," added Defenders' California director Kim Delfino. "All we have to do is plan smart from the start and move proposed projects to low-conflict areas, something the BLM and the Service failed to do when they approved the Silver State South and Stateline Solar projects in the Ivanpah Valley."

Finding a fix for dying Salton Sea

After years of inaction by state, lawmaker wants to put regional group at helm

Pelicans fly to Mullet Island, one of the four Salton Buttes, small volcanoes on the southern San Andreas Fault, after sunset on July 2 near Calipatria. Scientists say Mullet Island, the only place for many thousands of island-nesting birds to breed at the Salton Sea, will become vulnerable to attacks by predators such as raccoons and coyotes if the water level drops just a couple more feet. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Marcel Honoré
The Desert Sun

NORTH SHORE — As state lawmakers held their first summit in more than four years on the looming death of the Salton Sea, Sonia Herbert gazed out the window at the North Shore Beach & Yacht Club marina, where squawking seabirds swooped across the glassy sea surface, fishing for tilapia.

Like most of the 60 people who attended Monday's hearing, Herbert, who has lived in Bombay Beach since the 1970s, fears the worst: that time is running out on efforts to repair the sea and sustain its wildlife, and that overwhelming public health and economic crises will follow.

“All we've seen is studies, studies, studies and nothing has been done,” a visibly frustrated Herbert told Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez and two Assembly budget committee members. “What's going to happen if we don't do something?”

The state remains broke, and its preferred $9 billion sea restoration plan has languished since 2007.

Sticker shock over the restoration cost has led to political paralysis, but Pérez, a Coachella Democrat whose district includes the sea, has called its restoration his top priority for the rest of his legislative tenure.

At the hearing, which Pérez's office organized, he listened to county supervisors, residents and environmental advocates call for the state to relinquish control and to let locals settle on the best plan to restore the sea and the best way to pay for it.

“The sea needs help and it needs it now. The answer isn't big brother riding to the rescue, because he's not coming. There is no rescue,” Imperial County Supervisor Gary Wyatt told Pérez and two other Assembly members, Republican Brian Jones of Santee and Democrat Richard Gordon of Menlo Park.

“We need to drive this train,” said Wyatt, quoting longtime Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson, who died in 2009.

Wyatt and others pushed public-private partnerships on new geothermal and solar energy projects at the sea as a realistic way to tap dollars for Salton Sea restoration.

Wyatt proposed taking a 7,000-acre former military test site at the sea's south shore, now controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and converting it into a renewable energy depot that he said could provide 700 megawatts of power and produce at least $40 million a year in restoration funds.

Unlike redevelopment funds, that money would be exempt from state seizure, Wyatt said after the meeting.

“The interest is here, not there,” Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said, referring to Sacramento. “What we need is the authority. If we fix this sea… the economic advantages to this area (are) nearly unlimited.”

Pérez said he hoped the hearing would help drum up support in the Legislature for his AB 939 bill, a proposal to switch the authority from the state's Salton Sea Restoration Council — a body that has never met — and place it in the hands of the local Salton Sea Authority, a joint-powers authority of the local counties and local water districts, along with some state presence.

“I'm optimistic that we can find a way if we work together and there's a political will from all levels of government including grassroots,” Pérez said. “Part of the reason why we have not been able to move forward is we're all moving in so many different directions. We need to find consensus to what the issues of the Salton Sea are.”

As runoff from irrigation and other water transfers evaporate, the Salton Sea's salinity has risen while its mass has shrunk. By the end of this decade, its retreat will be even more dramatic.

Created by flooding in 1905 and without a new source of water to replenish it, California's largest lake will grow uninhabitable to fish and the thousands of migratory birds that feed on them.

The exposed lakebed and the dust it generates could be disastrous in an area that already has one of the nation's highest rates for youth asthma, officials say. It also would damage agriculture and tourism.

State budget analysts at the hearing Monday reported that tens of millions of dollars in state bond funds from Propositions 50 and 84 have been spent on proposals for the sea's multi-billion-dollar fix, though exactly where the money went wasn't made clear.

“We've spent more than half our bond money … We don't have much to show for it, frankly,” said Kimberley Delfino, California program director of the national nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife.

“This is shameful and frightening,” Delfino said. “When you've lost 95 to 98 percent of the wetlands in California, the birds don't have any other place to go. The situation at the Salton Sea is grim and the stakes are high. We need a new governance structure, now. There isn't a lot of time left.”

As for the immediate next step, Pérez said he hopes for a meeting between Defenders of Wildlife, the Salton Sea Authority, the state's Legislative Analyst's Office, and other stakeholders.

“The sea still has its strong supporters, fighters and believers,” Wyatt said. “There are ways to make the revenues happen.”

Reward offered in death of Calif desert tortoise

The Associated Press

YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. — A $5,000 reward has been offered for informating leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed a desert tortoise at a Joshua Tree National Park campground last month.

The reward, announced Thursday, is funded by the U.S. Humane Society, the Defenders of Wildlife and Joshua Tree Tortoise Rescue.

The dead tortoise was found Aug. 4. It had been burned in a fire grate at a campsite near Yucca Valley.

Desert tortoises are a threatened species, protected by the federal Endangered Species Act as well as state wildlife laws. The desert tortoise also is California's official state reptile.

Mojave Desert worth $1 billion

New analysis urges residents to look at the desert in a different way

RYAN ORR Staff Writer
Victor Valley Daily Press

SACRAMENTO — The Mojave Desert provides more than $1 billion annually in economic benefits to San Bernardino County and surrounding areas.

That is according to a recent analysis released by Defenders of Wildlife, urging residents to look at the desert differently.

“People who don’t live there think it’s a barren waste land,” said Mike Skuja, California representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “But it’s not.”

The analysis, called “Economic Oasis,” was compiled from reviewing reports and government documents that together, showed that the counties of San Bernardino, Inyo, Riverside and Los Angeles enjoy more than $1 billion annually in economic benefits from the Mojave Desert.

An estimated $363 million was pumped into the local economy by the Twentynine Palms Marine base, generating more than $690 million in total regional sales, according to the report.

Almost $1.5 billion per year in total regional sales in the entire state was generated from Edwards Air Force Base.

“We want Economic Oasis to illustrate to Californians in the areas around the Mojave exactly what this amazing desert has to offer as a protected sanctuary,” Skuja said.

San Bernardino County 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said that the analysis made some good points, but was definitely agenda-driven.

One point it made over and over is that development is a major threat to the desert, said Mitzelfelt.

“It advocates for more regulation, and I don’t really see the need for more regulation,” Mitzelfelt added.

Mitzelfelt said that most of the land that is not included in the Mojave National Preserve or other national parks are included in desert wildlife management areas, which provide stringent environmental requirements for new development.