Joshua Tree National Park poised to grow by 20,000 acres

Southern California´s tallest peak, San Gorgonio Mountain, can be seen from some parts of Joshua Tree National Park. (Staff Photo by Sarah Alvarado/ San Bernardino Sun)

By Jim Steinberg
The San Bernardino Sun

TWENTYNINE PALMS -- Joshua Tree National Park, the nation’s 15th largest, is poised to grow by more than 20,000 acres early next year.

After a lengthy study and environmental assessment, the National Park Service recommends adding more than 20,000 acres of federal, state and private lands to the boundary of Joshua Tree National Park.

The majority of the land — all of it in Riverside County — is in the Colorado Desert, a low elevation and area too hot with too little rain for the park’s iconic plant, the Joshua tree.

This land, which includes the Eagle Mountain and Chuckwalla Valley areas, is of vital importance for the bighorn sheep and desert tortoise populations, a National Park Service statement said.

The area also includes prehistoric and historic resources that expand on the national park’s cultural themes and contains areas important for maintaining Joshua Tree’s wilderness values, the statement said.

The earliest this addition to Joshua Tree National Park could occur is in late February, said David Smith, park superintendent.

Originally, the land was included in the creation of Joshua Tree National Monument by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, but removed for mineral extraction activities in 1950.

During its mining heyday, iron ore was sent by train from the Eagle Mountain area to the Kaiser Fontana steel mill, where much of the finished product traveled by rail to shipbuilding activities in the Port of Long Beach, Smith said.

Major mining activities ceased in the area in 1983, the Park Service said in a statement.

In 1989, the area was proposed for a landfill. After decades of litigation, the landfill proposal was withdrawn in 2012.

The Park Service and federal Bureau of Land Management, which now administers most of the land, will evaluate public comments on the proposed transfer of the land from the bureau to the Park Service.

If the Department of the Interior determines that it is appropriate to proceed with the transfer, then it will authorize the publication of a public land order in the Federal Register.

A public hearing to discuss these proposed actions will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Jan. 18 on the UC Riverside Palm Desert campus, Smith said.

Adding this land to Joshua Tree National Park also could be accomplished through congressional Action, Smith said.

Eagle Mountain hydropower plant takes big step forward

A massive iron ore mining pit at Eagle Mountain in the remote desert east of the Coachella Valley. The Eagle Mountain iron mine was built in 1948 and closed in 1982. Today, some conservationists believe the old mine should become part of Joshua Tree National Park, which surrounds it on three sides. Eagle Mountain is just miles from the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar plant, which is set to come fully online in January, and the small town of Desert Center. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

A controversial proposal to build a hydropower plant in the shadow of Joshua Tree National Park cleared a major hurdle Wednesday, in a surprising development that frustrated conservationists but encouraged some renewable energy advocates.

After two decades of trying to acquire the old Eagle Mountain iron mine — which was carved out of the southeast corner of Joshua Tree more than 60 years ago — the Eagle Crest Energy Company has finally succeeded. The Los Angeles-based firm announced Wednesday that it has purchased the site from the company formerly known as Kaiser Ventures, which built the long-dormant iron mine and for years refused to sell.

Eagle Crest's plan to build a 1,300-megawatt hydroelectric power plant — using billions of gallons of groundwater that would be drawn from an underground aquifer — still has to overcome several regulatory obstacles. But the proposal is now closer than ever to becoming a reality.

The project's backers say it would help California build more solar and wind power, a key priority as the state moves toward a 50 percent renewable energy mandate. The hydroelectric plant would work like a battery, storing excess energy generated by solar and wind farms when supply exceeds demand, and then releasing that energy when demand exceeds supply.

"As Riverside County continues to increase its role in delivering renewable power to the rest of California, we need to find ways to store energy for use at times when solar and wind are not generating power," county Supervisor John Benoit said in a statement released by Eagle Crest. "This project helps make renewable energy sources more viable, and in an environmentally sensitive manner."

But conservation groups and national parks advocates have slammed the proposal, saying it would waste water, harm several threatened species and use more energy than it generates. Many of them want to see Eagle Mountain added to Joshua Tree National Park, saying it has historic value as a well-preserved mining boomtown, in addition to conservation value.

"The costs significantly outweigh the benefits here," said David Lamfrom, California desert program director for the National Parks Conservation Association. "Whether you're looking at it from the angle of water or the angle of wildlife, this corporation wins and the public loses."

Nothing is simple when it comes to Eagle Mountain, which has been the subject of fiery debate in recent years.

Industrialist Henry Kaiser founded the iron mine and built the adjacent town in the 1950s, but the mine was shut down in the early 1980s as production of steel in the United States waned. For more than 25 years, the Kaiser subsidiary that still owned the site wanted to sell it to the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, which would have turned it into a massive garbage dump. But that plan got tied up in court, and eventually the agency backed off.

Even when that plan fell through, Kaiser officials insisted they wouldn't sell the site to Eagle Crest, saying they had received a great deal of interest from mining companies. Eagle Mountain still has millions of tons of iron ore.

The deal with Eagle Crest is something of a compromise, because Kaiser will retain the right to sell rock and iron ore tailings that already sit in plain view at Eagle Mountain. A Kaiser representative didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but the company will presumably try to sell that right to another company, since it has been in bankruptcy for several years.

That deal will no doubt frustrate conservationists, who oppose the hydropower plant as well as further mining.

In order to fill the reservoirs of the hydroelectric plant, about nine billion gallons of groundwater would be pumped from the aquifer under the Chuckwalla Valley over a period of four years. Eagle Crest officials have argued that's a small fraction of the groundwater held in the aquifer, and equivalent to the annual consumption of two Coachella Valley golf courses.

Conservation groups, though, say that kind of water consumption is irresponsible, especially during a historic drought. Park officials also worry that drawing on the aquifer could harm threatened species in and around the park.

"The potential that we could substantially deplete all of the springs in these three basins terrifies me," David Smith, superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, told The Desert Sun last year. "It has the potential for wiping out bighorn sheep populations from all those areas."

Local activists have also accused Kaiser of illegally conspiring with state mining officials to keep control of Eagle Mountain, arguing that the company should have been required to give the site back to the federal government after it stopped mining iron.

For renewable energy advocates, the question of how to ramp up intermittent renewables like solar and wind — which only generate electricity when the sun shines or the wind blows — has long been a major challenge. With Californian lawmakers likely to adopt a 50 percent renewable energy mandate in the next few months, that challenge has become more pressing.

Right now, utility companies generally turn to natural gas-fired power plants, which contribute to climate change, to help integrate more solar and wind onto the grid. Some renewable energy experts say "pumped storage" projects like Eagle Mountain can help reduce the need for natural gas.

That argument appealed to Benoit, a longtime renewable energy supporter. The Riverside County supervisor said that while more environmental review is needed, he's hopeful the project's benefits will outweigh its potential impacts on water and wildlife.

"Those are issues that will be evaluated thoroughly in the environmental process," he said in an interview. "My guess is, it will come in on the side of, 'Yes, it does make sense.'"

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted a license for the Eagle Mountain hydroelectric plant last year, but the proposal still needs to clear several legal hurdles, despite Eagle Crest now owning the land.

For one, the National Park Service petitioned the energy commission to reconsider its decision last August, and the agency has yet to respond to that request. Eagle Crest also still needs approval from the federal Bureau of Land Management to build transmission lines across public lands.

The biggest obstacle, though, could be pushback from local activists and national parks advocates, who could try to keep the hydroelectric plant tied up in court. Some have pointed out that parts of Eagle Mountain are designated for conservation under the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, an ongoing state-federal effort that would lay the ground rules for the next 25 years of clean energy development and conservation across the California desert.

Eagle Crest submitted comments to the Bureau of Land Management asking it to reverse those designations.

Eagle Mountain legal battle settled after 15 years

A massive iron ore mining pit at Eagle Mountain in the remote desert just east of the Coachella Valley. (Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

A longstanding legal battle over land around the old Eagle Mountain iron mine has been settled in a deal that some activists hope could bring the mine one step closer to inclusion in Joshua Tree National Park.

The old mine has been the subject of fiery debate in recent years, with several groups fighting over its future. The owners have been trying to sell the land to another mining company, while a separate company has obtained federal approval to build a hydroelectric power plant at the site. Conservationists, meanwhile, want to see the area absorbed by Joshua Tree National Park, which surrounds it on three sides.

The legal settlements signed last month don’t directly address any of those possibilities. Rather, they require Kaiser Eagle Mountain, which owns the mine, to return to the federal government certain lands surrounding its property, which the company received as part of a land exchange 15 years ago.

Regulators say that Kaiser still has the right to mine those lands, and that the partial reversal of the land exchange is more of a technicality than anything. Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Dana Wilson said the land’s return to federal control “doesn’t in any way relate” to the possibility of the area becoming part of the national park.

“If the park service is interested in the future in pursuing that, then we’d need to cross that bridge when we get to it,” she said.

Conservationists, though, see last month’s settlements as a major step toward the land being incorporated into Joshua Tree National Park. They’ve argued that the old mine — and the ghost town next to it — have conservation and historic value, and would allow park visitors to learn about the history of mining and steelmaking.

Donna Charpied, a local activist who brought one of the lawsuits to undo the land exchange, said Kaiser giving up its ownership of some of the land removes “a monumental stumbling block” to the national park proposal.

“We just knocked one of the heads off the hydra,” she said. “Time to get that land back to the park now. There’s no reason not to.”

It’s unclear what prompted Kaiser to agree to the settlement, after years of fighting Charpied and the National Parks Conservation Association in court. Kaiser Eagle Mountain Vice President Terry Cook said the company could have demanded it get back the lands it gave up 15 years ago, but that it decided to be “magnanimous” by letting the federal government keep them.

Those lands are important because of their conservation value. The Bureau of Land Management said in a statement that they include critical habitat for threatened and endangered species, including the desert tortoise, the flat-tailed horned lizard and the Yuma clapper rail.

“We thought long and hard about it, and we decided we’d let the (Bureau of Land Management) retain the lands, even though we were entitled to receive them back,” Cook said. “We’re trying to do the right thing by people.”

It’s possible that Kaiser had other motives for agreeing to the settlements as well. David Lamfrom, who works for the National Parks Conservation Association, speculated that the company might be trying to ease a potential sale to another mining company.

“Having a longstanding lawsuit over the raincloud of any prospective buyer just makes things so much more complicated,” he said.

It’s also unclear what the settlements mean for the hydroelectric power plant proposed by the Eagle Crest Energy Company. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted a license for the plant earlier this year, but Kaiser has thus far refused to sell its land to Eagle Crest.

The possibility of a sale could be more remote now, since some of the land that Kaiser returned to the federal government could be needed for the hydroelectric plant. Cook, Lamfrom and Charpied all said they weren’t yet sure what the reversal of the land exchange means for Eagle Crest’s proposal.

Conservation groups and the National Park Service have vehemently opposed the hydroelectric project, saying the power plant would drain billions of gallons of groundwater from an aquifer adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park.

The Eagle Crest Energy Company first proposed the hydroelectric project two decades ago — a move that angered Kaiser executives, who at the time had endorsed a plan to build a massive garbage dump at Eagle Mountain. That plan, which fell through last year, would have involved Kaiser selling its land to the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, which would have built the landfill.

In preparation for that sale, Kaiser executed a land swap with the federal Bureau of Land Management in 1999. That land exchange was the source of the legal controversy that was finally settled last month.

As part of the original land exchange, Kaiser gave the federal government land it owned alongside the Eagle Mountain railroad, which stretches from the eastern shore of the Salton Sea to the mine site. In exchange, the company received federal land surrounding the mine, which would have been used for the landfill project.

But conservation groups have long criticized the exchange, saying that it was carried out illegally and that federal land managers got the worse end of the deal. They’ve also argued that the exchange is no longer necessary now that the landfill plan has been scrapped.

Now, those groups have succeeded in reversing part of the land exchange. The reversal may or may not have practical implications — Kaiser could still mine the exchanged lands — but Lamfrom sees the end of the long-running legal battle as critical to Eagle Mountain’s future.

“This is a milestone that I think gets us back to a place where we can start having reasonable discussions about what the future of this landscape is,” he said.

Lamfrom’s organization supports studying Eagle Mountain for inclusion in the national park, saying that setting aside the area would connect important fragments of wilderness.

National park officials have agreed that preserving the area would be beneficial. Such a step would require action by Congress or President Barack Obama’s administration.

Industrialist Henry Kaiser founded the iron mine in the 1950s, on land that was carved out of the southeastern corner of the Joshua Tree National Monument — the predecessor to the national park. But the mine was shut down in the early 1980s as production of steel in the United States waned.

Federal and state regulators maintain that Kaiser never gave up its mining rights at Eagle Mountain, although local activists have contested that claim. Charpied and others have accused Kaiser of conspiring with state regulators to keep control of the site, which still has millions of tons of valuable iron ore.

Commission will reduce fee used to protect habitats

Irony: Halt to Eagle Mountain impacted enviro plans to buy critical habitat



Coachella Valley Multiple Species
Habitat Conservation Plan area

Written by Keith Matheny
mydesert.com

Coachella Valley -- A developer fee that supports a valleywide species habitat protection plan will be reduced.

The Coachella Valley Conservation Commission, which consists of representatives from the nine valley cities, Riverside County and local water agencies, plans to reduce the mitigation fee supporting the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan.

The plan protects 240,000 acres of open space and 27 plant and animal species in and around the Coachella Valley, including the threatened desert tortoise, peninsular bighorn sheep and desert pupfish.

The planned fee reduction is $130 per acre for commercial or industrial development, to $5,600 from $5,730.

The fee will drop $30 per acre for developments of up to eight units in affected areas, to $1,254 from $1,284.

Tom Kirk, Coachella Valley Association of Governments executive director, said the fee reductions are prompted by a new “nexus study” required of governments to occasionally evaluate the appropriateness of fees charged for new development.

Declining property values due to the struggling economy did not have a large impact on the fee, Kirk said, because the properties often purchased for habitat protection are remote and less desirable for building, which tends to keep land values more flat.

The habitat protection program hit a potential snag in March, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling overturning a land exchange that in effect halted the Eagle Mountain Landfill near Joshua Tree National Park.

The multiple species plan was counting on $250 million in long-term funding from the landfill, Kirk said, and developers potentially faced a huge fee increase without it.

But CVAG officials worked with federal and state agencies, environmentalists, and the local building industry, eventually striking a deal to continue with plans to buy critical habitat lands most susceptible to development over the next 20 to 30 years, but to shift lesser priority land purchases out up to 40 years, Kirk said.

“It drove down the fee a little bit, which was a heck of a lot better than raising it a whole lot,” he said.

Riverside County Planning Department Deputy Director Greg Neal said county supervisors are having staff return with an amended plan for a county board vote.

Other member governments will similarly have to amend their ordinances, he said.

Though the multi-species plan was adopted in 2007, to date it has raised only about $2 million in development impact fees — far below projections — due to the down economy, Kirk said.

“One of the many ironies of the plan is, when we have wildlife interests knocking at our door saying, ‘Why don't you acquire more land?' we need more development to do it,” he said.

The program has relied on about $5 million in federal grant funds and $13 million in CVAG transportation mitigation fees to pay for acquisitions, property management and biological monitoring, Kirk said.

“At CVAG, we look at it much like a developer does,” he said. “We'd rather pay a fee to help build interchanges on the I-10 than deal with the uncertainty and high cost of dealing with endangered species on a case-by-case basis.”

What's best for Eagle Mountain?

Our Voice: County shouldn't pass up proposed landfill

A Desert Sun Point Counterpoint

The Desert Sun Editorial Board

The proposed Eagle Mountain landfill site is 60 miles east of Indio at the former Kaiser iron ore mine. The mining operation left a hole 4.5 miles wide and 1.5 miles long. (Courtesy photo)

The Desert Sun has long supported putting the nation's largest landfill in an abandoned iron ore mine in a remote area known as Eagle Mountain.

This issue has been debated for 20 years and some believed it was finally over when in November the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, upheld a lower court's rejection of the plan.

Proponents, however, will continue to press their case through the courts. We hope they succeed.

From 1948 to 1983, Kaiser Mining Corp. operated on 5,000 acres near Joshua Tree National Park. In 1989, six years after the mining operation ceased, Kaiser applied to the Bureau of Land Management for a land swap that would provide 2,846 acres of mostly flat desert land to become part of the California Desert Conservation Area.

The mining operation left a hole 4.5 miles wide and 1.5 miles long, a scar in the desert landscape.

Rick Daniels, now city manager of Desert Hot Springs, said Eagle Mountain would be the “most environmentally sound landfill ever.”

It was approved by Riverside County in 1992 and has the green light from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has reviewed the potential impact on endangered species and three times issued a “no jeopardy” opinion.

Eagle Mountain would generate 1,300 jobs and an economic impact of $3 billion in its first 20 years of operation.

Without Eagle Mountain, 14,000 tons of Los Angeles area trash will go to Imperial County's Mesquite Landfill. It is literally an economic opportunity rolling right past us on railroad cars.

Judge Steven S. Trott was eloquent in his dissent: “What sane person would want to attempt to acquire property for a landfill? Our well-meaning environmental laws have unintentionally made such an endeavor a fool's errand.

“This case is yet another example of how daunting — if not impossible — such an adventure can be. Ulysses thought he encountered fearsome obstacles as he headed home to Ithaca on the Argo, but nothing that compares to the ‘due process' of unchecked environmental law. Not the Cyclops, not the Sirens, and not even Scylla and Charybdis can measure up to the obstacles Kaiser has faced in this endeavor.”

Keep up the fight, proponents.

Court nixes proposal for dump near Joshua Tree

Plan would have created ‘largest landfill in the U.S.'

Colin Atagi
The Desert Sun

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a lower court's rejection of a plan — 20 years in the making — that sought to turn a former iron ore mine near Joshua Tree National Park into the “largest landfill in the United States,” according to the decision.

Tuesday's ruling was a setback for proponents of the controversial Eagle Mountain Landfill, who say it would bring much-needed jobs and revenue to the Coachella Valley and the surrounding region.

But landfill opponents called Tuesday's ruling a “landmark victory” for the animals who call the national park home and the more than 1.3 million people who visit the park every year.

The appellate court's 2-1 decision upheld a 2005 district court decision that overturned the land exchange needed for the 4,654-acre Eagle Mountain Landfill, which was proposed for a former iron ore mine near Joshua Tree National Park.

“Thank God this thing is over; it's been going on for more than 20 years,” said Eagle Mountain resident Donna Charpied, who lives two miles from the proposed site with her husband, Larry. “It's time for the government to stop with this nonsense.”

U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Timlin said in September 2005 the proposal was based on a flawed land swap between the Bureau of Land Management and developer Kaiser Ventures because the government undervalued the property.

Under the land deal, the government provided 3,481 acres near Joshua Tree to Kaiser.

In exchange, Kaiser offered the government 2,486 acres of private land plus $20,100.

Meanwhile, partner Mine Reclamation Corp. of Palm Desert agreed to sell its interest to Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County for $41 million.

Rick Stoddard, Kaiser's chairman and chief executive, said he believes his company's environmental analysis was “more than adequate.”

“Our steadfast belief continues to be that the Eagle Mountain landfill's environmental analysis was more than adequate and that the proper legal procedures were followed in completing the land exchange,” he said.

The company plans to seek a review of the decision by a broader panel of 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges, Stoddard said.

The project site, which is surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park, could have received as much as 20,000 tons of Los Angeles County trash on a daily basis. The landfill's total capacity would have been 708 million tons.

Proponents, including the late Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson, argued the landfill would have benefited the Coachella Valley by creating jobs and generating nearly $1 billion for the county.

Opponents argued the landfill would have harmed the wildlife and air quality in the desert and Joshua Tree. As many as 1,500 people live in the area during winter, Charpied said.

“I wouldn't care if it was just three people affected; they shouldn't put garbage on a train and travel 200 miles and pollute the finest air quality in the nation,” she said.

The landfill would attract ravens and coyotes, which prey on young desert tortoises, while limiting the amount of space for bighorn sheep, said Mike Cipra, California Desert Program Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

“There's a really robust and healthy population of desert bighorn sheep, and the health of that sheep depends on their ability to move,” he said. “If the sheep are isolated over time, they'll eventually going to have a lot of inbreeding and potentially not survive.”

Don’t trash Joshua Tree National Park

by Seth Shteir
High Country News







Which word doesn’t belong with “national park?” Wildflowers, wildlife, hiking, night sky, garbage dump? No doubt you answered “garbage dump,” yet the biggest landfill in the United States may be developed right next to California’s Joshua Tree National Park.

Fortunately, a lawsuit filed by the National Parks Conservation Association and others is trying to halt this misguided proposal. The lawsuit, currently under appeal in the federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, argues that the landfill fails to serve the public interest, that a land exchange making the dump possible was improper, and the environmental impact statement flawed.

"Who would have thought that a federal agency that is supposed to be looking out for the best interests of U.S. citizens would have allowed this ridiculous proposal to come this far?” says Ron Sundergill, Pacific Region director of the National Parks Conservation Association.

The dump would receive 20,000 tons of trash each day from all over southern California, and over its 117-year lifetime, 700 billion pounds of trash would accumulate, towering 1,500 feet high over the rock-studded desert. What’s harder to believe is that the landfill would be surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that a dump this size would destabilize the fragile desert ecosystem. Losers almost certainly would be desert bighorn and the endangered desert tortoise; winners would be predatory ravens benefiting from the new free food. Noise and light pollution from the trucks and machinery would definitely impair the naturalness of the park, and although some will argue that the nation needs more landfills, it’s hard to make the case that this particular project is in the best interest of the public.

The way the deal came about is also questionable. The BLM’s land transfer with Kaiser Ventures was improper because it disregarded the Federal Lands Management Policy Act. The act states that land transfers cannot significantly conflict with management on adjacent federal lands. Yet by trading land to create the nation’s biggest dump, the BLM undermined the Park Service’s management of sensitive lands within Joshua Tree National Park.

It’s not just the ecological ramifications of this battleship-sized landfill that should have people worried. A National Parks Conservation Association report showed that in 2001, the 1.3 million visitors to Joshua tree contributed $46.3 million to the local economy and supported 1,115 jobs. Desert tortoises and bighorn sheep wouldn’t be the only species harmed by the Eagle Mountain Landfill.

The national parks nonprofit and other individuals also say that the land exchange between the BLM and Kaiser Ventures was flawed. When the public land necessary for the exchange was appraised, the BLM identified its value in vague terms -- “holding for speculative investment and future capital appreciation” -- instead of acknowledging that its acquisition by Kaiser Ventures would likely mean it would become a major landfill. This resulted in an undervalued appraisal and taxpayers getting a raw deal. Ultimately, the swap of 3,481 acres of public land brought in a mere $20,100. Kaiser’s non-contiguous parcels that were transferred to the BLM also added little value to public lands. The parcels lie along the Eagle Mountain Rail Line, the very rail line that would haul trash to the landfill.

Although the National Park Service has accepted the environmental impact statement for the Eagle Mountain Landfill, some federal agency representatives say they remain concerned about the impact of the dump. It is the National Parks Conservation Association and other park-lovers who have taken on the job of challenging the EIS because of its narrowly defined statement of purpose. The EIS is, in fact, a facsimile of Kaiser Venture’s business plan, and the effect of its narrow purpose statement led to limited alternatives. For example, there is no mention anywhere in the EIS of investigating other landfill sites on BLM land or increasing the size and use of existing landfills.

Allowing the nation’s largest landfill next to a national park is a little like building a roller coaster next door to an elementary school. It’s simply a poor idea. Let’s hope that the court understands that a national park visited by millions of people each year can’t be neighbors to a noisy, spreading landfill. The tragedy, though, is that a court must make this decision.

Seth Shteir is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is vice president of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society in southern California.

Voices against power path grow

By JUTTA BIGGERSTAFF / Special to The Trail
Twentynine Palms Desert Trail

YUCCA VALLEY — Exclamations of dismay rang among the crowd Saturday night, Jan. 5 as Dave Miller of the California Desert Coalition presented his renderings of what Green Path North would do to scenic vistas in the Morongo Basin.

Miller superimposed huge transmission towers onto photos of desert panoramas, depicting the lines snaking through canyons and topping buttes.

The Los Angeles Department of Power and Water Green Path North project would carve an 118-mile swath through the desert in order to erect transmission towers up to 200 feet tall on public and private land. The towers would deliver renewable electricity from geothermal, wind and solar sources from the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles.

However, Miller informed the crowd that the infrastructure to support the project has not yet been built.

Eighty-five miles of the transmission lines would traverse a corridor from Desert Hot Springs through environmentally sensitive areas in the Hi-Desert to Hesperia. The process would mean destruction to unspoiled desert, disruption of wildlife corridors and reduced quality of life for human desert dwellers, the California Desert Coalition argues.

Opposition to the plan from the Morongo Basin and surrounding Hi-Desert is growing, Miller said.

Communities passing resolutions to take a stand against the project include Yucca Valley, Twentynine Palms, Joshua Tree, Landers, Pioneertown and Lucerne Valley.

Last month, in a resolution proposed by Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, the county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to oppose the project.

“The county is very proud of this whole area because of the huge investment that’s been made with the (Morongo Valley) preserve, with the park and with the Wildlands Conservancy holdings,” Miller said. “This area is very well protected, privately and publicly, and for LADWP to brazenly overlook that in its plans to run these power lines through was really a blow to our county representatives.”

Corridor already laid on Intertate 10

According to Miller, though the plan for Green Path North has been in the works for more than two years, the LADWP still claims the process is in its early stages and no route has been decided on. However, the California Desert Coalition’s research has discovered nine survey markers in the Morongo Basin that LADWP continues to disavow, he said.

Several other energy corridors, including along Interstate 10, already exist and, according to Miller, the LADWP already owns a shorter, more direct route. The California Desert Coalition wondered why the power company didn’t use that one.

“The answer we got back is the I-10 is way too crowded, but recently California Desert Coalition co-chair April Sall had a conversation with Southern California Edison, who told April, ‘We have capacity, there’s no problem,’” Miller said. “The problem is, LADWP wants to own this line, they don’t want to do business with SCE.”

The point his coalition is making, Miller explained, is there are existing corridors and alternative routes could be used to deliver the power.

“If we shut this down we’re not shutting down green power, we’re not attacking the whole notion of having renewable energy replacing coal and dirty energy,” he emphasized. “That is not the battle we’re fighting. We’re fighting this particular Green Path North/LADWP project.”

Landfill fighter: Don’t give up

Guest speaker for the evening was Larry Charpied, who, along with his wife, Donna, has continually thwarted plans for the proposed Eagle Mountain Landfill near their home in Desert Center.

The site is surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park. If built, railroad cars and trucks would deliver 20,000 tons of garbage each day to the site for the next 117 years.

The Charpieds moved to “the middle of nowhere” to start a jojoba farm in 1982, but their idyllic plans were disrupted in the late ’80s when the Kaiser Corporation initiated its plan to develop an old mine site into what would be the world’s largest trash dump. The issue continues to be argued in the federal courts.

The plain-speaking, benign-looking activist recounted the couple’s 20-year battle to protect their home, their lifestyle and the environment. His advice to the CDC: Never give up.

Of note: The trash that would fill the Eagle Mountain Landfill would come from Los Angeles.

Opponent portrays plan as devilish

During the Q-and-A portion of the meeting, coalition volunteer Alana Ponder described an idea that came to her on her daily drive along Twentynine Palms Highway.

Her thought was to build a large sign that would show people what the towers would look like and to serve as a reminder that if nothing is done to stop Green Path North, those lines would forever mar the scenic vistas of the Morongo Basin.

“I’m worried that so many people don’t know it’s coming,” she explained.

Ponder personified her picture of an LADWP tower by giving it eyes, what could be either ears or horns, and an evil demeanor.

Comments from departing audience members were positive and most expressed determination to derail Green Path. Sales of CDC T-shirts and bumper stickers were brisk.

Janice Pask of Yucca Valley said she thought the meeting was informative.

Let land swap stand, former owners urge

Eagle Mountain Landfill










By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise





A land swap struck down by a federal judge two years ago should be overturned, allowing one of the nation's largest landfills to be built in a mine pit near Joshua Tree National Park, an attorney for Ontario-based Kaiser Ventures argued before a federal appellate panel Thursday.

Leonard Feldman said Kaiser's former iron-ore mining operation -- which carved four large pits in the mountainous desert area in Riverside County less than two miles from the park -- already damaged the land. To use another location for a landfill would unnecessarily scar more land, he said.

"Literally, it is an abyss. It's a very scarred and disturbed piece of land. ... It makes sense to put a landfill in there," he told the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena.

At issue in the case is a 1999 land swap in which the U.S. Bureau of Land Management gave Kaiser 3,481 acres of public land around the former Kaiser Steel Co. mining pits to be used for the landfill operation. In return, Kaiser gave the BLM almost 2,500 acres along its 52-mile rail line that heads toward the Salton Sea. To compensate for the 1,000-acre difference, Kaiser paid the BLM $20,100, or essentially $20 an acre.

"It seems like the government got a bad deal," Circuit Judge Richard Paez said.

Environmental groups, including the National Parks Conservation Association, the Glen-Avon based Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, and Donna and Larry Charpied, jojoba farmers who live near the mine site, have argued that the land swap was improper.

They won much of their case in 2005 when U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin, then based in Riverside, ruled that the BLM gave away the public land below market value and failed to fully consider all of the potential environmental consequences of the landfill.

Kaiser sold the landfill property in 2000 to the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County for $41 million, pending the outcome of legal matters. It would be designed to take as much as 20,000 tons of garbage each day, hauled by train.

Environmental groups argued that the BLM didn't consider that the landfill would be a profit-making business when it did the swap, thus selling the land too cheaply.

Tamara Rountree, a U.S. Justice Department appellate attorney, said the BLM "expressly and exhaustively considered the landfill as a use."

Noah Long, a Stanford law student representing the National Parks Conservation Association, argued that the lack of market demand for that land did not justify that it be used for a landfill, and suggested the BLM inflated the need for a landfill in granting the swap.

After the hearing, the environmental groups said they were hopeful because a 9th Circuit ruling in 2000 overturned an earlier lower-court ruling that had upheld a similar land swap between the BLM and another company for a landfill in Imperial County.

Attorneys for both sides expected a decision by this panel to take at least six months.

Architecture as an alternative

A couple's call to action leads to a competition to reenvision land use near Joshua Tree National Park.

LA Times
By Ann Japenga

IN 20 years of fighting to block a monster garbage dump from moving into their backyard near Joshua Tree National Park, jojoba farmers Donna and Larry Charpied have filed lawsuits, staged rallies and resorted to all the usual activist tactics — without a clear win. They needed a new tool, so they called an architect.

Architecture traditionally has been thought of as an elite endeavor. In the 1960s and again recently, some groups such as Architecture for Humanity have embraced social awareness — green building, affordable housing and other goals. But rarely have architectural skills been used to try to change the outcome of a controversy in the way one might use tree-sitting or monkey-wrenching. Now, a small group is doing just that in the Charpieds' neighborhood, an isolated outpost called Eagle Mountain.

Donna and Larry Charpied resorted to a tactic of resistance not out of any high-minded architectural notions but because the usual means weren't working. Ontario-based Kaiser Ventures, with the support of Riverside County, has been planning for years to build a landfill on its property at Eagle Mountain. If the dump is built, as many as 20,000 tons a day of L.A.'s garbage will wind up at the abandoned ore mine site. Each time the Charpieds and their supporters win a round in court, there's the inevitable appeal. Currently Kaiser is appealing a ruling that the plan didn't meet an environmental review to a federal appeals court.

In an attempt to break the standoff, the Charpieds decided not to wait until the land was technically "saved" but to make an alternate plan. "I don't want to go to my grave fighting a dump," says Donna Charpied, a sun-browned organic farmer with a rock 'n' roller's bravado. "Something is going to be done with that site, and we might as well have a say in what that is.

"After a series of steps, they ended up hooking up with architecture students at leading L.A. schools and young professionals to compete for alternative ideas for the desert site, hoping the designs would be more than an academic exercise.

The Charpieds first called on Eric Shamp, a Redlands architect they'd met at a conference. Shamp says there's a higher threshold of responsibility for an architect than an artist or fashion designer because his or her creations are not transitory.

"If you're an artist it's OK to do 'Piss Christ,' " says Shamp, referring to the work by Andres Serrano. "But architects are really shaping the built world, and if you want the built world to be a better place, you have to be an activist. It can't all be about style.

"The Charpieds put to Shamp and designer Eric Stotts the challenge of designing a research institute, eco-tourism site and heritage center — all powered by renewable energy — for the abandoned mining town. Shamp and Stotts, in turn, challenged the L.A. chapter of the Emerging Green Builders, who then adopted the "Vision for Eagle Mountain" as a design competition.

The Emerging Green Builders was founded by students and young professionals working in architecture and other design fields; their inaugural meeting was at the Greenbuild expo in Austin, Texas, in 2002. The group has grown nationally from three chapters to 90 in the last few years and has been enlisted for projects such as creating a sustainable design for a Boys and Girls Club gym in Santa Fe, N.M. They are accustomed to talking about sustainability and solar power, but guerrilla-style activism was new to most of them.

It was new to Kaiser Ventures as well. Terry Cook, executive vice president and general counsel, says he would have thought the Charpieds and the Emerging Green Builders would have consulted his company before making plans for their property. "It would be like me submitting your house for redesign without your permission," he says.

An iron ore mining site

If you drive along Interstate 10 from Palm Springs to the Colorado River, the Eagle Mountain site is tucked up in the hills to your left, out in a lonely stretch inhabited by bighorn sheep and big-eared bats. The Kaiser Steel Corp. extracted iron ore from the mountain for 30 years; the site also once housed a private prison. What's left today is an abandoned company town of boarded-up homes, along with deep mining pits and mountains of tailings (waste material from the mines), all surrounded by pristine desert. The Charpieds have started a campaign called Give It Back! intended to return nearly 30,000 acres of surrounding land to Joshua Tree National Park in accord with a 1952 land use agreement between the mining company and Congress.

The couple's anti-dump activities have earned them support — and some enemies as well — in the communities of Twentynine Palms, Indio, Coachella and other towns likely to be affected by the proposed landfill. The pair lives in a 1954 Airstream trailer surrounded by a 5-acre carpet of bright green jojoba plants, desert shrubs whose oils are used in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. The nearest neighbor is a mile away; it's a 60-mile drive for groceries. In their years of opposing the dump, the Charpieds have focused on protecting the natural habitat. They never saw much possibility in the old Kaiser site itself until six years ago, when Donna Charpied attended a conference on community natural assets. She was asked to give a presentation envisioning a use for the abandoned buildings and mining relics.

"Up until that time I had a very poor vision of our community," she says with a hint of a blue-collar Pittsburgh accent. "Everybody felt: All we are is trash. It does a lot to your psyche. I never saw anything good until I was forced to make that PowerPoint presentation. When Larry and I went home and started looking around, we thought: 'Man-o-day! This isn't a ghost town. These are wilderness huts. Over here is a science class.' "

Charpied shared her excitement with Shamp, and he came out to visit during a rare wildflower bloom. At first, the architect couldn't quite picture a sustainable community rising amid the pits and tailings. But the more time he spent with the Charpieds, the more contagious their belief became. Soon, he could envision something like what happened in Marfa, Texas, where the late Minimalist artist Donald Judd transformed former Army hangars into art galleries. His efforts, supported in the early days by the Dia Art Foundation of New York, transformed the desert town into an art center. "If ideas get out there, that's the start of it," Shamp says.

The Charpieds are accustomed to silence and 100-mile vistas in their little outpost near Desert Center. So they were out of their element during a recent visit to the concrete halls of SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) in downtown L.A., where winning entries in the design competition were on display.

Techno music bounced off the walls, and hip students milled around the exhibits. Twenty-five teams had come up with models for Eagle Mountain; those entries had been culled to four winners.

As non-architects, the Charpieds didn't know quite how to read the slick graphics and symbols. But they recognized the rebellion in the room. Larry Charpied shook contestants' hands vigorously and vowed to take their ideas to Riverside County, hoping together they could save Eagle Mountain.

The leading entries

The winning entry, "The Nest," was conceived by Beryl Lopez and Marlen Alvarez, undergraduates at Cal Poly Pomona. (The third- and fourth-place prizes also went to the students of professor Pablo La Roche at Cal Poly.) In Lopez and Alvarez's model, electric trams run along the old Kaiser Steel railroad tracks, delivering researchers to an underground laboratory and tourists to a Universal Studios-like back lot tour of historical mining operations. Among the features incorporated by other contestants were a space camp, a habitat for bats and an environmentally responsible golf course.

The winning pair will go on to a national competition at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in Chicago in November. To encourage further discussion, the Emerging Green Builders of L.A. plans to publish the winning designs.

When the hand-pumping and celebrating was through, the question remained: Can twentysomethings adept with 3-D software really change the minds of big business and government agencies? The concept has mostly been bandied in academia. A few professors, such as Jeff Hou at the University of Washington, teach courses in design activism. And blogs such as Activist Architect discuss the matter in theoretical terms. The trend toward architecture-as-resistance has seen fewer expressions in the real world. Shamp says architecture is still a big-money business and professionals can't afford to alienate potential clients with activities that go beyond socially aware to radical. He took pains to keep his firm's name out of the Eagle Mountain competition.

Even if monkey-wrenching were cool with the bosses, there is still the problem of profit. The Eagle Mountain landfill site is perceived by supporters as an economic boon to Riverside County. A wilderness heritage site and research center — however visionary — less obviously profitable.

Given the clout of Kaiser, it's easy to dismiss the contest as a pie-in-the-sky exercise. Professor La Roche says he doesn't necessarily expect the winning plans to be built. But a completed development is not the goal so much as changing people's perceptions of the site. "These students are young and enthusiastic," he says. "Sometimes people like that change things."

Kaiser Ventures spokesman Cook had this response for the winning contestants: "If they want to pay me the value of the land — $85 or $90 million — they can have at it."

Court deals blow to landfill plans

EAGLE MOUNTAIN:
The judge voids a needed BLM acreage swap. LA County's trash may go elsewhere.




By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise





A federal judge struck down a land exchange needed to allow one of the nation's largest landfills to be built near Joshua Tree National Park and filled by Los Angeles County garbage.

The judge, in a long-awaited ruling issued Tuesday, said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to consider all of the potential environmental consequences of permitting a landfill on the 3,481 acres that the federal agency traded to Ontario-based Kaiser Ventures. The property surrounds Kaiser's closed iron-ore pits, which would be the core of the landfill operation.

The company, in exchange, gave the bureau 2,486 acres of private land scattered throughout the Riverside County desert.

"The court concludes the BLM's record of decision was arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law," U.S. District Judge Robert J. Timlin said in his 26-page opinion.

Timlin said the bureau failed to fully investigate how a landfill might affect bighorn sheep and the desert ecosystem. He also indicated that the BLM undervalued the land traded to Kaiser.

BLM and Kaiser spokesmen said they are not sure what will happen next.

"We'll make a determination of exactly what that (ruling) means and how we'll proceed from here," said the BLM's Doran Sanchez.

Terry Cook, a Kaiser spokesman, said it could take months to figure out whether the project can survive without the land swap. A company subsidiary, Mine Reclamation Corp. of Palm Desert, is the landfill developer.

"Frankly, we're taken aback by the decision," Cook said. But he added, "This project has faced legal and other challenges over the years and has always ultimately come out ahead."

Although Los Angeles County bought the landfill from Kaiser for $41 million, the final sale was contingent on the resolution of legal challenges and the money continues to be held in escrow, said John Gulledge, head of the LA County sanitation districts' solid-waste-management department.

"I can't see how the project can move ahead at this time and place," he said. "They (Kaiser) have to deliver a project with no court challenges and all the permits."

Cook said he fears Timlin's ruling could endanger several landfill-related permits issued by county, state and federal agencies.

The land swap needed to develop the open-pit mines into a landfill was challenged in two lawsuits filed five years ago by the National Parks and Conservation Association and two jojoba farmers who live near the site. The judge merged them into one case.

Donna Charpied, one of the plaintiffs, said she was elated by the ruling. She has fought the project since it was first proposed in 1988. The Kaiser property is less than two miles from wilderness areas in the national park and not far from Charpied's jojoba farm.

"This project is wrong," Charpied said, "and there's just not a right way to do a wrong thing."

She said she hoped Riverside County, which approved the landfill, would take another look at the project. County Supervisor Roy Wilson, who represents the desert district, said he had not seen the ruling yet and couldn't comment.

The landfill would take as much as 20,000 tons of garbage each day, hauled by train from Los Angeles County through San Bernardino and Riverside counties to the former mine north of Interstate 10 near Desert Center.

Riverside County would earn as much as $5 for each ton of garbage hauled across the county line and $1 per ton to buy wildlife habitat as part of the Coachella Valley's growth plan, Wilson has said.

The judge said the BLM fully analyzed the effects on desert tortoises, air quality and groundwater but failed in other environmental considerations.

Timlin said the bureau, in violation of federal law, failed to "take a hard look at the consequences" of the landfill on bighorn sheep, the surrounding ecosystem and the potential for increases in the populations of coyotes and ravens, which prey on the federally protected desert tortoise.

The judge also found the BLM had failed to consider the potential value of the public land it traded to Kaiser.

"The court concludes that BLM's failure to consider an income-producing landfill as a potential highest and best use was an abuse of discretion," he wrote.

Timlin left it up to the BLM to decide whether it would try again to work out the land swap.

Los Angeles County is not waiting for the Eagle Mountain dispute to be resolved. The county wants to develop the Mesquite landfill in Imperial County because one of its major landfills, near Whittier, is nearing capacity, Gulledge said.

"That's our No. 1 task now," he said. "We are moving forward to have a functional waste-by-rail program by January of 2010."

Eagle Mountain landfill History

• 1988-89: Eagle Mountain landfill is proposed at a former iron-ore mine. Kaiser Ventures applies to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for a land exchange necessary for landfill operations.
  
• 1994: A Superior Court rules that an environmental report from Riverside County and the BLM is deficient.
  
• 1997: BLM approves a revised environmental report. The land exchange is tentatively approved.
  
• 1999-2000: Two lawsuits are filed in federal court to stop the landfill.
  
• 2005: U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin strikes down the land swap.