Southern California Desert Management Plan Worries Activists

A sweeping renewable energy management plan for Southern California's desert regions is stirring fears about potential new solar farms and transmission lines in San Diego and Imperial counties.

California power lines, Feb. 21, 2011 (Robert Couse-Baker)

By Erik Anderson
KPBS.org

A sweeping renewable energy management plan for Southern California's desert regions is stirring fears about potential new solar farms and transmission lines in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Federal and state officials have been crafting a desert management plan for five years.

The recently unveiled proposal would help manage development and habitat protection on 22 million acres of federal, state and privately owned land in the eastern part of the state.

The idea is to streamline the development process for renewable energy projects on about two million acres.

East County resident Donna Tisdale has fought against backcountry development for years. She's trying to get the word out that this plan could have major negative impacts.

"I had to contact a lot of farmers in the Imperial Valley to try and get them up to speed on what was going on," Tisdale said. "People in East County were kind of shocked to hear that there's at least one more 500 KV line, like Sunrise Powerlink, proposed."

Sunrise Powerlink is a 117-mile transmission line that connects San Diego with the Imperial Valley. It was put into service June 17, 2012.

The plan's architects consist of what they call "an unprecedented collaborative effort between the California Energy Commission, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also known as the Renewable Energy Action Team."

The state and federal coalition is currently seeking public comment.

The desert energy and conservation protection plan is scheduled to be finalized next year.

Imperial Valley's pact could help save the Salton Sea

Members of the Imperial Irrigation District board of directors, the Imperial County board of supervisors, and other officials commemorate the signing of memorandum of understanding at Red Hill Marina on Oct 24 at the Salton Sea. ( Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Opinion

Written by The Editorial Board
Desert Sun

The pledge by three Imperial County entities to develop renewable energy projects to generate money for the restoration of the Salton Sea could be a big step. Progress is long overdue in a decades-long debate that has been incredibly frustrating for those of us who see the future of the shrinking sea as the region’s largest pending threat to public health and the environment.

Finally, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), Imperial County and the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District are on the same page. Representatives last week signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on geothermal and other renewable energy projects, and to work with the state to build transmission lines to bring that power to California’s grid.

A preliminary IID study estimates these projects could generate $3 billion in revenue for restoration projects. That’s three times higher than an earlier estimate and the most significant potential investment we’ve seen yet.

With the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, there is a strong need for new sources of power in Southern California. It could be a huge opportunity.

As promising as it may sound, we’re skeptical. Power plants like this take huge capital investments and years to make it through the regulatory process. Even with the state’s mandate of generating at least a third of its power from renewable sources by 2020, the energy market is hard to predict.

Utilities are looking for the cheapest sources of energy available, as they should on behalf of their customers.

If the fracking program approved by the Legislature this year generates the mother lode of natural gas that has been predicted, building transmission lines to reach the remote southern end of the Salton Sea might not be the top priority.

The Quantification Settlement Agreement, the nation’s largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer from Imperial County to San Diego County, takes full effect at the end of 2017. At that point, mitigation flows will cease, which could expose more of the lake bed, allowing fine dust to become airborne in the desert wind and create a health hazard. There is a sense of urgency.

Whether the renewable project can come online and generate a revenue stream within the next four years is a big question.

Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez’s determination is admirable. He is cosponsoring Senate Bill 760 with Sen. Rod Wright, a Democrat from Inglewood, which would elevate geothermal power in the state’s energy procurement process.

Another bill, AB 177, would direct retail sellers of electricity to adopt long-term strategies to reach even loftier goals for renewable energy — more than half the state’s power by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

Both bills are pending until the Legislature reconvenes in January.

Tapping into the sea’s vast potential of geothermal energy also fits with the new commitment to reduce greenhouse gases made by Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed a climate change pact Monday with the governors of Oregon and Washington and the environmental minister of British Columbia.

It is good that the Imperial County power brokers are now united in their Salton Sea strategy. That wasn’t always the case, Pérez said.

“That made it difficult, quite frankly, for folks like myself at the state level to advocate on behalf of our locals here,” he said.

Kevin Kelley, IID’s general manager, said he hopes this show of unity will push state legislators to finally address the plan that was devised by state water officials in 2007 but never voted on.

When lawmakers gather in two months in Sacramento, they should debate serious and swift solutions for the Salton Sea. The folks who live around the sea are committed. They have an aggressive plan of action, although it might be overly ambitious. We may not be able to wait for the geothermal genie to rise up and save us.

Banning, Beaumont Assemblyman Wants Salton Sea Restored

"There was a time when the Salton Sea attracted more visitors per year than Yosemite," Nestande said. "I want to empower the Salton Sea Authority so they can return the area to the recreation and destination site it once was."

North Shore Yacht Club, Salton Sea. (Photo: Renee Schiavone)

By Renee Schiavone
Banning-Beaumont Patch

Palm Desert's assemblyman has proposed legislation this week to spur action on restoring the shrinking Salton Sea by allocating $50 million for projects overseen by the Salton Sea Authority.

Assemblyman Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, introduced Assembly Bill 709 ahead of a hearing Friday in Mecca, during which representatives from government and private organizations will address the sea's needs.

"The issues surrounding the restoration of the Salton Sea have been going on for far too long," Nestande said. "State and federal inaction has stymied restoration progress. We need to return control to the Salton Sea Authority as the lead agency so they can move forward."

AB 709 would require that $50 million in Proposition 84 bond revenue be earmarked for sea improvements and would direct the California Wildlife Conservation Board to apply for matching federal funds in support of restoration.

The Salton Sea Authority would take charge of all projects under Nestande's bill. Currently, the SSA -- composed of officials from Riverside and Imperial counties -- acts primarily in an advisory capacity.

"There was a time when the Salton Sea attracted more visitors per year than Yosemite," Nestande said. "I want to empower the Salton Sea Authority so they can return the area to the recreation and destination site it once was."

According to the assemblyman, the SSA would have to develop a concrete restoration plan that passes muster with the state Legislative Analyst's Office, after which funds would be made available.

Nestande's bill follows several proposals introduced last month by Assemblyman Manuel Perez, D-Coachella, that address funding for a restoration feasibility study and mitigation measures necessary to prevent environmental damage that might result from changes to the sea.

The 365-square-mile body of water -- the largest part of which lies in Imperial County, with the north portion stretching to within a few miles of Thermal -- has been plagued with increasing salinity over the last 40 years, to the point that some of the sea's deeper places are saltier than the ocean.

According to studies, nutrient compounds from agricultural runoff have created a "eutrophic" condition where high levels of hydrogen sulfide and ammonia kill fish and produce gagging odors.

Water reclamation plans by local agencies and Mexico, as well as a reduction of Colorado River supplies, will shrink the sea in the coming years, according to the Salton Sea Authority.

Assemblyman Nestande serves the communities of Banning, Beaumont, Cabazon, Calimesa, Cherry Valley, Hemet, Indian Wells, La Quinta, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Rancho Mirage, San Jacinto, White Water, 29 Palms, Joshua Tree, Landers, Morongo Valley, Pioneer Town, Yucaipa, and Yucca Valley.

Massive turbines rise in Ocotillo

By Alejando Davila | Staff Writer
Imperial Valley Press

For Don Quixote, windmills were monstrous giants, some with arms nearly two leagues long. But for El Centro resident Efren Ramos, windmills such as the 112 being built west of here, are the source of income that pay for his daughter’s wedding.

Video: Pattern Energy's Ocotillo wind farm takes shape

“I told her that my limit was $25,000,” said Ramos with a laugh while referring to his daughter, who’s marrying at a San Diego beach in December.

The 56-year-old had been retired for more than a year when the project began and was doing OK, he said. And yet, he has worked all his life, so when the opportunity came up to work at the project, Ramos decided to come out of retirement.

He is now part of the civil crew, doing day-to-day operations, meaning he does roadwork and “anything else that comes up,” such as loading and unloading material or even cholla plant relocation.

Ramos is one of some 350 people, about half of them local, who are employed by Pattern Energy and its Ocotillo Wind Express, a renewable energy project comprised of windmills — or better said, wind turbines — unlike any Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes was likely to imagine.

That is because once commissioned, these wind turbines roughly the size of 40-story tall buildings and blades the size of a 747 Boeing passenger jet won’t power mills; they will power about 94,000 homes in San Diego, according to U.S. Bureau of Land Management figures.

The Imperial County Board of Supervisors approved Ocotillo Wind Express on April 25.

Some three weeks later the BLM did the same as the lead agency in charge of this project that the federal government selected as one of many priority projects needed to diversify the nation’s energy portfolio.

Rising turbines

Construction began in May amid lawsuits filed by local Native American tribes, environmental organizations and some residents who oppose the project over cultural, biological, health and aesthetic concerns.

Just last month, a lawsuit filed by Community Advocates for Renewable Energy Stewardship was dismissed in a San Diego federal court.

Lawsuits are also pending from the Quechan Tribe, the Desert Protective Council and a joint suit by Protect Our Communities Foundation, Backcountry Against Dumps and activist Donna Tisdale.

However, thus far, lawsuits have been unsuccessful in halting the project.

All facets of the project are in one stage or another at this time, said construction manager Joan Inlow.

“(This) consists of roads and site preparation, as well as pouring of the concrete bases that are underground (and) support the turbine, she said, “we are also delivering and putting up turbines. It’s kind of hard not to see that when you drive through the area.”

Workers “are also doing a lot of internal wiring in the turbines,” said Inlow adding the interconnecting underground collection system, which connects the turbines together into circuits, is being built.

As this takes place, San Diego Gas and Electric crews are working on the switchyard and other structures that will tie the project up into the Sunrise Power Link, described as a 500-kilovolt “superhighway” connecting the Imperial Valley to San Diego County.

So everyday workers along with cranes and other heavy machinery are assembling towers, rotors and turbines; an impressive feat to witness particularly when noticing the speed in which open desert becomes a turbine site.

Construction manager Russell Graham said it takes about 60 hours to put up a turbine.

As of Friday, more than 30 turbines could be seen standing from afar and many more will be seen in the upcoming months.

“Our plan was six (turbines) a week and we’ll also have a few weeks when we may put up seven and possibly eight (turbines),” said Inlow, who expects 86 turbines to be up and delivering power by the end of this year. The remaining 26 turbines, she said, will surely be up and working by June 2013.

The bigger picture

But Ocotillo Wind Express and the engineering that goes into building and connecting turbines across some 12,000 miles of BLM land is just a variable of a much bigger equation, one that hopes to find the answer to the country’s energy needs.

Ocotillo Wind was a priority in the Obama administration’s effort to diversify the nation’s energy portfolio through a “fast-track” process.

This priority is achieved on a variety of criteria, like necessary public participation, environmental analysis and its likelihood of success in the permitting process.

BLM spokeswoman Erin Curtis described this plan as the “environmentally responsible development of utility-scale renewable energy projects on public lands.”

This plan continues, and just this year, the BLM gave priority status to 17 projects: nine solar developments, six wind developments and two geothermal plants, according to Curtis, who noted these projects represent about 7,000 megawatts of power.

But the fast-track process, just like Ocotillo Wind Express, has created unease among some community members.

Native American tribes like the Quechan, have repeatedly called for the fast-track process and this project to stop, as it’s being built on an area archaeologically rich and spiritually important for them. Tribes also feel mitigation efforts are insufficient.

This comes in spite of the environmental and financial benefits presented by those who support industrial renewable energy projects.

According to an independent report, the project will bring about $442 million in revenue to the county over the 30-year life of the project.

On the other hand, some Ocotillo residents fear for their health and safety, while at the same time dislike the aesthetic change of the desert.

Long-standing concerns

Parke Ewing is one of those displeased residents. His house is just over a half mile from where turbines will stand and, he says, “I’ll be surrounded about 220 degrees … basically on three sides.”

“We are just scared to death for our health,” said Ewing, who like many opposing the project, has fears, allegations and shows deep distrust of Pattern and the government branches that have approved the project.

“There are plenty of scientists that have proven that low-frequency sound — the noise in these things, is proven to be unsafe and a bother (to) people,” he said.

“They can’t sleep at night and I’m scared to death that that’s going to happen to me. I don’t know that it’s going to, but from the research that I’ve done on the Internet — yes, I think it’s going to be a problem.”

Ewing also alleges there isn’t enough wind in the area to support the project.

“They (Pattern) say that they will be able to produce up to 320 megawatts of power. We think that they are going to be able to produce less than 20 percent of that,” said Ewing, who adds he is unsure if the project is properly engineered or inspected by the BLM or the county.

It should be noted Graham says the project will create about 265 megawatts of power as planned turbines were taken out of the project over environmental concerns.

Meanwhile, county Planning Director Armando Villa notes he gets a report on the project every day.

“We have hired engineers and inspectors that specialize in steel foundations to be out there,” he said.

“This is ongoing,” added Villa, who when asked about health issues responds “there’s not enough verifiable science to tell us that these things (turbines) are bad.”

And as far as the BLM’s monitoring efforts, Curtis pointed to online reports available on www.ocotilloeccmp.com

These reports have been posted every week since late May, up until the latest report, which is good through Sept. 9.

The last report notes issues/concerns over dust suppression, trash management and generator emissions, among others. Some of these concerns appear on previous reports as well. However, reports also note the contractor addressed concerns in a timely manner.

In addition, Pattern dismisses Ewing’s allegations.

Civil, geotechnical, structural and electrical engineering plans and calculations were completed by state licensed engineers and submitted to and approved by the county, said Pattern Energy’s Matt Dallas through an e-mail in which he wrote that “multi-year wind studies confirm that the site has strong wind resources.”

Meanwhile, a 2007 geographic information system map developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows the southwestern end of the county as having wind resource potential ranging from “marginal” to “superb.”

This last study surely opens more back and forth allegations, responses and findings on both ends of the spectrum.

And yet, two things are certain in this project. Like all developments, Ocotillo Wind Express impacts the county, bringing benefits and costs.

But whether one outweighs the other seems to be, depending on who answers, as contrasting as the way the errant knight Don Quixote and his faithful squire Sancho Panza saw the windmills.

For one, they were monstrous giants, while for the other: “what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go.”

Water drives area's politics

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Water has always been the driving political issue in Imperial Valley, fueled by fears that 19 million people living on Southern California's coast will suck it dry. Los Angeles dealt that fate to Owens Valley farmers almost a century ago, as portrayed in Roman Polanski's film “Chinatown.”

Imperial Valley, with only 175,000 people — but a half-million acres of productive farms — gets nearly 20 percent of the Colorado River's flow, which would be enough for more than 6 million homes. It gets more than any of the seven Western U.S. states and northern Mexico, which also rely on the 1,450-mile waterway. Early settlers were first to claim the water, and under Western water law, farmers can keep it as long as they can demonstrate it is put to good use.

Imperial Valley got a jolt in 1984 when a state panel ruled farmers were wasting water, forcing the sale of a slice of its share to cities. The Bass family, Texas oil billionaires, soon became the largest landowners in an ill-fated attempt to sell even more water to cities.

Farmer Jack Vessey joined other big farmers to campaign against a 2003 agreement under which Imperial Valley sold water to San Diego in the nation's largest farm-to-city transfer.

Mike Morgan is their leader. Morgan has refused to cut his hair until his concerns are addressed. Now, eight years later, the 64-year-old's gray and strawberry blond ponytail stretches down his back.

The farmers' main target is the Imperial Irrigation District, which bought the canal system from the region's bankrupted pioneers in 1911 and manages its water rights. The government agency employs 1,300 people, ranging from “zanjeros” who open and close 6,000 metal canal gates to meter readers at its electric utility. To critics, the agency is a misguided bureaucracy.

Non-farmers now control the agency's five-member elected board, a shift welcomed by some who fear large landowners might squander the region's most precious resource.

Vessey disagrees: “It makes me nervous when a jeweler in El Centro has control over that water.”

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.”

Water worries: The drying of the West

The Colorado River and the civilisation it waters are in crisis

Lake Mead's "bathtub ring" at Hoover Dam.

The Economist

STANDING on the Hoover Dam and looking upstream at Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, the visitor notices a wide, white band ringing the cliffs. Nicknamed “the bathtub ring”, this discolouration comes from minerals that were once deposited on the volcanic rock by the Colorado River and have become visible as its level has dropped. It is one sign of a water crisis that threatens America’s south-west.

Other reminders abound. Farther upstream there are dry docks, jutting out ominously into desert, where boats were once moored. In one finger of Lake Mead buildings that were abandoned in the 1930s, as the water of the newly dammed river rose and submerged them, have eerily begun reappearing, like a ghost town.

The main reason why Lake Mead, currently only 40% full, has been getting emptier is a decade-long drought. Whether this is a cyclical and normal event, or an early sign of climate change, is unclear. But even if the drought ends, most scientists think global warming will cause flows on the Colorado River to decrease by 10-30% in the next half century, says Douglas Kenney, the director of a water-policy programme at the University of Colorado Law School.

The other reason, says Mr Kenney, is the rapidly increasing demand for the river’s water. The Colorado provides much or most of the water for many cities and farms in seven states—Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California—before it peters out in the sands of Mexico.

In the northern states, its water supports cattle empires. In its southern stretch, especially in California’s Imperial County, the river irrigates deserts to produce America’s winter vegetables. And all along the way, aqueducts branch off to supply cities from Salt Lake City and Denver to Phoenix and Los Angeles. The metropolis closest to Lake Mead, Las Vegas, gets 90% of its water from this one source.

That is why Las Vegas is a canary in the mine shaft, as Pat Mulroy, the boss of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, puts it. The Las Vegas valley gets its water through two long channels drilled through the rock. The first taps the lake at 1,050 feet (320 metres) above sea level, the second at 1,000 feet. Lake Mead’s water level is now near its record low, at 1,086 feet. Within a few years it could leave Las Vegas’s first intake, or even both, dry.

The threat to Sin City is a good example of the four dimensions—physical, legal, political and cultural—of water in the West. For the physical, the standard response is to summon the engineers. Ms Mulroy already has them digging a third intake at 890 feet. Given the weight of the water on top, this is fiendishly difficult and will not be ready until 2014. Ms Mulroy also wants to pipe groundwater from the rural and wetter northern counties of Nevada to Las Vegas, but that has caused a vicious row.

Another response is to call in the lawyers. This was the preferred approach a century ago, in the era of the “water wars”. Starting with the Colorado River Compact of 1922 and continuing with statutes, a treaty with Mexico and case law until the 1960s, a truce was achieved. Called the Law of the River, the resulting regime determines who along the river has what right to how much water.

At least, it does in theory. The problem is that the law took shape after two decades of record water flows, which became the basis for allocation. As a result it apportions more water than there is in the river. For decades that did not matter, since there were so few people. Then the cattle, fruit and people using the river multiplied.

The law’s seniority rules theoretically mean that, for example, the taps to Las Vegas would be shut completely before a single lettuce-grower in California’s Imperial County lost a drop. This “idiocy of who gets cut first and second”, as Ms Mulroy calls it, gives rise to the political dimension. These days, co-operation has supplemented, if not wholly replaced, the old rivalries among agricultural and urban users, and among the seven states. Nevada and Arizona, for example, have a water-banking partnership, whereby Arizona stores excess water in its aquifers so that Nevada could use it in a pinch. In California, the water utility of Los Angeles has bought water rights from farmers in Imperial County. But arguments persist.

The final dimension is the culture of the West. Does every middle-class house really need a lawn in a desert? Ms Mulroy has already started paying Las Vegans to rip out their turf and opt for desert landscaping, which can be chic. Her own husband put up a fight but lost. So out went that lawn, too, just as the low-flow toilets and taps came in.

Hoover Dam's Perpetual Power

Franklin Roosevelt's signature project created more than jobs and energy—it incited one of our nation's greatest transformations

A view of part of the Hoover Dam in 1936. (CSU Archives/Everett Collection)

By MICHAEL HILTZIK
Wall Street Journal

Seventy-five years ago this summer, President Franklin Roosevelt journeyed west from Washington to place the New Deal's indelible stamp on an outstanding symbol of governmental might.

The occasion was the official dedication of what is today known as Hoover Dam. As FDR told 10,000 spectators at the Colorado River dam site and 20 million more via radio, the dam meant gainful employment, cheap hydroelectric power, reliable irrigation and protection from the obstinate elements, all ripped from a forbidding desert canyon by the hand of a visionary federal government. Eleanor Roosevelt, who accompanied her husband on his visit to the Colorado River, would tell friends that the trip brought home to her the sweeping achievement of his administration as if for the very first time. That the project had originated with Republicans—indeed, it was originally conceived by her own Uncle Theodore—went unmentioned.

It is customary to think of Roosevelt's New Deal as the driver of the social and economic changes that gripped America after 1945. But this transformation really began a decade earlier, when the completion of Hoover Dam heralded a period of explosive industrial development and population growth in the West that would reverberate nationwide. The story of America in the last half of the 20th century should be seen as the story not of the postwar era, but the post-dam era.

The dam did more than contribute to the physical and economic remaking of its region; it prefigured and inspired a fundamental change in American values—political, ideological, even psychological. The path from an America of self-contained localities, each one trying address its problems and needs in local isolation, to one in which every state or local issue is seen as a piece of a broad national agenda points us back to Hoover Dam.

Yet the history of Hoover Dam warns us, too, that the nationalization of regional public works can come at a cost. As the Sept. 30 anniversary of FDR's dedication approaches, the country is debating, even more vehemently than it did 75 years ago, the place of the federal government in our lives. It was people's concerns about ceding their personal relationships with doctors to a remote government bureaucracy that animated the opposition to the health-care reform bills in Congress. State and municipal officials complain about the strings that almost always come attached to federal program funding—whether it's minimum benefit standards imposed on federally subsidized health and relief programs, or wage or employment rules attached to federally funded public works.

Then there's the infiltration of national politics into local contracting. Consider the case of a $54 million rail project in California's Napa Valley, which went, without competitive bidding, to a contractor owned by an Alaskan Native American tribe in 2008 because of a preference written years ago into federal law by former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska.

These sorts of conflicts and concerns will only become more common as the federal government takes more of a role in upgrading the nation's infrastructure, whether through stimulus funding or by other means. As the Government Accountability Office determined in 2008, the vast majority of the nation's roads and highways are owned by state and local governments, as are the nation's bridges, ports, transit lines and water systems. Few of these can be repaired or even maintained without some federal funding. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of a major public construction project that can be launched without a huge federal appropriation, whether it is an aqueduct, flood-control levee, highway or transportation link.

Hoover Dam made the West but also confined it in a straitjacket. The growth of such great regional urban centers as Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver was driven by the water and hydroelectricity it promised. But the millions of residents drawn to those metropolises over the decades have had to confront the realization that its promise was equivocal. Today the Colorado River cannot provide enough water to fulfill all the expectations that the building of Hoover Dam excited in the seven states of the river basin. Even taking advantage of its actual capacity comes at a price—as the federal government controls the water, states and smaller communities must cede to it a large measure of control over their own politics and policies.

The dam that would wield national influence was born in a quintessentially local crisis: a series of floods that devastated Southern California's Imperial Valley in 1905.

The valley had been converted from an arid desert into an agricultural Eden by water irrigated from the Colorado via a 50-mile canal. When the river burst its banks that winter, the private company managing the canal proved itself unequal to the engineering challenges and the financial demands it entailed. The Southern Pacific Railroad stepped into the breach, rescuing the valley from almost certain catastrophe at a cost of some $3 million. But the episode underscored for conservation-minded President Theodore Roosevelt—at a time when "conservation" connoted not only the preservation of nature, but the exploitation of natural resources—that the U.S. government alone could marshal the resources and the authority to manage the river for the public good. In 1907 he proposed that the government undertake "a broad, comprehensive scheme of development" for the Colorado "so that none of the water of this great river which can be put to beneficial use will…go to waste."

Roosevelt's successors expanded on his vision, to the point that Woodrow Wilson's interior secretary, Franklin K. Lane, would proclaim in 1916 that "every tree is a challenge to us, and every pool of water and every foot of soil. The mountains are our enemies. We must pierce them and make them serve. The sinful rivers we must curb."

The Colorado was the most sinful of rivers, unpredictable and destructive in its violent moods. In the 1920s, curbing it became a Republican cause, promoted in Congress by Sen. Hiram Johnson of California, whose Boulder Canyon Project Act was signed into law by Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

Even then, the government's traditional fiscal conservatism stood in the project's way. Federal spending, focused largely on the nation's standing Army and Navy and the payment of obligations incurred in wartime (such as interest on war debt and the upkeep of veterans), amounted to roughly 2% of gross national product. By the end of the 20th century, that figure would be closer to 20%.

What changed the political calculus was the onset of the greatest economic crisis in modern history. By 1930, President Hoover was contemplating a vast increase in federal public works spending to combat unemployment. The problem then was the dearth of "shovel-ready" projects to absorb the additional money. Only one stood out, already authorized by Congress, approved by Calvin Coolidge, and nearly designed and engineered: the great dam on the Colorado.

Hoover's successor, Franklin Roosevelt, instinctively recognized the power of great public works to inspire and encourage. Within a year of his 1935 dedication, three more dams would be under construction in the West, all ranking with Boulder Dam as among the world's grandest. (The dam was christened with Hoover's name by his friend and interior secretary, Ray Lyman Wilbur, at its 1930 groundbreaking, renamed "Boulder Dam" by the Roosevelt Administration, and restored to its original name by a Republican Congress in 1947.) The New Deal's Tennessee Valley Authority would eventually encompass 29 hydroelectric dams. FDR began to see himself as the nation's premier dam builder, calling constantly for more projects, like a man under a spell. Seven more dams would rise on the Colorado itself, exploiting it so completely that its once mighty flow into the Gulf of California has been reduced today to a brackish dribble, runoff from Mexican farms.

Hoover Dam inspired more than irrigation works. Even before its final concrete was poured, construction of the Golden Gate Bridge was under way, involving some of the same contracting firms working in the Colorado gorge. The power of America's concerted will and financial resources, demonstrated so decisively by the raising of the dam in such inhospitable conditions, would continue to assert itself over the succeeding years. This was true in times of acute crisis, as after Pearl Harbor, at D-Day, and in the Manhattan Project; and in times of more placid if not entirely tranquil aspiration, as during 1950s and 1960s, which bequeathed us the interstate highway system and the moon landing.

The rationale for nationalizing public works is largely a sound one: in our mobile, interconnected world even regional infrastructure projects produce nationwide benefits. Westerners and Easterners, Northerners and Southerners fly in and out of each others' airports and ship and receive goods over roadways and rail lines binding the nation together from the rocky coast of Maine to the Pacific shore. Who would begrudge the coastal communities of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas the federal assistance contributed to the efforts to combat the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?

But as the residents of the West well know, the price is a loss of local self-determination. The Colorado River Compact—the interstate treaty that cleared the way for Hoover Dam in 1922 by balancing the water rights of the seven states of the Colorado basin—created a precedent for federal oversight of the river. But its full implications did not become clear until four decades later, with the Supreme Court's 1963 ruling in Arizona v. California.

In that decision, nominally concerned with a dispute between those two states over water rights on the Colorado, the Justices awarded the authority to apportion surpluses and shortages from federal reclamation projects to the Department of the Interior. Farm regulations, urban growth policy, industrial development—on these and myriad other issues, any state that depended on water from a federal reservoir henceforth would have to defer to Washington. This was so astonishing an expansion of federal power over the states that the liberal Justice William O. Douglas excoriated the majority for what he labeled "the baldest attempt by judges in modern times to spin their own philosophy into the fabric of the law."

And so Hoover Dam, born in an effort by Southern California farmers and ranchers to bring willful nature under control, became the instrument by which they ceded control over their destinies to a higher governmental authority. A new set of internecine conflicts over water—between cities and farms, big cities and small towns, wet regions and arid zones—would be decided not in the chambers of state capitols and city halls, but in Washington, D.C. That situation continues to this day: For the citizens of the seven states of the Colorado watershed, the most important cabinet appointee in any new administration is not the secretary of defense or state, but the secretary of the interior.

For all that, Franklin Roosevelt envisioned the Boulder Canyon Project in a way that his predecessor Herbert Hoover would have found entirely alien: as a symbol. The dam signified not only man's mastery over nature, Roosevelt observed, but also a people's ability to find greatness by coalescing into a social and economic community.

Roosevelt was fully alive to the totemic significance of what he called "the greatest dam in the world," its elegant machine-like beauty and alabaster majesty. He understood the spell it would cast on every visitor: Hundreds of thousands of visitors had preceded him, peering over the canyon rim during the construction phase at the ant-like workers 700 feet below; afterwards, a million tourists a year would heed his call "to come to Boulder Dam and see it with your own eyes."

Movie companies would set their melodramas against the improbable backdrop of the exploding cliffsides and pouring concrete; novelists would nudge their plots into motion with mysterious events unfolding in the dam's shadows; advertisers would pose their models against its elegant lines; poets would sing of its flawless beauty.

The United States after the construction of Hoover Dam was very different from the United States that built it. The nation was transformed from one that glorified individualism into one that cherished shared enterprise and communal social support. Public construction projects put millions of people to work creating long-lasting community improvements—hospitals, schools, parks and bridges such as New York's Triborough (now Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) and the San Francisco Bay Bridge. From the end of the war to the 1970s, America's economic growth was broad-based and income inequality suppressed, and socially inclusive federal policies such as civil rights, affirmative action and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were enacted with popular, if not unanimous, support.

To be sure, that change was not all the making of the dam itself; Social Security, the Works Progress Administration, and other New Deal programs forged in the crucible of Depression all played an essential role, as did four years of war. But the dam remains the physical embodiment of this great transformation, a remote regional construction project reconfigured into a symbol of national pride.

Michael Hiltzik is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. This essay is adapted from "Colossus: Hoover Dam and the American Century," due out from Free Press in June.

Judge reinstates attempt to protect flat-tailed horned lizard

The ruling follows the 9th Circuit's rejection of a Bush administration policy against listing the reptiles as threatened. The Department of Interior is expected to make a decision by next November.

A flat-tailed Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma mcalli) tries to hide in the dry mustard plants in the Coachella Valley Preserve. (Cameron Barrows)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Chalk one up for the flat-tailed horned lizard.

In the latest round in a 16-year legal battle to keep the squat lizard with dragon-like head spines safe from urban encroachment in its Southern California and Arizona haunts, a federal judge has reinstated a 1993 proposal to list the creature as a threatened species.

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake's ruling earlier this week in Arizona follows a recent U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsider its earlier decision to deny the lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act.

That decision rejected a Bush administration policy that environmentalists said favored development at the expense of the lizard and many plants and animals across the nation.

Since 1993, the agency has withdrawn three proposals to list the lizard on the grounds that it was hard to find and, therefore, difficult to classify as threatened. Each withdrawal was successfully challenged in court by conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Horned Lizard Conservation Society.

In the meantime, the lizard's population has continued to decline in Arizona, California and Baja California largely because its habitats of gravel pans and dunes have been taken over by farming, housing, off-road vehicles, geothermal leases, gravel pits, golf courses, military exercises and border fences between the United States and Mexico.

The Department of the Interior is expected to make a final decision about the status of the flat-tailed horned lizard by November 2010.

"The lizard is certainly as deserving of federal protection today as it was 16 years ago," said attorney Bill Snape, who represented the Center for Biological Diversity in the matter. "Hopefully this is the final chapter in the lizard's long and tortured legal history."

The lizard -- 3 1/2 inches long and a voracious consumer of harvester ants -- once inhabited wide swaths of the Colorado and Sonoran deserts.

Listing the lizard as threatened could potentially affect the ongoing rush to build huge solar energy facilities across the desert flatlands of Southern California, said Allan Muth, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, south of Palm Desert.

"Amid all the applications being submitted to develop solar energy plants, it doesn't look like things will get any better for the flat-tailed horned lizard," Muth said. "If listing the lizard as a threatened species means people will take a little more time to think these things through, that's a good thing."

Anticipating a protection declaration, Stirling Energy Systems plans to mitigate the environmental impact of its proposed Solar II facility on 6,500 acres of flat-tailed horned lizard habitat near the Imperial County city of El Centro by purchasing prime lizard habitat elsewhere and donating it for conservation.

The proposed facility was recently renamed Tessera Solar's Imperial Valley Solar Two by Stirling to reflect the name of its sister company.

Groups seek $2.7 million for fighting power line

Critic calls intervenor claims 'great way to make a living'

By DAVE DOWNEY
North County Times

Opponents of San Diego Gas & Electric Co.'s power line have petitioned the state to compensate them for $2.7 million in costs they say they incurred over three years battling the Sunrise Powerlink ---- costs that would be passed on to utility ratepayers.

The groups were "intervenors" in the Sunrise case under a program that allows opponents to take on a formal role in arguing merits of utility projects before the California Public Utilities Commission, the regulatory body that licenses electric, gas and telephone projects.

The state lets intervenors recoup their costs.

But critics say the reimbursement requests are excessive. And because of the prospect of making big money, they suggest the program encourages groups to routinely oppose utility projects, whether ill-conceived or not.

The intervenors counter that their bills are reasonable. They say their involvement helped hold down costs of the $2 billion transmission line, and prevented it from being built in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and North County.

See highlights of the Sunrise Powerlink intervenor compensation requests

The most prominent intervenor, the San Diego consumer group Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN), asked for $1.2 million to cover fees for attorneys, experts, document preparation and travel from late 2005 through early 2009.

The commission also received requests for:

-- $797,673 from the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.

-- $473,379 from the community group Rancho Penasquitos Concerned Citizens.

-- $257,617 from the Mussey Grade Road Alliance, represented by the husband and wife team of Joseph Mitchell and Diane Conklin of Ramona.

If granted, the consumer group's award would be the largest compensation given to an intervenor since at least 1996, according to commission records. And the environmental groups' compensation would be third-highest since then.

The current record of $866,884 was awarded to The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco consumer group.

At the same time, the San Diego-based utility spent more than $125 million to promote its power line, and those costs will be passed on to ratepayers, said Jennifer Briscoe, a company spokeswoman.

The total includes costs associated with the 11,000-page environmental impact report prepared for the project, the company's legal bills, applications for various permits, and hosting dozens of public meetings and open houses around the region. Briscoe said the company hasn't finished tallying those expenses.

Good intentions

The intervenors billed ratepayers $300 to $480 per hour for attorneys and $75 to $270 an hour for "expert" witnesses.

And they are seeking more than $16,000 to cover the time they spent preparing their compensation claims.

The deadline for submitting claims was last week. SDG&E and the commission staff have until March 25 to file responses to the claims, and commissioners are expected to decide how much the groups will get sometime after that.

The Sunrise Powerlink is a 120-mile, high-voltage line that was given the green light by the state commission in December.

Construction is scheduled to start in 2010. The wires are to be strung from metallic towers up to 150 feet tall through southern San Diego County and southwestern Imperial County. The project was one of the most contentious and heavily studied in California history.

Designed for these types of projects, the state's intervenor program sought to empower small, poorly funded grass-roots organizations to credibly challenge corporate giants in the commission's complicated courtlike proceedings, said Susan Carothers, a commission spokeswoman.

"By hearing from different perspectives, the California PUC is better able to make informed decisions," Carothers said.

But critics say intervenors often take advantage of the program ---- and clearly did so in the Sunrise case.

"I can see how the original intent might have been a positive one," said Lani Lutar, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, in a telephone interview Wednesday. "But it seems to have gone out of control with unintended side effects. It has become an incentive to have these just-say-no nonprofit groups. Groups like UCAN now make it their mission to oppose every utility project that comes forward."

Scott Barnett, a San Diego-area tax watchdog who operates TaxpayersAdvocate.org, said the Sunrise reimbursement requests are unreasonably high.

"It seems like quite a racket to me," he said. "I need to get into the intervenor business, I think. It's a great way to make a living."

Both taxpayer groups favored the line.

Michael Shames, executive director for the Utility Consumers' Action Network, insisted his group does not routinely oppose projects for the sake of boosting coffers with intervenor-compensation dollars.

And he disagreed the program gives the wrong incentive.

"Intervenors don't earn even one dollar unless our opposition is sound, credible and effective," Shames said by e-mail. "The economic incentive is for us to be effective, not for us to just oppose."

The commission's Web site tells intervenors this: "You may request compensation for the time and expenses you incurred to participate in the proceeding as long as your participation made a 'substantial contribution' to the outcome of the proceeding."

Shames said his personal hourly rate of $330 and his group's $1.2 million claim is justified.

"Why is that appropriate? Because SDG&E made us do a tremendous amount of work ---- they filed the equivalent of three different applications with continuous modifications throughout," he said. "We spent the better part of three years in extensive litigation and totally disproved and discredited SDG&E's representations about the economic benefits of the line and the need to route it through Anza-Borrego."

Years of fighting

The battle aside, Barnett and Lutar, the taxpayer advocates, charged the four intervenors duplicated much of the work of the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, the arm of the commission responsible for representing ratepayer interests.

"It seems like we're paying twice for the, quote, independent perspective," said Andrew Poat, vice president of public policy for the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. and a backer of Sunrise Powerlink.

Scott Logan, a regulatory analyst for the division who handled the Sunrise case, said there was little duplication.

"We look at it as both a complement and supplement to DRA's work," Logan said.

Because the commission frowns on repetition, the intervenors ---- in their claims ---- stressed the unique accomplishments they say they made.

The consumer group said it held down project costs, the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity said they shaped the environmental report and kept the line out of Anza-Borrego, and the Ramona group said it secured extra measures to prevent wires from starting wildfires.

Harvey Payne, an attorney for Rancho Penasquitos Concerned Citizens, said his group persuaded SDG&E to scrap the last 15 miles of the power line, sparing neighborhoods in Rancho Penasquitos and Carmel Valley.

And Payne maintains his group's request for almost a half-million dollars is justified.

"This was three years of constantly fighting SDG&E," he said. "This was approximately 1,000 hours of time over three years for me. This was my expert's time over three years. But, most importantly, we are saving the ratepayers at least $72 million."

Payne hired a retired transmission engineer for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., William Stephenson, to provide expertise.

When it came to intervenor costs, the environmental groups submitted the highest hourly rate: $480. That was to cover work by San Diego attorney Steven Siegel, whom they hired for their Sunrise opposition campaign.

Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, said the $480-per-hour rate is "perfectly reasonable."

The commission's allowable range for attorney compensation is $150 to $535 per hour.

"He is a very experienced senior attorney, so we billed him out at a higher rate," Suckling said. "We feel like our success in the case came from having a senior attorney. Steve did a great job for us."

The environmental groups also are seeking $70 to $150 an hour for experts who provided information about endangered animals, such as the desert bighorn sheep that roams Anza-Borrego, and native plants.

Likewise, Conklin, of the Ramona group, defended her group's $257,617 bill.

"We were totally consumed by this," Conklin said. "We worked incredible hours. We didn't bill for all those hours. It sounds like a lot ---- a quarter of a million dollars ---- but we tried to be as reasonable as possible."

Why Aren't More Geothermal Projects Moving Forward in California?

Drilling rig under contract at the Truckhaven geothermal project in northwestern
Imperial County. (photo: David Baker, San Francisco Chronicle)

by Karl Gawell
Geothermal Energy Association
Geothermal energy produces more power in California than wind and solar combined, comprising almost 5% of the state's electricity. As the state moves forward, it will need significant new production from geothermal and other renewable technologies to meet the aggressive climate change goals set by the governor and the legislature. While there is a lot of pressure to accelerate production and a host of federal and state initiatives proposing to help, we need to make sure they are addressing all of the critical hurdles.

When I asked the question at a recent industry meeting, "Why aren't more projects moving forward in California?" the response was rather quick and direct. While I could have expected a discussion of investment problems, the slow economy, or the need to develop new technology, what I was told was: leases and permits are simply not being issued.

Here's one example I was given: a lease that won with a very substantial bid from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) almost two years ago was still waiting for a drilling permit to be issued. This particular lease is not in a pristine area, but to the contrary, it is almost totally within an existing geothermal field.

Another example was the continued delays in decision-making at one geothermal site due to off-road vehicle users. Despite completion of a full EIS, development at one new site in Southern California, known as Truckhaven, is not proceeding because leases have yet to be issued, let alone subsequent permits approved. The problem is opposition to the project from recreational off-road vehicle users who like to drive their four-wheel-drive vehicles around the area. The project is delayed while the BLM seeks to assuage their concerns.

While these two examples might just seem to be the kind of problems endemic to working on public lands, they are just the tip of the iceberg. In a state where federal and state lands play a significant role, most of the public lands have effectively been off limits for decades because the land-use plans of federal agencies simply didn't consider geothermal energy when they were prepared.

Before a lease can be issued on public lands the land-use plan for the area has to have adequately considered geothermal leasing and made a decision that the lands could be open to leasing. Also, the land-use plan has to have an adequate and up-to-date environmental analysis (EA or EIS) supporting it. Because BLM (and the FS) simply have not done their homework in the land-use plans prepared over the past 25 years, most areas in California have been de facto closed to geothermal leasing and development.

That is why in 2007 and 2008 the BLM and Forest Service prepared a Programmatic Geothermal EIS (PGEIS) to address this history of neglect. Now, as part of their Record of Decision (ROD) on this document, the Department of the Interior is amending plans in California and other western states to either allow leasing or close lands to leasing on the basis of the results of their analysis. For California, the ROD proposes to amend land-use plans in 11 California BLM planning areas to open 10 million acres to possible geothermal leasing. At the same time, the ROD will close 5 million acres in these 11 BLM planning areas to geothermal leasing.

If someone cannot obtain a lease to develop a geothermal project, there is simply no incentive to explore for or develop new resources. Now, the BLM has in place the plans and environmental documents necessary to make a decision if someone nominates BLM lands for competitive leasing. But for the past two decades, 10 million acres of public land in California with geothermal potential were off-limits due to bureaucratic oversight.

This is a lot of land and the PGEIS analysis indicated that a lot of it does have geothermal potential. Today, there are only about 50,000 acres of federal geothermal leases in production nationwide which support about 1200 MW of power capacity. So, how much geothermal potential might there be on these 10 million acres?

Let's do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation; if ten percent of the land now open to leasing is eventually developed at the same proportion to existing leased acreage, geothermal production would increase 2000%. This is just from the lands in California — the PGEIS also made decisions for 11 other western states. And, while that sounds like a lot of land to develop, geothermal power has one of the smallest footprints of any energy technology. Only a small fraction of each lease is actually utilized for power production.

Let's get back to the question we started with: why aren't more geothermal projects moving forward in California and what needs to be done about it?

Congress and the new administration have set some high goals for expanding renewable energy production, including geothermal energy. Don't get me wrong, I think making an investment in new technology is vitally important. We need that investment. It's also exciting to see the emphasis on providing effective incentives for doubling or tripling renewable power production over the next three years. The rollercoaster of federal and state policies supporting renewable energy has unquestionably been part of the problem.

But we also need to address the bureaucratic hurdles that could stand in the way of achieving this goal. Timely decisions regarding leasing and permitting must not be ignored — they are fundamental to achieving expanded geothermal energy production in California and the West. Sometimes when I am asked what the hurdles are to moving geothermal and other renewable production forward, I feel like invoking the wisdom of the comic strip character, Pogo, who would often remark: "We have met the enemy, and them is us."

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.

Battle over desert power line escalates

An environmental group asks the state Supreme Court to review PUC approval of the project.

By Marla Dickerson
Los Angeles Times

An environmental group has asked the California Supreme Court to review a controversial power transmission project that was approved last month by the state Public Utilities Commission.

The petition filed late Wednesday by the Center for Biological Diversity alleges that the commission violated California law by failing to ensure that the proposed Sunrise Powerlink would be used principally to carry renewable energy and by rejecting alternative routes that would have avoided fragile wilderness areas. The group wants the court to void the decision and order the PUC to reconsider the proposal.

"Sunrise . . . would sacrifice sensitive public lands and vital habitat without any guarantee the line will be used to deliver clean energy," said Ileene Anderson, Los Angeles spokeswoman for the group.

The center also plans to ask the PUC for a rehearing on the $1.9-billion project, which it contends is unnecessary and too costly, Anderson said.

Wednesday's filing, which was expected, is just the latest development in a lengthy dispute over Sunrise. Proposed by San Diego Gas & Electric, the $1.9-billion ratepayer-financed transmission line is slated to run 123 miles from Imperial County to San Diego, crossing remote areas of the San Diego backcountry and the Cleveland National Forest.

SDG&E said the line was necessary for it to meet state mandates to boost its use of renewable power by ensuring there is enough transmission capacity available to get energy from remote wind, solar and geothermal projects to urban areas where it's needed.

Opponents say it's a costly boondoggle that will destroy unique desert habitat while allowing SDG&E to transport fossil fuel-generated electricity through the lines. They contend that funds would be better spent developing urban solar projects that use existing transmission infrastructure.

PUC spokeswoman Terrie Prosper said she couldn't comment on a pending appeal of a decision. The court can take as long as it wants to decide whether it will hear the petition.

Desert power line gets OK

The ratepayer-funded electrical transmission project aims to boost the use of clean sources.

By Marc Lifsher
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Sacramento -- Regulators gave a San Diego utility the go-ahead Thursday to build a $1.9-billion transmission line that it says is needed to move nonpolluting geothermal, wind and solar power from inland deserts to energy-hungry coastal cities.

The California Public Utilities Commission, meeting in San Francisco, voted 4-1 to approve a proposed decision by President Michael Peevey to allow San Diego Gas & Electric Co. to use ratepayer funds to string 123 miles of new high-voltage lines. Massive steel towers would carry the electricity from Imperial County through environmentally sensitive areas of the San Diego County backcountry and the Cleveland National Forest.

The commission's lone dissenter, Dian Grueneich, couldn't persuade her colleagues to support an alternative decision. It would have authorized the line, known as the Sunrise Powerlink, but only if SDG&E, a unit of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, complied with strict requirements that it be filled with electrons from "green" sources.

Once operational, the line will play "a critical role in California's efforts to achieve energy independence" and help the state meet its goal to generate a third of its power from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2020, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said.

Developers, who want to invest millions of dollars in power plants to generate alternative energy, say they won't be able to secure financing without a commitment from the state that the line will be available to carry their electricity to market.


The Sunrise plan, which has been before the commission for three years, has solid backing from state, local and ethnic chambers of commerce, many San Diego County governments and labor unions. But it has garnered equally strong opposition from environmental groups, consumer advocates and rural communities that lie along the line's path, roughly paralleling the U.S.-Mexico border.

Opponents, who denounce Sunrise as too costly and unneeded, vow to file lawsuits challenging the Public Utility Commission's decision.

"The commissioners issued a $2-billion, politically driven decision today that disregarded the facts," said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers Action Network. "It will be up to the appellate courts to force the PUC to face the facts that make the Sunrise project a whopping Christmas present for Sempra but a lump of coal for all of the state's ratepayers."

Other Sunrise foes said the commission's decision could have been worse for the environment if SDG&E's initial power line route had been approved. The utility originally wanted to run the line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a vast preserve that spans portions of Riverside, San Diego and Imperial counties, considered a jewel of the California system.

In the face of criticism from the Sierra Club and the California Parks Foundation, SDG&E recently dropped the Anza-Borrego route and embraced a more costly path farther south.

In October, the utility came out on the losing end of an administrative law judge's proposed decision that the line wasn't needed to satisfy San Diego County's short-term power requirements.

Commissioner Grueneich, a veteran environmental activist, offered SDG&E a compromise: The company could build on the southern route if it could provide the PUC with a firm, legal commitment that the line's 1,000 megawatts of capacity would be filled completely with energy from renewable, nonpolluting sources.

Grueneich said she feared that the company would use Sunrise to carry electricity produced by coal or natural-gas-fired power plants in other states or nearby Baja California, Mexico.

Both SDG&E and Peevey, who authored his own, ultimately successful proposed decision, countered that Grueneich's conditions could prove too burdensome to the utility and its alternative energy suppliers.

The commission, Peevey said, would monitor SDG&E to make sure it lives up to a nonbinding promise to send no coal-based electricity through the Sunrise line. The company also said it would meet the state's 33% alternative energy goal by the 2020 deadline.

"I fully expect the company to follow through on its commitments," Peevey said.

But SDG&E's word wasn't good enough for Grueneich.

"We have an obligation to ensure that San Diego Gas & Electric's ratepayers and not just its shareholders see a return on their investment," she said.

"I am not willing to risk $2 billion in ratepayer money to the invisible hand of the market."

Debate over Sunrise Powerlink may be near decision

Transmission lines near Boulevard in San Diego County. Many area residents have criticized a utility’s plan to erect what it calls a superhighway for green electricity as it tries to meet its renewable energy commitment.Sean Masterson / For The Times

The California Utilities Commission is scheduled to vote on the renewable energy transmission project, opposed by some environmentalists.

By Marla Dickerson and Marc Lifsher
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Sacramento and Calipatria, Calif. -- In the rural, arid flatlands near the Salton Sea, CalEnergy Generation is sitting on what California needs.

The Imperial County company taps steam heat from deep within the Earth's crust to generate clean electricity, enough to light 238,000 homes.

There's more where that came from. But whether further development of renewable energy ever happens at this Calipatria operation and dozens of proposed projects in California's hinterlands may depend on what goes on in San Francisco, maybe as soon as today.

The California Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to vote on a controversial transmission project known as the Sunrise Powerlink. The $1.9-billion high-voltage line would stretch more than 100 miles from Imperial County to San Diego, linking power plants in the desert to coastal cities hungry for their energy.

Billed by its developer, San Diego Gas & Electric Co., as a superhighway for green electricity, the project has drawn fierce opposition from environmental and community groups that don't want Godzilla-sized power towers marring the region's scenic wild areas.

The bruising four-year battle has exposed one of the dirty little secrets of clean energy: A lot of this new-age power requires old-school infrastructure to get to people's homes.

"You can't love renewables and hate transmission. They go together," said Jonathan Weisgall, a vice president of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., which owns CalEnergy.

SDG&E, a unit of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, says it needs the line to meet tough state mandates to boost its use of green energy. Existing transmission, company executives contend, can't possibly accommodate all the wind, solar and geothermal projects needed in coming decades.

Opponents say clean power is a cover for SDG&E to use Sunrise to transport low-cost, polluting electricity from Mexico, where Sempra has invested heavily in natural gas and power-plant assets.

Activists also say Sunrise will fleece ratepayers, destroy sensitive desert habitat and increase the risk of deadly blazes in one of the state's most fire-prone areas. Far better, they say, to upgrade California's existing transmission network, encourage energy conservation and build clean generation closer to California's cities.

"This isn't about protecting the planet. It's about money," said Donna Tisdale, a rancher and community activist in eastern San Diego County. "This is the industrialization of rural America."

A creaky grid

California isn't alone in this power struggle.

Concern is rising about the inability of the antiquated U.S. power grid to keep pace with the nation's growing demand for electricity. Congestion -- essentially electricity traffic jams -- bedevils existing transmission corridors across the country. Renewable sources such as wind and utility-scale solar thermal plants are adding to the bottleneck.

The U.S. Department of Energy has identified Southern California and the New York-to-Washington corridor as the nation's most critically power-congested areas. Officials say more transmission should be built and warn of the increasing risk of blackouts if it isn't.

California is in a particularly tight spot. State law requires investor-owned utilities to procure 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010. That's set to increase to 33% by 2020, thanks to sweeping new rules that require California to slash its greenhouse gas emissions.

At present, less than 12% of the state's electricity comes from renewables. Utilities are counting on large-scale solar plants, wind farms and geothermal operations to help them meet their targets.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger actively supports these projects as well as new transmission to accompany them. He wrote utility regulators Tuesday endorsing the Sunrise line, saying, "This project is a vital link in California's renewable energy future and must be approved as soon as possible."

Critics say spending billions on distant power plants and hulking transmission lines is a throwback to another era, the equivalent of betting the farm on an Escalade instead of a Prius. The true promise of green electricity, said San Diego environmentalist Terry Weiner, lies not only in switching to clean sources but also in changing the way energy is delivered.

She said massive investment in rooftop solar panels in California's cities could bring hundreds of clean megawatts online quickly without damaging precious wilderness habitat.

"San Diego doesn't need to import sunshine from the desert," said Weiner, conservation coordinator for the San Diego-based Desert Protective Council.

Environmentalists have won some rounds. SDG&E had been pushing to build Sunrise through the heart of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a recreational jewel beloved by hikers and campers. That 150-mile route appears doomed after recent decisions by an administrative law judge and a utilities commission member.

Judge Jean Veith wants the commission to reject the Sunrise Powerlink because she has concluded it's too costly, too harmful to the environment and not needed for SDG&E to meet clean-energy mandates.

Commissioner Dian Grueneich favors an alternate 120-mile route along the Mexico border, provided that SDG&E agrees to deliver a "substantial" amount of clean energy on the line.

The utility objected, complaining that continued regulatory wrangling would slow construction and discourage the development of renewables. The company promised to allow no power from coal-fired generation on the line if the commission would give it a timely approval.

"I think it's ready for a decision," said Mike Niggli, SDG&E's chief operating officer. "There have been tens of thousands of pages of documents."

A need to plan

The likelihood of approval increased markedly a few weeks ago, when commission President Michael Peevey issued his own proposed alternative decision mandating the same route Grueneich did but without her restrictions. It would "clear the way for a new renewable energy superhighway, allowing us to tap into the Imperial Valley's rich renewable resources without delay or unnecessary barriers," Peevey said.

Whether Sunrise is greenlighted and with what conditions will send important signals to companies hoping to develop more geothermal, solar and wind energy in California's desert regions.

Building transmission gives renewable-energy companies the certainty they say they need to market electricity. Access to transmission allows them to sign long-term delivery contracts with utilities and line up financing to build new power plants.

But financial uncertainty could make it impossible to fulfill contracts with both SDG&E and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to supply up to 1,700 megawatts of power, said Steve Cowman, chief executive of Stirling Energy Systems Inc., a Phoenix solar power company.

Californians need to find a balance between protecting environmentally sensitive areas and building transmission lines, said Paul Thomsen, director of policy and business development for Ormat Technologies Inc., a Reno geothermal company.

"You really start to back yourself into a corner," Thomsen said, "if you don't want to live next to a power plant, and you don't want transmission and don't want fossil fuels."