L.A. took their water and land a century ago. Now the Owens Valley is fighting back

The Los Angeles Aqueduct, which transports water from the Owens Valley to Los Angeles, was built in the early 1900s. (Los Angeles Times)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

BISHOP, CALIF. -- A century ago, agents from Los Angeles converged on the Owens Valley on a secret mission.

They figured out who owned water rights in the lush valley and began quietly purchasing land, posing as ranchers and farmers.

Soon, residents of the Eastern Sierra realized much of the water rights were now owned by Los Angeles interests. L.A. proceeded to drain the valley, taking the water via a great aqueduct to fuel the metropolis’ explosive growth.

This scheme became an essential piece of California history and the subject of the classic 1974 film “Chinatown.” In the Owens Valley, it is still known as the original sin that sparked decades of hatred for Los Angeles as the valley dried up and ranchers and farmers struggled to make a living.

But now, the Owens Valley is trying to rectify this dark moment in its history.

Officials have launched eminent domain proceedings in an effort to take property acquired by Los Angeles in the early 1900s.

Owens Valley wants to reclaim its history

It is the first time Inyo County has used eminent domain rules against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns 25% of the Owens Valley floor, officials said Wednesday.

Unlike previous battles with the DWP that focused on the environmental and economic damage caused by L.A.'s pumping of local water supplies, the county seeks to pay fair market value for property and water rights needed for landfills, parks, commerce and ranchlands along a 112-mile stretch of Highway 395 east of the Sierra Nevada.

“We’re using a hammer the DWP has never seen before in Owens Valley,” Inyo County Supervisor Rick Pucci said. “Our goal is the future health and safety of our communities.”

The move comes after years of efforts by Los Angeles to make amends for taking the region’s land and water. In 2013, for instance, the city agreed to fast-track measures to control toxic dust storms that have blown across the eastern Sierra Nevada since L.A. opened the aqueduct a century ago that drained Owens Lake.

As a gesture of conciliation, the city a year ago erected a $4.6-million monument of granite and sculpted earth that now rises from a dry bed of Owens Lake. It features a public plaza with curved granite walls inspired by the wing shapes of shorebirds. Sculptures of earth and rock have been made to resemble whitecaps like those that graced the lake’s surface before it was transformed into a noxious dust bowl.

L.A. concerns about giving back land

But in Owens Valley, Angelenos bearing gifts have always elicited skepticism, and occasionally sparked eruptions of violence. The aqueduct was dynamited repeatedly after increased pumping exacerbated a drought during the 1920s that laid waste to local farms and businesses.

Inyo County officials see their effort to take back DWP land as an important step in taking back local control.

That worries DWP officials, who acknowledged they were caught off guard by the action.

“This is brand new. It could be a slippery slope and where it would lead us I don’t know,” Marty Adams, chief operating officer at the agency, said. “The county also wants the water rights on certain properties, which could have a cascading effect. We’re very concerned about that.”

The Inyo County Board of Supervisors directed its staff to study the use of eminent domain after the DWP a year ago proposed a fourfold rent increase of more than $20,000 annually at a landfill in Bishop operated by the county on land it has leased from the DWP for decades, Rick Benson, assistant county administrator, said.

The proposed lease included a clause allowing the DWP to terminate the agreement for any reason with a 180-day notice, he said.

After months of heated negotiations, the county approved the new three-year lease agreement in January because, Benson said: “We had no choice.”

“We’re mandated by the state to provide environmentally sound means of disposal,” he said. “But the cost of abandoning that landfill and building and certifying a new one elsewhere would be astronomical.”

Beyond that, he said, the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery refused to renew an operating permit for the landfill until a new lease was in place on the property.

Valley towns struggling to survive

In March, Inyo County Administrator Kevin Carunchio notified the DWP of the county’s decision to condemn that landfill site and two others in the towns of Independence and Lone Pine. That would set in motion legal proceedings that could lead to its taking ownership from the DWP.

A county appraisal concluded a fair market value for the total 200 acres of $522,000, county officials said. On Monday, the DWP declined that offer, saying it had yet to complete its own appraisals.

Some officials are already raising the possibility of mounting crowd-sourcing campaigns to fund additional acquisitions of DWP land for public benefit.

“The county would obviously like more economic opportunities,” the DWP’s Adams said, “and we support that.”

In the meantime, Owens Valley towns — including Big Pine, Independence, Lone Pine and Olancha — struggle to survive, with most of their developable land and water rights controlled by the DWP.

In 1997, the DWP agreed to relinquish 75 acres in the Owens Valley for residential and commercial uses, and the county amended its General Plan to ensure that land exchanges did not result in a net loss of tax base or revenues. Since then, county officials say, lots on only a fraction of that acreage have changed hands because the DWP has tended to set minimum bids far above market value.

In 2009, a group of Owens Valley residents sent a petition to then-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles City Council urging them to force the DWP to compensate for the loss of private land it planned to buy in the region by releasing an equal amount of its own holdings elsewhere. The city never responded, according to activists who helped write the petition.

The DWP has spent more than $1 billion to comply with a 1997 agreement with the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District to combat the powder-fine dust from the dry 110-square-mile Owens Lake bed.

Separately, after decades of political bickering and a bruising court fight, the DWP directed water back into a 62-mile-long stretch of the Lower Owens River that had been left essentially dry after its flows of Sierra snowmelt were diverted to the Los Angeles Aqueduct. But it later balked at removing thick stands of reeds that swiftly choked the renewed river.

The DWP caused an uproar during the drought in 2015 when it gave ranchers 48 hours’ notice of its intention to reduce their irrigation water from the usual 49,000 acre-feet a year to 20,500 acre-feet a year. The agency abandoned the deadline after Inyo County threatened to seek an injunction to stop what it claimed was a violation of long-term water agreements that would devastate the local economy.

Some itching for a fight with L.A.

Farming and ranching generate $20 million a year in rural Inyo County, second only to tourism, officials said.

Jenifer Castaneda, a Lone Pine real estate broker and community activist, had one word to say about the county’s use of eminent domain: “Awesome.”

Castaneda said she only hopes local leaders are ready for a long fight and that they don’t “cave when Los Angeles dangles some kind of big fat carrot in front of their noses."

LADWP scrambling to prepare dusty Owens Valley for possible floods

Overflow from the Owens River creates a mirror pond near Bishop reflecting the snow-capped Sierras. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

by Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Lone Pine, Calif. -- As snow continued to fall on the eastern Sierra Nevada on Monday, platoons of earth movers, cranes and utility trucks fanned out across the Owens Valley, scrambling to empty reservoirs and clean out a lattice-work of ditches and pipelines in a frantic effort to protect the key source of Los Angeles’ water.

With snowpack levels at 241% of normal, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti a week ago issued an emergency declaration allowing the Department of Water and Power to take immediate steps to shore up the aqueduct and its $1-billion dust-control project on dry Owens Lake, which L.A. drained to slake its thirst in the last century.

DWP activities have always elicited concern in the Owens Valley, given the history of a water war that began when Los Angeles agents posed as ranchers and farmers to buy land and water rights in the area. Their goal was to build the aqueduct system to meet the needs of the growing metropolis 200 miles to the south.

The stealth used to obtain the region’s land and water rights became grist for books and movies that portrayed the dark underbelly of Los Angeles’ formative years, and inspired deep-seated suspicions about the city’s motives that linger to this day.

Officials insist that the current emergency poses a real threat not just to urban Los Angeles’ residents, but to the ranchers, farmers, outdoor enthusiasts and small-business owners living in the sage-scented high desert gap between the fang-like peaks, some taller than 14,000 feet, of the Sierra Nevada to west and the White and Inyo ranges to the east.

“Conditions of extreme peril” threaten residents and ecosystems, Garcetti said. The 1 million acre-feet of water expected to flow through the century-old aqueduct system this spring and summer could possibly overflow the web of concrete channels, spilling into fields, homes and businesses.

The danger of destructive flooding and the utility’s responses to it are raising tensions between Los Angeles and the Owens Valley towns along a 110-mile stretch of U.S. 395 in a rural region defined by water wars since the early 1900s.

The crews swarming the valley are focused on protecting DWP infrastructure and U.S. 395, the principle route between Southern California and eastern resort areas, leaving some townsfolk fretting they are being overlooked.

The emergency is already taking toll on the tourism industry in a stunning landscape of snow-capped peaks, cascading streams, dormant volcanoes, small towns and sage plains dotted with irrigated pastures — most of them leased from the DWP.

The Bishop Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau, for example, was forced to cancel the 50th annual Blake Jones Trout Derby scheduled for March 11 after the DWP rescinded its permission to hold the event because of dangerously high waters spilling over the banks of the Owens River, just north of town.

“Losing the derby was a $300,000 hit to the local economy,” said Tawni Thompson, director of the chamber. “We’ll never know how many vacationers decided not to come through Bishop because they were scared of dying in a flood.”

“I’m going to declare a state of emergency,” she added, “if our tourism industry goes down the toilet.”

Bernadette Johnson, superintendent of the Manzanar National Historic Site on U.S. 395, has been getting nowhere with requests for additional flood control measures along streams on DWP land just outside the boundaries of the location that was a Japanese American internment camp during World War II.

“We were hit by destructive flooding earlier this year, and in 2013 and 2014,” Johnson said. “But the DWP is saying that when all hell breaks loose they won’t have enough resources and manpower to help us. We have to wonder about their priorities.”

In long legal battles spanning decades, the DWP was eventually forced to give up significant amounts of water to steady water levels in Mono Lake, re-water parts of dry Owens Lake to help prevent dust storms and restore a 62-mile stretch of the Lower Owens River.

Many residents suspect that the DWP plans to use emergency declarations to bypass rules and regulations that have prevented it in the past from constructing paved roads, for example, on Owens Lake, which is owned by the State Lands Commission.

Richard Harasick, head of the DWP’s water system, dismissed that notion: “The department is not using this emergency declaration to take some sort of advantage or build special projects that would otherwise have to go through the normal regulatory process.”

“It is as much to help us manage the anticipated floodwaters as to aid in public safety,” he said. “It allows us to get goods, services and contracts faster, from heavy equipment to riprap needed to shore up banks and channels.”

This week, Inyo, Kern and Mono counties were expected to issue their own emergency declarations, making them eligible for state and federal assistance in the event of flooding.

“My proclamation will ask for critical resources,” Inyo County Administrator Kevin Carunchio said. “In the meantime, I want every DWP facility, ditch, diversion bypass, canal and conveyance structure available and operating as soon as possible.”

The region has a history of destructive floodwaters rushing off the High Sierra.

In August 1989, for example, cloudbursts driven by 60-mph winds gouged out the underpinnings of the aqueduct near Cartago and closed a 63-mile stretch of U.S. 395.

Jon Klusmire, administrator of the Eastern California Museum in Independence, isn’t taking any chances with the little institution located along a usually docile creek.

“I’ve devised a survival strategy for a worst-case scenario,” he said. “I’m going to jam some boards in a nearby DWP diversion gate, then dig a ditch to divert the water away from the museum and into the streets.”

The big question for Kathy Jefferson Bancroft, tribal historic preservation officer for the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation, is this: “How could it be that Los Angeles never developed a plan B in a place where massive snowpack and destructive flooding go with the terrain?”

Standing on a berm overlooking on the plots of vegetation, gravel and shallow flooding the DWP has constructed across 50 square miles of dry lake bed over the past 20 years, Bancroft said, “They’ve reduced dust pollution here by 96% with these projects, and they’re all going to be underwater soon.

“Honestly, I’m looking forward to seeing this lake filled up again, like it is supposed to be,” she said.

That vista will be short-lived. The runoff is expected to evaporate within 12 to 18 months, leaving behind an already existing repair job for dust abatement and system improvements expected to cost up to $500 million, officials said.

The rebuilding effort will be done in cooperation with state and federal regulatory agencies, local authorities and stakeholders, the State Lands Commission, which owns the lake bed, and the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, which is responsible for protecting the health of Owens Valley residents.

“When we’re done, it’ll be something different than what exists today,” Harasick said. “That’s because we plan to make it more flood-resilient.”

Infamous water heist -- and hubris -- reap poison whirlwind

Winds whip dust off the dry 110-square mile Owens Lake bed during a March 2010 storm. The lake, the site of Los Angeles’ infamous water grab at the turn of the 20th century, was home to the country’s worst particle air pollution until extensive control measures were installed. Photo courtesy of Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District.

Jeremy P. Jacobs
Greenwire

INYO COUNTY, Calif. -- America's first water war was fought here in the early 1900s, sparked by a Los Angeles sneak attack on the Owens River.

When it ended, the booming metropolis had slurped up the water, Owens Lake was a poisoned salt flat and Owens Valley residents were choking in thick clouds of toxic dust.

The Owens Lake story is a cautionary tale for the West, where cities, farms and endangered fish are battling over water supplies threatened by a warming climate and historic drought. There are at least a half-dozen salt lakes -- including Utah's iconic Great Salt Lake -- being strangled by arid conditions and rising demands for fresh water.

Scientists call the lakes "terminal" because they are found at the end of river systems, but the term could also be a diagnosis.

The lakes are dying.

"They are all threatened in one way or another," said David Herbst, a biologist with the University of California's Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory. "It's well taken that climate change and drought -- their coupling -- is going to have a large effect. But diversions for agriculture, for urban uses -- that's the reason that water is taken away."

What's left after the fresh water vanishes is deadly to people and wildlife. Rivers sweep into the lakes sodium and chloride and farm contaminants -- selenium, pesticides, mercury and arsenic. So when fresh water stops flowing, the existing water evaporates, leaving behind salty plains of toxic dust. For public health, the impacts are severe. Imagine dust bowls where you can't see 20 feet in front of you and need a respirator to breathe.

Some of these lakes, like Winnemucca in Nevada and Sevier in Utah, are already gone. Others are in grave danger.

The Great Salt Lake is fouling the air near Utah population centers, yet the state is weighing a new diversion project that would reduce freshwater flows, exposing more of its lake bed and likely increasing toxic dust, local experts say.

The Salton Sea, California's largest lake, will see water flows drop dramatically in the next year under a complicated state-backed agreement that transferred water from the farms near the lake to San Diego. Without dust controls, scientists say, a public health catastrophe looms for 600,000 people who live near the lake -- and for people as far away as Los Angeles or Phoenix who might find themselves in poison dust clouds.

Even Mono Lake, the focus of a landmark California Supreme Court case and one of the West's most protected lakes, appears headed toward crisis.

Michael Rosen of the U.S. Geological Survey said the destruction of the lakes was a blatant disregard of nature.

"Once the water gets there, it is no longer useful for humans," Rosen said. "So if we can divert the water before it becomes unusable, that's a beneficial thing. That's the way it was historically looked at."

Put another way, allowing water to flow into these lakes has not been considered "reasonable and beneficial," a mandate that appears in the state constitutions in the West. There is no law or clear regulatory framework to protect the lakes. Instead, there are a variety of competing interests, industries, agencies, municipalities and states all vying for their increasingly depleted inflows.

By the 1920s, Owens Lake -- which once sprawled over 110 square miles and teemed with wildlife -- had become a dangerous source of air pollution. Winds whipping through the valley at up to 60 miles an hour stirred up dense clouds of cancer-causing dust and salt.

Los Angeles has been forced to spend some $2 billion to engineer a dramatic pollution fix deemed by some here one of the great engineering fixes of the 21st century. The hardscrabble project is a patchwork of dust-smothering techniques, including gravel, flooded ponds and rows of planted vegetation that cover nearly 50 square miles -- an area more than twice the size of Manhattan.

"I think Owens Lake may someday be the ninth Wonder of the World," said Phillip Kiddoo, the head of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, which enforces federal air pollution regulations. "Everyone said it can't be done, it's too big a problem. But we're proving everyone wrong."

Owens Lake brings into sharp relief the ramifications of letting lakes go dry. It also underscores what it takes to fix a lake's air pollution problems, and managers from lakes around the world are looking to Owens Lake for solutions.

Without greater protections, Herbst said, these lakes are "screwed."

'Moses'

Owens Lake, a remnant of a much larger water body that formed during the last ice age, is nestled between the Sierra Nevada and the Inyo Mountains.

With peaks reaching more than 14,000 feet, the mountain ranges form the Owens Valley -- 75 miles long and 10 to 20 miles wide.

The lake is fed by the Owens River, the only major river east of the Sierra Nevada. The Owens begins near Yosemite in Mono County, then heads south more than 100 miles to the lake. In high-water years, the river carries hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or around enough for a family of four for a year in Los Angeles.

As the 20th century dawned, the new Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, DWP, led by Chief Engineer William Mulholland discovered the lake.

William Mulholland. - Wikipedia.

Mulholland -- a smart, brash and arrogant Irish immigrant -- had his eyes fixed on using that water to build an empire.

By 1904, DWP concluded it lacked enough water to serve a population that was doubling every four years and was gripped by drought.

What followed was a plot to pipe the Owens River to Los Angeles -- even though the two were separated by more than 200 miles, a mountain range and a desert.

Mulholland would not be deterred.

His department used tricks like flushing all the water from Los Angeles reservoirs into the ocean at night in order to make the drought appear more severe and garner support for a bond measure to fund the project. And his agents shielded their identities, posing as farmers looking to buy land.

The caper became the basis of Roman Polanski's celebrated 1974 film, "Chinatown," and was described in colorful detail in Marc Reisner's 1986 account of Western water management, "Cadillac Desert."

"Los Angeles employed chicanery, subterfuge, spies, bribery, a campaign of divide-and-conquer, and a strategy of lies to get the water it needed," Reisner wrote. "In the end, it mined the valley bone-dry, impoverishing it, while the water made a number of prominent Los Angeleans very, very rich. There are those who would argue that if all of this was legal, then something is the matter with the law."

Mulholland's department bought nearly the entire valley -- more than 300,000 acres -- for groundwater and water rights. By 1913, it had captured all the streams of the Owens River. And within a few years, Owens Lake had dried up.

The aqueduct and pipeline to transport the water to Los Angeles took six years to build across the Mojave Desert. At 223 miles, including more than 50 miles of tunnels, it was the world's longest aqueduct and the largest single water project on Earth.

Owens Valley farmers fought fiercely, using dynamite to blow up large swaths of Mulholland's aqueduct several times in the 1920s.

But by the 1930s, DWP owned about 95 percent of the farmland in the valley and 85 percent of town property.

And still Los Angeles needed more water. By 1970, a second aqueduct was constructed that the city used to begin pumping groundwater, which further dried up the land and water that fed Owens Lake.

Mulholland became a legend.

"[I]nstead of leading his people through the waters to the promised land, he would cleave the desert and lead the promised waters to them," Reisner wrote. "To a thirsty city, he was Moses."

Raining lawsuits

Ted Schade came to Owens Valley to clean up Mulholland's mess.

Schade (pronounced "shady"), a 58-year-old civil engineer with short gray hair, blue eyes and a love of motorcycles, grew up in Southern California and frequently camped in the eastern Sierra as a child.

After a trip in the Owens Valley with his wife, he picked up a local newspaper with a job ad seeking an engineer to study "fugitive dust."

"I thought fugitive dust was the dust that escaped convicts made," Schade joked.

The posting was the beginning of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District's attempt to tackle the nation's worst dust pollution. Since the lake bed dried up in the 1920s, nothing had been done to control salt and other coarse particles that are picked up by the valley's strong winds -- despite numerous complaints from locals suffering from respiratory ailments.

The tide began turning in Owens Valley's favor in the late 1970s when the military got involved, Schade said.

Just south of Owens Lake, the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake is the Navy's largest test facility for missiles and other weapons. Tests there require specialized cameras -- and clear views. So the Navy had grown weary of canceling tests in frequent dust storms.

And then Congress acted. In 1987 and 1990, lawmakers amended the Clean Air Act to address dust. The landmark 1990 amendments classified coarse particles as a hazardous air pollutant, specifically citing pollution at Owens Lake.

That, Schade said, "gave us our marching orders."

The air district prepared a state implementation plan for U.S. EPA that required DWP to control the dust by 2001.

DWP refused. The department is a formidable foe -- the nation's largest water and power utility, with 8,800 employees and serving more than 3.9 million people in an area of nearly 470 square miles. It sells $1.1 billion per year in water and another $3.3 billion in electricity.

The politically connected and well-heeled department flexed its legal muscle.

Schade's first break came because DWP was headed in the late 1990s by S. David Freeman, an engineer who helped establish EPA under President Nixon and led the Tennessee Valley Authority under President Carter and who remains generally held in high regard by the environmental community.

Freeman, Schade said, recognized DWP was responsible for the dust that in 1998 -- when EPA ordered the department to control the pollution -- was more than 100 times beyond the federal standard for coarse particulates.

So DWP agreed to invest in fixing the lake bed, but Freeman insisted the air district would not order how to do it, or mandate that huge swaths of the lake be cleaned up at once. It was hard to tell how much of the lake was emitting dust, he said, so by installing dust controls piece by piece, DWP could control the dust without having to cover the entire lake bed.

From the beginning, the air district believed it would take dust controls on about 45 square miles of the lake bed -- nearly half the lake bottom. But it gave DWP three options for dust control: apply water, gravel or plant vegetation. In 2001, the air district began flooding 10 square miles in the northeast part of the former lake.

The effort failed to bring the area into attainment with federal standards, so Schade ordered more gravel coverage. He then ordered more. And still more.

In 2011, the last additional requirement was ordered, but DWP balked and drew a line in the dust.

Then the lawsuits began.

"They pulled out all the stops," Schade said. "They sued us on everything they could sue us on."

At one point, there were at least a dozen lawsuits flying.

Burying the hatchet

How did an air district that operates with a skeleton staff working out of an abandoned motel afford to fight all the lawsuits and public relations assaults, while simultaneously monitoring one of the most complicated air pollution problems in the country?

Politics.

The political pendulum had begun to swing away from DWP and toward the air cleanup.

In 1983, the California Legislature passed Senate Bill 270, which forced DWP to pay all "reasonable" costs for mitigating the dust at Owens Lake. The language was part of a compromise in which the air district could not require DWP to put water on the lake, affect its water rights or cut off all water flowing to Los Angeles.

As the district took more aggressive steps to tackle pollution -- there are now some 200 air monitors of some sort on the lake -- DWP had to foot the bill.

Then, in 1998, a court applied the same principle to attorneys' fees. The air district hired the best environmental lawyers in the state, and a court held that was "reasonable" under S.B. 270 because DWP also had a top-notch legal team.

So the water department was forced to fund both sides of its legal war.

"We just sent them the bill and they had to pay us," Schade said.

In 2013, DWP's will began to crack when Eric Garcetti (D) was elected Los Angeles mayor and Michael Feuer (D) was elected city attorney. Both had strong environmental credentials, and Garcetti appointed commissioners to DWP's board with environmental backgrounds, including former U.S. Rep. Mel Levine (D) and attorney William Funderburk. They all expressed an interest in getting past the contentious litigation.

The district reached a settlement with Schade in October 2014 that required dust controls on 48.6 square miles, an area that is largely already in place today. There is also another 10 percent of the area -- 4.8 square miles -- set aside as a contingency that the air district can order and DWP can't dispute.

Schade said it appears the 48.6 square miles is going to be enough to bring the lake into Clean Air Act attainment. The dust is more than 90 percent controlled, and DWP will continue to divert large amounts of water to Owens Valley in the future. It is planning to keep 158,400 acre-feet of Owens River water in the valley in the next year, including 65,000 acre-feet specifically for dust mitigation and another 8,000 acre-feet for recreation and wildlife.

Those commitments to the valley are locked into law. DWP will likely keep more water in the valley in the next year than it will export to Los Angeles, 114,000 acre-feet -- more than San Francisco uses in a year. During the height of the drought last year, all the water flowing down the aqueduct at one point was diverted to Owens Lake; none went on to Los Angeles.

Schade retired last year after the settlement was put into place.

"When the bad guys are vanquished, the sheriff gets on the train and rides out of town," Schade said, half joking.

Last November, Schade gathered with DWP and air district officials on the lake bed. They dug a hole and buried legal documents and mementos from the 25-year fight, including, of course, a hatchet.

For the birds

Spend some time at Owens Lake and you'll hear people talk about "unintended consequences."

Along with the original dust pollution, there were unexpected problems when DWP in 2001 began flooding miles of the lake bed in response to the air district's first mitigation order.

Owens Lake dust control areas.

DWP chose flooding because it was simple and the most cost-effective. It was a matter of building a large earthen berm and turning on the water, which the department already owned.

Almost immediately, the birds that had abandoned Owens Lake when it dried up returned. Because the lake bed itself is state-owned and protected by California's public trust laws for wildlife, DWP was required to safeguard birds landing in an enormous construction zone. Some of the birds were rare species, like the snowy plover.

"We've created all this habitat, and it was completely inadvertent," said Jeff Nordin, a DWP watershed resources supervisor, on a recent lake tour. "It was, 'Let's control dust the quickest and easiest way. Let's put water out there.'"

Nordin, 36, grew up in the Los Angeles area and now leads DWP's mitigation efforts from a biological and ecological perspective.

The Audubon Society also swooped in and began working with Nordin to create a master plan for how to turn the lake's mitigation tracts -- called "cells" or "dust control areas" -- into habitat for a variety of bird species.

"We didn't want this place to be paved over," Audubon's Andrea Jones said.

The process could take another 10 years, and DWP may spend another billion dollars on it. The goals are to conserve water, maintain dust control and build bird habitat. That includes increasing public access to the lake for bird-watchers and making the lake more visually appealing.

To that end, last month DWP unveiled a series of trails sought to entice visitors and, in particular, birders. The main attraction is a gazebo-type kiosk with wings reminiscent of a snowy plover's and landscape architecture meant to evoke the white caps of waves. It can be reached by turning off the highway visitors would traverse driving from Death Valley to Yosemite. DWP spent $4.6 million on the project.

Nordin said the goal is to gradually convert the dust control areas that don't provide good habitat into ones that attract birds. That includes varied ponds with islands and other vegetation.

Herbst, the University of California biologist, said the new plan provides an interesting opportunity.

Because of the control DWP has over these different cells -- their shape, salinity level, depth, etc. -- it can create a "mosaic of different habitats," he said. "All these different types of habitats for all different kinds of birds."

That can include deepwater ponds for some bird species, as well as shallow ponds for others that are ideal for growing the algae at the bottom of the ecosystem's food chain.

Herbst said he is skeptical that DWP can accomplish these goals while still cutting back on water use, as it plans to do, but the potential is there to create an important foraging ground for a wide variety of birds.

"It will just draw in birds because of the food if the salinity is at the right level," Herbst said.

'Scared to death'

But controversies aren't over. The Paiute tribe, whose reservation is just north of the lake, is critical of the trails and mitigation projects along the shoreline that are near ancient burial sites and other cultural artifacts.

Kathy Bancroft, 61, a Paiute community leader who has suffered breathing problems her entire life, said she is primarily concerned about preserving their sacred grounds around the lake.

She criticized DWP's projects for their "highly engineered" feel. Nothing looks natural or as it looked for her ancestors, she said, and she referred to each dust control area as another "Band-Aid." She said there are more natural ways to control dust.

"It's not like you would have to continually fill it up," she said. "You'd fill it up and then the vegetation would start growing on the sides. Then if you gradually drained it down, the vegetation would follow it. Things like that. But nobody thinks like that. They are just putting these Band-Aids on."

But DWP's Nordin said he's optimistic that since the settlement in 2014, the local animosity will shrivel. He said the master plan, which will take 10 years to implement, is a new phase for the lake.

"There's been a lot of ideas that DWP caused this mess, and there are some punitive aspects to it," Nordin said. "We are trying to get to where we are moving forward with all stakeholders collaboratively to meet all of their goals."

DWP will be working at Owens Lake in perpetuity, managing wildlife habitat and dust controls.

Officials overseeing water management in the West are looking to Owens Lake in anticipation of what they'll face in their own areas. Schade, the former air district control officer, however, warns that the Owens Lake cleanup was probably easier than others -- notably, the Salton Sea in Southern California near Palm Desert.

More people live near the Salton Sea, which is more than three times the size of Owens Lake -- nearly 350 square miles.

The Salton is already shrinking, and the amount of water reaching the lake will slow dramatically in the next year. By some estimates, 26,000 acres of the Salton Sea's lake bed will be exposed by 2020. At this point, there are only 2,000 acres of planned dust-control and habitat projects scheduled to be completed by that year.

Schade, who visited the Salton Sea while he was working on Owens Lake, sees trouble ahead.

"I took a look at it, and I said, 'Oh, my God.' Looking down at the soil between my feet, it looked exactly like Owens Lake. And I know what happened when Owens Lake disappeared," Schade said.

"I'm scared to death."

Feds approve controversial remote desert solar plant near Baker

A bighorn sheep climbs the terrain of the Mojave National Preserve, about a mile northeast of the proposed site for the Soda Mountain Solar project on Tuesday, July 21 2015 near Baker. (Stan Lim)

By Jim Steinberg
The San Bernardino Sun

Over objections of environmentalists, the Obama administration on Tuesday approved a 287-megawatt solar energy plant for a remote part of the Mojave Desert.

The 1,767-acre project being developed by Bechtel Corp. is located on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, about six miles southwest of Baker.

“Soda Mountain is another step forward toward diversifying our nation’s energy portfolio and meeting the state of California’s growing demand for renewable energy,” said BLM Director Neil Kornze.

The project is consistent with BLM’s landscape approach for the California desert, which supports careful development of renewable energy while protecting the resources and places that make the desert special, Kornze said in a statement.

“The approval of Soda Mountain Solar is a stark contradiction by the Obama administration,” Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement.

“Less than two months ago, we lauded the administration as conservation heroes after they designated national monuments in the desert to protect and connect important landscapes,” she said.

Allowing the Soda Mountain project to proceed “inhibits national park wildlife from migrating and adapting to a changing climate,” Pierno added.

The project will provide enough power for more than 86,000 homes and help toward meeting Obama’s Climate Action Plan goal of 20,000 megawatts of power derived from renewable energy project on public lands by 2020, the BLM statement said.

The agency said it spent more than three years consulting and working with a variety of federal and state partners, members of the public and others to develop a “comprehensive environmental analysis” of the Soda Mountain project area and devise a project design that preserves scenic vistas, reduces potential impacts to wildlife in the area and protects groundwater.

The agency said its approved design removes an array of solar panels originally approved north of the 15 Freeway, eliminating most of the visual effects of the project within the Mojave National Preserve.

Last year, the project was reduced from the originally proposed 2,222 acres.

The agency also said its decision ensures the project will not block future efforts to re-establish bighorn sheep movement across the interstate highway.

But Ileene Anderson, Los Angeles-based senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the massive solar array would block the “last, best linkage” for desert bighorn sheep between the Mojave National Preserve and the Soda Mountain Wilderness Study Area.

Renewable-energy generation “has to be done right,” she said.

The smaller, revised project is located in an area of disturbed lands including an active utility corridor for oil and gas pipelines, electricity transmission and communication lines and facilities, BLM said.

However, the National Parks Conservation Association says the project is in the “undeveloped” South Soda Mountain region immediately adjacent to Mojave National Preserve.

Francis Canavan, a Bechtel spokesman, acknowledged that the company doesn’t yet have an agreement to sell the electricity from the project, but he added that talks are underway with potential buyers.

Bechtel also does not have a signed agreement to use the power lines that run past the project site, which are owned by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Getting permission to use Los Angeles’ power lines, however, “shouldn’t be a problem,” Canavan said.

Researchers determine origin of mysterious stone columns along Crowley Lake

A mystery in stone

Robin Wham photographs the columns, which for decades were regarded as little more than curiosities along the eastern shore of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Crowley Lake reservoir. They had been buried and hidden for eons until the reservoir's pounding waves began carving out the softer material at the base of cliffs of pumice and ash. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

by Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Mammoth Lakes, CA -- The strange pillar-like formation emerged after Crowley Lake reservoir was completed in 1941: stone columns up to 20 feet tall connected by high arches, as if part of an ancient Moorish temple.

They had been buried and hidden for eons until the reservoir's pounding waves began carving out the softer material at the base of cliffs of pumice and ash.

In the ensuing decades, the columns were regarded as little more than curiosities along the eastern shore of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reservoir, which is best known as a trout fishing hot spot about 10 miles south of Mammoth Lakes.

But now answers are emerging from a study at UC Berkeley. Researchers have determined that the columns were created by cold water percolating down into — and steam rising up out of — hot volcanic ash spewed by a cataclysmic explosion 760,000 years ago

"These columns are spectacular products of a natural experiment in the physics of hydrothermal convection," Noah Randolph-Flagg, 25, a PhD candidate and lead author of the study, said in an interview.

The blast, 2,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, created the Long Valley Caldera, a massive 10-by-2-mile sink that includes the Mammoth Lakes area. It also covered much of the eastern Sierra Nevada range with a coarse volcanic tuff, or ash fall.

Randolph-Flagg said researchers not only discovered the origin of the columns but also learned a great deal about the surrounding landscape. "They have lot to tell us about what the region was like before and after the caldera exploded, and about how volcanoes can change local climate," he said.

The columns began forming as snowmelt seeped into the still hot tuff. The water boiled, creating "evenly spaced convection cells similar to heat pipes," according to the study to be presented next month in San Francisco at an American Geophysical Union meeting, the world's largest conference in geophysical sciences.

From the very first moment I laid eyes on this weird and wondrous place a year ago, I was smitten. It made me go back to school to get a master's degree in geology.
- Robin Wham, 62, a graduate student at Cal State Sacramento

Analyses by X-rays and electronic microscopes of samples of the columns found that tiny spaces in these convection pipes were cemented into place by erosion-resistant minerals.

Randolph-Flagg estimates that as many as 5,000 columns exist within a 2- to 3-square-mile area east of the lake. They appear in clusters, and are diverse in size and shape.

Many are gray, straight as telephone poles and encircled with horizontal cracks about 12 inches apart. Some are reddish-orange in color. Some are bent, or all tilting at the same angle. Still others are half-buried and resemble the fossilized backbones of dinosaurs.

Next year, the Department of Water and Power will begin ferrying students to the site as part of an "effort to further educate the public about these invaluable natural resources," said Amanda Parsons, a spokeswoman for the utility.

Edward W. Hildreth, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and expert on the history of the Long Valley Caldera and the chemistry of its tuff, welcomes the sudden interest in the columns, which can be reached by boat, on foot or by four-wheel-drive vehicles.

More analysis could help scientists better understand how quickly the columns solidified, and the chemistry and temperatures that produced their spacing, width, height and composition.

Among other researchers investigating the columns is Robin Wham, 62, a graduate student in geology at Cal State Sacramento whose proposed thesis involves mapping their precise locations and comparing their characteristics to those of similar formations in New Mexico and Mexico.

On a recent Sunday, Wham, a retired physical therapist, clambered down a steep trail with a clipboard and GPS device to double-check the coordinates of a grotto filled with columns that she likes to call "my office."

"From the very first moment I laid eyes on this weird and wondrous place a year ago, I was smitten," she said. "It made me go back to school to get a master's degree in geology."

County Opposes Wind Turbines On Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa

Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.

San Bernardino County Sentinel

In one of his last acts as Third District county supervisor, Neil Derry convinced his board colleagues to take a stand against a British company’s proposal to erect several score 197-foot high wind turbines in the desert north of Yucca Valley on Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa north of Pipes Canyon Road between Pioneertown and Yucca Mesa.

London-based Element Power, which has its main North American office in Portland, Oregon, has been doing exploratory work to determine whether it will seek permits for the project under the aegis of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which calls for 33 percent of California’s commercially-produced electricity sales to be provided by renewable sources by 2020. Element is banking upon an expedited permitting process that is available for projects applied for under the plan.

The board of supervisors this week, however, significantly complicated that approach when it collectively endorsed a resolution brought forth by Derry opposing Element Power’s application.

In making his recommendation for the resolution, Derry noted that the Black Lava Butte Wind Project was proposed to be sited where previously an electrical transmission line project known as Green Path North was to have been located.

“On December 4, 2007 the board of supervisors adopted Resolution No. 2007-367 opposing the Green Path North project proposed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power,” Derry stated in his report to the board with regard to the resolution. “The project called for the erection of power transmission lines throughout western portions of the Morongo Basin and endangered natural wildlife corridors, sensitive habitat areas and important cultural resources. Following the abandonment of the Green Path North project, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power once again solicited requests for proposals to be filed for proposed projects on the Green Path North alignment.

The Black Lava Butte Wind Project application filed by Element Power and approved by the Bureau of Land Management calls for the exploration of potential wind energy capture and transmission within the backcountry of the Morongo Basin. Element Power would first seek to ascertain the viability of wind energy development by measuring data from two meteorological towers approximately 200 feet in height that have already been constructed.”

In July 2011, Element Power erected the two 197-foot high towers Derry referred to in order to collect data on wind speed and direction at that height at that location. The Bureau of Land Management in 2010 gave Element permission to build those towers. Element hopes to determine from that data whether building a wind farm at that location will prove commercially viable.

While some endorse the concept of aggressive corporate efforts to develop renewable energy and certain environmentalists embrace the wind farm concept, others, including some environmentalists, are opposed to the project proposal.

Some opponents cite the harm they perceive the placement of turbines will have on the desert vista. They and others find objectionable the danger they say the wind turbines represent to eagles, bats, and other birds that fly through or inhabit the area. Another point of protest hinges on the possible destruction of Native American rock art and other archaeological artifacts in the area. Other critics point out that the remote location of the wind field will require that the electricity be transported a considerable distance, and that a significant percentage of the energy will be lost during that line transport.

Three groups opposed to the project on environmental grounds, the California Desert Coalition, Save Our Desert, and the Center for Biological Diversity, are seeking to have that portion of the desert which was identified as an area of critical environmental concern in the Desert Protection Act introduced to Congress in 2011 extended to include Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.

If Element Power elects to proceed with the project, it will need to erect eight miles of transmission lines and towers to deliver the energy to the California Power Grid’s existing electrical transmission lines.

Derry made reference to the transmission line and its placement in his call for the board to oppose the project.

“In order to supply the region’s electrical grid with the wind power, an eight-mile transmission line would need to be constructed over environmentally sensitive habitat,” Derry wrote. “Over 4,000 acres of undeveloped public lands would be subjected to transmission lines and networks of wind turbines. This project area required helicopter transport in order to erect the meteorological towers and further development would require the building of road infrastructure in order to reach two scenic jewels of the Morongo Basin: Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa.”

Derry said that neither he nor the county are opposed to the harnessing of the wind to produce electrical power, but that such projects should be undertaken in areas that will not suffer environmental or ecological degradation as a consequence.

“As stated previously in Resolution No. 2007-367, while the county supports the use of renewable resources and encourages programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions; the county of San Bernardino also places a high value on protecting and preserving the natural resources of the California desert and as a result opposes the construction of high tension power lines through environmentally sensitive areas in the Morongo Basin, and recommends that additional power lines be located within existing energy corridors,” Derry stated.

Community celebrates Green Path North's demise

By Jutta Biggerstaff
Hi-Desert Star



Ruth Rieman and April Sall, leaders of the California Desert Coalition, embrace after the announcement that the L.A. Department of Water and Power has scrapped Green Path North.

YUCCA VALLEY — To a standing ovation of applause and cheers Wednesday at the Yucca Valley Community Center, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced the department’s decision to scrap Green Path North.

The proposed power project would have slashed a 118-mile swath through the desert to provide renewable electricity from geothermal, wind and solar sources from the Imperial Valley to L.A.

Locally, the 200-foot transmission towers would have cut through Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, Pipes Canyon Preserve and the hills along Old Woman Springs Road that wind through Yucca Mesa, Flamingo Heights, Landers and Johnson Valley.

“As of today, we have submitted two letters to the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw the right-of-way grant applications,” said Mark Sedlacek, LADWP director of environmental affairs.

The capitulation by the energy giant capped a strenuous and passionate resistance from Hi-Desert residents.

April Sall, conservation director of the Wildlands Conservancy and founder of the California Desert Coalition, wiped away tears as she thanked the audience of dedicated volunteers and supporters for their efforts.

She called the three-year attempt to stop Green Path North an “emotional battle” and a lot of hard work, but said the outcome made the work worthwhile.

“If this project were to go forward, this landscape and these communities would be forever changed,” she said. “This really is an incredible victory that speaks not only to community activism and grass-roots organizing, but to our local officials who really did come to bat for us.”

Sall said she found out about the decision to scuttle Green Path North from LADWP General Manager David Freeman, who acknowledged the department had made some mistakes.

“He admitted that we managed to get about half the state ticked off at LADWP,” she laughed.

Sall called Freeman a forward-thinking leader, and the California Desert Coalition is encouraged to hear some of his ideas.

“They are looking at Owens Dry Lake where they can re-purpose already disturbed lands and use existing transmission,” she said. “Our position from the beginning has been there’s a responsible way to do this.”

Meg Foley, Morongo Valley community services director, said she was thrilled by the announcement.

“Its been a long, concerted effort, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome,” she said. “We always believed we’d find a way to keep the route from going through here, but it’s surprising to finally hear it and know it’s official.”

Seth Shteir, program coordinator for air and climate with the National Parks Conservation Association, said the decision to halt Green Path North is great because it will leave intact critical habitat in Big Morongo Canyon Preserve.

“I know about the importance of the habitat by reading about it, but I also know about it by bird-watching there on Saturday mornings,” he said. “You just see incredible diversity of species, and it’s wonderful that they’ve been able to protect it.”

Sall summed up the Green Path North experience by giving credit to the people of the Morongo Basin who faced down a powerful adversary by the force of their conviction.

“We organized, and we had people who are very passionate about the land and their communities, and they rose to the occasion,” she said. “It’s been an inspiring experience.”

DWP drops plan to build 85-mile power transmission line across the desert

Environmental groups opposed the $800-million Green Path North Transmission Line because it would have crossed wilderness preserves and scenic ridgelines.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Facing enormous costs and fierce opposition from environmental groups, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on Wednesday announced that it has dropped plans to build an 85-mile-long "green" power transmission line across desert wilderness preserves and scenic ridgelines.

Controversy surrounding the proposed Green Path North Transmission Line had tarnished Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's bid to portray himself as the leader of the "cleanest, greenest big city in America."

Villaraigosa was unavailable for comment. But interim DWP Chief S. David Freeman said the decision to pull the plug on the $800-million project "was the practical thing to do. Essentially, the utility came up with the idea, and the mayor ended it."

"Why get into a fight with a Joshua tree when you don't really need to?" Freeman added with a laugh.

David Myers, Wildlands Conservancy executive director, lauded the decision.

"This was an ill-conceived project, and it was corrected," Myers said. "Los Angeles realized it didn't make sense to spend nearly $1 billion on Green Path when the DWP already owns transmission lines throughout Southern California."

The DWP submitted a right-of-way grant application to the U.S. Forest Service in 2007 for the project, designed to bring electricity generated by solar, geothermal, wind and nuclear power to Los Angeles from the southeastern California deserts and Arizona.

Environmental and community groups were outraged by the DWP's plans to route high-voltage lines and 16-story towers through the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve north of Palm Springs, Pioneertown near Yucca Valley, Pipes Canyon Wilderness Preserve and a corner of the San Bernardino National Forest before linking with existing DWP power lines in Hesperia.

Home to bighorn sheep and chuckwallas, the preserves are internationally recognized birding hot spots embroidered with trails and streams that run under canopies of willow and cottonwood trees.

Opponents in the community of Oak Glen have inundated Los Angeles City Hall over the last three years with more than 50,000 e-mails, letters and postcards. The Wildlands Conservancy bought billboards on Interstate 10 that displayed scenic landscapes and a blunt message: "L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, it's not yours to destroy!"

Environmentalists celebrated the announcement Wednesday at events held in Oak Glen and Yucca Valley, where Joshua Tree resident and desert activist Elden Hughes said, "It's a huge victory, and the intelligent thing to do."

Freeman agreed and joked, "This decision should help in terms of billboard control because we hear the opponents are going to take down all those nasty signs along Interstate 10."

The announcement reflected a shift in policy toward developing renewable resources closer to the DWP's existing power corridors.

Freeman recently proposed construction of a gigantic array of photovoltaic cells over 80 square miles of the Owens Lake's dry lake bed and nearby flatlands that would generate up to 10% of all the power produced in California while simultaneously calming the region's fierce dust storms.

Owens Lake as solar power plant?

The DWP seeks to build a 660-acre pilot project on the dry lake bed -- and avoid doing an environmental impact report.

A solar array could mitigate dust at Owens Lake. Currently to help fight dust, the DWP regularly floods the dry lake bed, which attracts birds -- and bird-watchers, as above. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times / April 18, 2009)

By Phil Willon
Los Angeles Times

Nearly a century after Los Angeles drained Owens Lake by diverting its water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the city now hopes to generate solar energy on the dusty salt flats it left behind.

The Department of Water and Power's board of commissioners Tuesday unanimously approved a renewable energy pilot project that would cover 616 acres of lake bed with solar arrays -- a possible precursor to a mammoth solar farm that could cover thousands of acres.

City utility officials hope that, along with generating power for L.A., the solar panels would reduce the fierce dust storms that rise from the dry lake bed. To comply with federal clean air standards, the DWP must control the dust that has plagued the Owens Valley for decades. Its efforts are part of a $500-million dust mitigation plan.

The solar project still must win approval from the California State Lands Commission, and that may be a difficult task. The commission's executive officer Tuesday said he had serious concerns about the size of the "demonstration" project and the DWP's plans to seek an exemption from a state environmental impact review.

Well aware of the nasty residue left by L.A.'s water grab in the early 1900s, city officials have taken special care to sell the idea to Owens Valley residents. So much water was pumped away from the valley that, afterward, many farmers and ranchers couldn't scratch out a living.

Interim DWP General Manager S. David Freeman traveled to Inyo County before Thanksgiving to meet with local government officials, environmental groups, ranchers and other residents in an effort to sell the solar proposal.

"It's really interesting and exciting, to say the least," said Inyo County Administrative Officer Kevin Carunchio. "Generally, the county has been looking at the potential for renewable energy projects to generate economic activity and fill the county coffers, since mining has been regulated out of business."

To help win over environmentalists, Freeman promised that the DWP would continue its program to flood portions of the lake bed with water to help control dust; the project currently uses enough water to supply 60,000 families. That shallow, ankle-deep flooding has created critical habitat for tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds.

"In general we support that idea. This small test project is in an area of the lake that has some of the least value for wildlife. It's a good area to put a project, to see if you can make it work and fix the dust," said Mike Prather of the Eastern Sierra Audubon Society.

DWP Commissioner Jonathan Parfrey, who serves as director of the Green L.A. Institute, said Tuesday he was "really enthusiastic" about the proposal but counseled DWP executives to keep Owens Valley residents well informed.

"We need to maintain good relations with the environmentalists in the eastern Sierra in order to provide them really strong assurances of the limited scope of this particular project, and an ongoing . . . conversation with them about any expanded projects," he said.

Michael Webster, the DWP's assistant manager of system development and procurement, told the board of commissioners that the agency has tested solar arrays in wind tunnels and determined that the structures, if properly aligned, can work as effective dust control measures.

The pilot solar project would generate an estimated 50 megawatts by 2012, or about 0.5% of L.A.'s energy needs. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has vowed to halt the use of coal-burning power plants by 2020 and -- that same year -- generate at least 40% of its energy from renewable resources.

The DWP estimates that the solar pilot project also could save 2,460 acre-feet of water a year -- worth $1.7 million -- because the solar arrays could be used to control dust in that portion of Owens Lake instead of flooding.

Because the State Lands Commission has oversight of the 100-square-mile Owens Lake, the DWP must convince the agency to lease the 616 acres for the pilot solar farm -- and, later, to grant leases for any expansion.

Paul Thayer, the state commission's executive officer, said the agency is willing to discuss "some sort of balance of habitat restoration and solar generation on the lake bed."

But he cautioned that a 616-acre solar farm would be among the largest in California, and DWP's efforts to avoid an environmental review could pose a major obstacle. "We think the project is much too ambitious now, particularly for that kind of environmental review," Thayer said, adding that a smaller project might be more acceptable.

Thayer said DWP officials estimate that Owens Lake has the potential to be developed into a large-scale solar farm: "They envision up into the gigawatt range . . . thousands of acres."

L.A. may drop plans for controversial transmission line

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

By Phil Willon
Los Angeles Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edison to decommission Mohave power plant

The company closed the coal-fired facility in Laughlin NV in 2006 because it needed expensive upgrades.



Associated Press
Los Angeles Times

The owners of the closed Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., said Wednesday that they would decommission the coal-fired power plant, which once supplied electricity to 1.5 million homes.

Southern California Edison Co. operated the 1,580-megawatt plant since it came online in 1971, and the company owned 56% of the facility on the Colorado River.

Edison shut down the plant in 2006 because it needed pollution-control upgrades to comply with a 1999 Clean Air Act settlement, a new water supply and pipeline upgrades costing $1.1 billion.

The plant's owners said they would decommission the plant and remove the generating facility from the site. Its operating permits will be terminated next year.

The utility is considering selling the property or constructing a renewable-energy project. Edison spokesman Gil Alexander said the utility had studied the property, its topography and the climate to determine whether it would be suitable for a renewable project, but no decisions had been made.

Roger Clark, air and energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Ariz., one of the groups that sued over pollution controls, said he was pleased that the owners would dismantle the plant and were considering renewable energy.

"It's the final chapter on the story of Mohave as a coal plant," Clark said. "Until the owners decided to go ahead and decommission it and take it apart, there was always a chance someone could buy it and crank it up again."

Edison had planned to upgrade and restart the power plant but said in June 2006 that the plant needed too many repairs for the effort to go forward.

The Salt River Project, which owns 20% of the plant, later sought to take over operation from Edison but abandoned the effort in 2007 after its offer to buy Edison's ownership interest was rebuffed.

Other owners of the plant included Nevada Power Co. with 14% and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power with 10%.

Birds return to Owens Lake, unexpectedly

Hoping to control dust, L.A.'s DWP poured ankle-deep water into a Central California lake bed. Now tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds stop there.

Shorebirds gather on ponds at Owens Lake the evening before the lake-wide bird census.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Lone Pine, Calif. -- Teams of biologists fanned out across the vast playa of Owens Lake on Saturday to take a full accounting of one of environmentalism's unintended successes: tens of thousands of migrating waterfowl and shorebirds roosting on a dust-control project.

The 100-square-mile lake just east of Sequoia National Park was transformed into dusty salt flats after 1913, when its cargo of snowmelt and spring water was diverted into the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Since 2001, however, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has flooded portions of the lake bed to control choking dust pollution.

Nature quickly responded to the ankle-deep sheet of water delivered by the $500-million dust-control project's plumbing system. First to appear on the sheen of water tinged bright green by algae were brine flies. Then came migrating birds that feed on them and peregrine falcons that feed on the birds.

This year, Audubon California designated Owens Lake one of the 17 most important bird areas in the state and a globally important wetlands in the making.

Peering through a spotting scope in the direction of a chaotic chorus of gulls and waterfowl, Michael Prather, a botanist who helped organize the lake-wide bird census, said, "We believe there are more birds at Owens Lake now than at any time since its water was diverted in 1913."

Moments later, the birds lifted off the water in a clatter of wing beats.

"There's a palpable tenseness among these migrating birds," he mused. "It's almost as though, having little time to spare, they are tapping their feet, anxious to get moving to their ultimate destinations."

As he spoke, about 20 species of shorebirds and waders -- long-billed curlews, yellowlegs, American avocets, black-necked stilts, sandpipers, black-bellied plovers, Wilson's phalaropes, dowagers and whimbrels -- were bulking up their fat reserves to complete a journey that would take them from wintering grounds as far south as Argentina to breeding areas in the boreal forests and shores of Alaska, Canada and the Arctic.

Owens Lake is an eerily flat, shimmering landscape, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles, surrounded by spiky lava flows and banded hills between the 14,000-foot Sierra Nevada on the west and the 11,000-foot Inyo Mountains on the east.

In fall and spring, it now attracts about 50,000 birds, including roughly 500 snowy plovers, a shorebird listed as a species of special concern. Breeding on sandbars and in thatches of grass are colonies of yellow-headed blackbirds.

One team crisscrossing the white, crunchy lake bed was led by DWP biologist Debbie House and Jon Dunn, co-editor of the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of Western North America.

Dunn used a spotting scope to count hundreds of birds on the far side of a spreading pond, calling out their numbers and species to House, who recorded the tallies on a clipboard.

"I've got 250 cinnamon teal, 40 redheads, 85 California gulls, 10 lesser scaup and two peregrine falcons hunting ducks along the shore," he said. "There's also 13 ring-billed gulls and a white-faced ibis."

"Osprey!" added Tony Brake, a retired neuroscientist who volunteered for the day.

A few miles to the south, Prather's team surveyed wildlife pecking at waterborne insects and brine shrimp in and around brackish ponds. Highlights included what Prather excitedly described as "a scopeful of Franklin's gulls!"

Not bad birding for one Saturday morning.

Hoping to end decades of conflict with Owens Valley residents, Los Angeles has tried a variety of methods to cut air pollution, including flooding, plants and gravel. Amid drought concerns, the dust-control project, which has been dogged by cost overruns, is experimenting with a $105-million waterless process called "moat and row." The process attempts to capture airborne dust particles in a specifically configured ridged landscape.

As it stands, each year the project uses about 60,000 acre-feet of water worth about $54 million -- enough to supply 60,000 families.

The annual bird surveys at Owens Lake, which began in 2007, aim to create a database that the DWP, environmental groups and state wildlife and lands authorities can use to develop more efficient and environmentally sensitive dust-control efforts.

By 2 p.m. Saturday, Dunn said the numbers were looking good for dozens of species.

"Excellent day; good conditions and lots of birds, even a few rarities: Lapland longspurs, Baird's sandpipers and a Herring gull," he said. "We're pleased with the results."

New Green Path North proposal would avoid sensitive desert areas

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise






A new route proposed for a controversial power line would sidestep sensitive Mojave Desert land by running towers parallel to existing lines along Interstate 10 and through San Timoteo Canyon to Lytle Creek.

The seventh and latest potential route for the Green Path North project to carry renewable energy to Los Angeles was confirmed Thursday by city Department of Water and Power officials.

It won cautious praise from desert preservationists who have been fighting to keep high-voltage transmission towers off of public land and wilderness areas near Joshua Tree National Park.

"If they continue to work on the I-10, that's the appropriate place for it. But we're not there yet," said April Sall, founder of the California Desert Coalition.

She said a San Timoteo route is of concern and urged DWP to instead share the I-10 corridor with Southern California Edison.

The new proposal avoids widespread condemnation of private properties that would be necessary under one of the other proposed routes to bring power from geothermal, wind and solar projects in from the desert.

An earlier suggested route from the utility would run towers along I-10 as far west as Interstate 15 and cross 3,500 properties.

The route that drew the most criticism from groups like Sall's involved cutting across sensitive desert areas, including the privately owned Pipes Canyon Wilderness near Pioneertown in San Bernardino County.

The most recent proposal, known as Route A3, would establish additional rights of way near existing utility paths along I-10 from north of Palm Springs to Beaumont.

The route then would cut north through the historic San Timoteo Canyon, to Loma Linda, Colton, Rialto and San Bernardino, said Joseph Ramallo, a DWP spokesman.

The new path would end at the utility's transmission lines at Lytle Creek north of Fontana. From there, electricity could be routed to Los Angeles, he said.

"It involves 10 cities and is by no means an easy route," Ramallo said. "Just as there were opponents who expressed concerns about the route through Morongo and Yucca valleys, we expect there will be concerns raised about A3."

Sherli Leonard, executive director of The Redlands Conservancy, was upset Thursday to learn about the latest potential route.

Her group is a nonprofit land trust that maintains a hiking trail along San Timoteo Creek.

Eventually, the group plans a linear park along the entire 17-mile canyon that stretches from Redlands to Moreno Valley.

The existing Edison lines on hilltops and in the canyon "are pretty ugly," said Leonard, adding that construction of more lines would be "devastating to wildlife habitat and corridors."

If the DWP project affects the canyon, "The Redlands Conservancy will take an active role in objecting to it," she said.

The utility proposes to acquire additional rights of way parallel to those used by Edison and Union Pacific railroad, Ramallo said.

A Union Pacific spokeswoman said DWP had not approached the railroad.

David Nahai, DWP general manager, said the proposed towers have been reduced from 500 kilovolts to 230 kilovolts, which means the towers would be equally tall but require about 200 feet of width instead of 330 feet.

BURYING LINES

The lower voltage would allow the lines to be buried for up to 15 miles of the 80-mile route to protect sensitive areas and preserve views.

Sandi Blain, manager of transmission project licensing for Edison, said DWP contacted Edison about two weeks ago to set up new discussions.

Route A3 would involve about 300 private properties, Ramallo said.

The plan has not been publicly announced and was only pitched to desert stakeholders in a private meeting at DWP offices last week.

Joan Taylor, California-Nevada desert energy chairwoman for the Sierra Club, said she was told at the meeting that the route would affect 30 permanent structures and seven mobile homes.

Many of those with an interest in the latest alternative haven't heard about it, including the cities of Redlands and Loma Linda.

San Bernardino County Supervisor Neil Derry, whose district includes most of the affected cities, said he welcomed a less intrusive project than the controversial desert route.

"The fact that they are being flexible is always a good thing," he said. "But my opposition remains until we see solid information that they're willing to share with the public."

Dennis Halloway, Loma Linda city manager, said his city wouldn't have a problem with Route A3 if it uses existing Edison routes through the Loma Linda Preserve, 1,700 city-owned acres in the hills south of town.

DWP officials said they cannot release detailed information or maps because it is too early in the process.

"All of these routes are conceptual," Nahai said. "It's possible as we go through the process that new routes will suggest themselves and the ones we have may get altered."

The first step in the environmental review process is expected within the next six weeks with a notice of intent that includes right-of-way and permit applications to the federal government, Nahai said.

Public meetings and environmental analysis will follow. DWP hopes to complete Green Path North by 2014.

The project will help Los Angeles meet state-mandated renewable energy goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

About 11 percent of DWP's electricity comes from renewable sources. By 2020, it will need to be 35 percent.

DWP sticks with Green Path North project, rejects Edison's offer to use power lines

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

Southern California Edison is offering an alternative to the Green Path North power line project that Los Angeles wants to build across San Bernardino County deserts and foothills.

Edison could add enough capacity on its power lines along Interstate 10 to carry electricity to Los Angeles from geothermal, wind and solar power projects planned in the desert, said Sandi Blain, manager of the transmission project licenses for Edison, an investor-owned utility.

However, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power say they are not interested.

Any agreement with Edison would involve paying to use the power lines and could be suspended or terminated, leaving too much uncertainty for some 5 million Los Angeles-area customers, said David Nahai, DWP general manager.

"We cannot afford to be in a second position when it comes to transmission," Nahai said. "We have to have permanent and absolute transmission rights. ... Renting is not the option one prefers to have."

Los Angeles wants 800-megawatt power lines in place by 2013 or 2014 to tap geothermal energy at the Salton Sea as well as proposed desert-area wind and solar projects.

Imperial Irrigation District would build power lines from Salton Sea to a spot north of Palm Springs. From there, in several scenarios, the Los Angeles utility would build about 80 miles of transmission lines to Hesperia, linking to the network that would carry the electricity to Los Angeles through the Antelope Valley.

Los Angeles needs to tap renewable energy sources to meet state greenhouse-gas reduction requirements. About 11 percent of the utility's electricity comes from renewable sources. By 2020, that needs to be 35 percent, utility spokesman Joseph Ramallo said.

OPPOSITION

Edison's offer bolsters the position of Green Path opponents.

Some High Desert residents have fought the DWP Green Path North plan ever since they happened upon one of the utility's survey crews last year north of Yucca Valley.

They fear power lines, and the roads needed to build and maintain them, would damage undisturbed land in the desert and in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains. Opponents include property owners, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and the cities of Desert Hot Springs and Twentynine Palms.

Los Angeles officials said they would need a path no more than 330 feet wide, but desert residents worry that Green Path power lines could help justify a federal utility corridor designation that might lead to pipelines and other utility projects.

The maintenance roads would invite off-roaders, causing more damage to the environment, said David Miller, a resident of Pioneertown northwest of Yucca Valley and a member of the California Desert Coalition, a group opposing the project.

"We need to first maximize the use of all existing (utility) corridors, including all of the I-10 capacity, before we start adding corridors," Miller said.

Nahai said DWP is considering ways to build the power lines with minimal damage to the environment. An option is to bury the lines in more sensitive areas, he said. One scenario would put a portion of the power lines parallel to Edison's lines along Interstate 10. Nahai said he is in talks with Edison.

Some Inland cities could benefit from Green Path. DWP would build the lines in partnership with the interagency Southern California Public Power Authority, whose members include the cities of Riverside, Colton and Banning. Members of the power authority that opt into a project are then entitled to some of the electricity.

Blain said if the Los Angeles utility used Edison lines along Interstate 10, it would have to schedule power deliveries through California Independent System Operator.

The ISO is a state entity created when the electricity industry was deregulated in the 1990s to allow open access to most of the power grid in California. The agency would also set the transmission fees that Edison could charge.

GOING IT ALONE

But Ramallo said Los Angeles prefers to own its transmission lines and power-generation sources as much as possible.

That allows the utility to offer lower rates than those offered by investor-owned, for-profit utilities, such as Edison.

Miller said DWP's motives go beyond tapping renewable energy. The utility would have the potential to bring in money by delivering power to others, he said.

The project greatly boosts the DWP's clout and financial position by establishing new power lines near future alternative-energy projects and between two transmission corridors along interstates 10 and 15, he said.

"There is a huge potential for revenue," Miller said.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is processing 171 applications seeking to develop solar and wind energy on public land in the desert from Ridgecrest to El Centro. Any electricity those projects generate would have to be linked to the power grid.

The Los Angeles area will need all the power Green Path can carry, DWP officials said.

Nahai said the agency's only purpose is to serve the public.

"It is almost perverse for anyone to suggest we would be building this line to make money," Nahai said.

Federal environmental review of the Green Path proposal is expected to start next year.