Pioneertown residents now have clean tap water — for the first time in decades

Kenneth Gentry, of Yucca Valley, who also owns property in Pioneertown, smiles as he feels water moving through pipes at a well site in Yucca Valley on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (Photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

By SANDRA EMERSON
San Bernardino Sun

Gay Smith started getting clean tap water to her home in Pioneertown nearly three months ago. Still, the retired teacher said she walks over to a jug of water from the county to fill a pot for boiling potatoes.

“You don’t realize the habits you get into until you don’t have to do those habits anymore,” Smith said.

For three years, residents of the unincorporated San Bernardino County desert town have used twice-a-month shipments of bottled water because local wells were no longer meeting state standards for drinking water. The water was too high in naturally occurring arsenic, uranium and fluoride, which can cause health problems over time.

The shipments were a temporary solution to decades of water quality problems. That changed in September, when work finished on a new pipeline that pulls clean water from a well 4 miles away in Yucca Valley. The new pipeline also boosted water supply, addressing a longtime water shortage in the town that was built in 1946 as an Old West film set.

“Even back in the film days, a lot of people bought (property) thinking they were going to go out there and retire,” David Miller, a Pioneertown resident and Friends of Pioneertown board member. “By the time these people retired there was no water.”

Pioneertown was founded by Hollywood investors, including Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, in 1946. It became home to film and TV productions, such as “The Cisco Kid,” and “The Gene Autry Show” and is still used for music videos, print and commercial work.

No water, no growth

Like any old western town, it’s all about water, Miller said.

The town hasn’t had enough water to support large development or much home building, which has limited growth in the 1-square-mile town.

When Smith and her husband, John, bought the Desert Willow Ranch in 1969 there wasn’t water, Smith said. They connected to a water system controlled by Benton Lefton, an Ohio developer who bought Pioneertown with plans to turn it into a master-planned community called The California Golden Empire. There wasn’t enough water to support Lefton’s dream, so ultimately, the water system fell into residents’ hands.

In 1980, residents voted to give that responsibility to the county.

In November 1999, the county placed a moratorium on new construction because of the small water supply and quality concerns, said Steve Samaras, division manager with the county’s special district’s department, water and sanitation division.

Around that time, county officials began notifying residents that their water violated drinking water standards, particularly for arsenic. The state lowered the maximum amount of arsenic allowed in the water, which put some of Pioneertown’s wells out of commission, Samaras said.

The violation didn’t trigger an outright ban on drinking the water, but county officials still had to let residents know of the potential health risk. Elevated fluoride levels, however, made the water unsafe for children under 9 years old, so they were told not to drink it.

“It’s not something you’re going to drink today and you’re going to have a problem tomorrow,” Samaras said. “It’s over the course of your life time and the certain amount you consume, the risk is greater.”

Residents continued to drink from the troubled water system while county officials worked to tap into a new well. In September 2016, the county started delivering bottled water to residents so they didn’t have to use their taps.

Smith’s situation was eased by having a reverse osmosis filter, but she still worried about using tap water for cooking and feeding her dogs. Out of concern from her doctor that the water was causing skin issues, she emptied a jacuzzi on her property and sold it.

“I”m laying out there one night enjoying the stars in 104-degree water,” she said, “and I’m thinking to myself, ‘What the heck are you doing? Are you out of your mind?’”

Reverse osmosis wasn’t an option for the town’s system because it requires the loss of water to produce clean water. There just wasn’t water to spare.

County officials reached an agreement with the Hi-Desert Water District to connect to a well the district was no longer using in Yucca Valley.

“For them that well, as high output as it is, would have just been just a piece of what would have helped their town,” Miller said. “For us, it’s everything and then some.”

A system from ‘Star Wars’

In contrast to the town’s Old West style, its new water system is pretty high tech.

Miller called it “Star Wars.”

The $5.4 million project, funded mostly by state grant money, included rehabilitation of the well and construction of a new system with pumps, tanks, and more pipeline than existed inside the town.

A station halfway between the well and the town, was built mostly underground to avoid harming the hillside views. County water officials can control the system remotely and numerous safety features ensure it’s not tampered with.

At 180 gallons per minute, the new well pumps two and a half times more water than all the wells in Pioneertown, Samaras said.

The water now exceeds all standards and is only treated with a small amount of chlorine as a precaution, he said.

Crews with Sukut Construction worked through spring and summer to get the project done. They excavated rock to install the pipeline, causing some traffic delays, but nothing serious, Miller said.

“It all went so smoothly that people now have just all good things to say about this,” Miller said. “That was healing up 35 years of scarring. It was an amazing thing to watch.”

More water, more growth

The new pipeline will open up the town to some new construction, but not too much.

Today, there are 120 water meters in Pioneertown, serving a little more than 400 people.

While the county works to determine the maximum number of connections that can be safely served by the new system, nine property owners with meters were told they can build and another 42 may soon get permission to connect to the water source, Samaras said.

Still, residents want their Old West town to stay small.

“People have been fighting to keep it exactly the way it is now,” said Kenneth Gentry, who wrote a book about Pioneertown’s history.

ABOUT PIONEERTOWN

Founded: 1946

Founders: Hollywood investors, including Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry

Location: About 4 miles northwest of Yucca Valley, in San Bernardino County

Notable filming: “The Cisco Kid,” “The Gene Autry Show,” “Annie Oakley,” “Seven Psychopaths,” “Ingrid Goes West,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Funnel of Love” music video

Attractions: Mane Street, where many original Old West buildings stand; film museum; Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, which serves barbecue and hosts concerts, including a surprise show from Sir Paul McCartney in 2016; Pioneertown Motel, built in 1946 as lodging for western film stars; nearby Joshua Tree National Park

New pipeline replaces contaminated wells in Pioneertown

Morongo Basin Conservation Association president and Pipes Canyon resident Steve Bardwell tastes the new drinking water from the Pioneertown Pipeline during Friday morning’s ceremony. (Jené Estrada. Hi-Desert Star)

By Jené Estrada
Hi-Desert Star

PIONEERTOWN — After over 30 years of community effort, Pioneertown now has clean, potable drinking water straight from the tap and on Friday morning, Sept. 13, people from across the Morongo Basin gathered outside of Pappy & Harriett’s to celebrate the achievement.

The Pioneertown Pipeline will pump water into this small community to replace the source water in Pioneertown, which has several quality issues.

Most of the county-run wells in Pioneertown were taken out of service due to high concentrations of uranium and arsenic. The new pipeline connects the existing Pioneertown water distribution system to a Hi-Desert Water District well through the installation of approximately 4 miles of transmission pipeline and two booster stations.

This project was funded through a State Proposition 84 grant that was approved by the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund on Nov. 14, 2018, for $5.4 million.

The new pipeline was completed on July 27 but the county asked residents not to drink the water until after the ribbon-cutting ceremony to allow the lines to run the clean water and purge all old contaminates.

Dawn Rowe, the 3rd District supervisor for San Bernardino County, opened up the ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday morning by thanking local agencies including the Hi-Desert Water District and the Mojave Water Agency for their contributions. She also gave a special thanks to the San Bernardino County Special Districts Department for pushing the project forward.

Jack Dugan, a longtime Pioneertown resident and the former Pioneertown representative on the Morongo Basin Municipal Advisory Council, spoke about the history of the project and thanked everyone for pushing through the roadblocks that halted the project’s progress; these included the incline into Pioneertown from Yucca Valley and the rocky terrain.

“Between 1947 and 1948, Dick Curtis was talking to San Bernardino County about piping water into Pioneertown,” Dugan said. “Well, it’s here. It took a while, but it’s here.”

Dugan went on to thank the county for securing grant money to pay for the pipeline, which was installed in Pioneertown at no cost to the local residents.

Division Manager Steve Samaras with the Special Districts Water and Sanitation Department said he was excited to see the project reach its completion. Up on the podium, he took a drink of water from the pipeline brought in for the ceremony.

“This water exceeds all federal and state quality regulation,” he said. “This is a new chapter in the history of Pioneertown.”

After he spoke, Rowe and longtime resident David Miller then turned the key, opening the Pioneertown Pipeline.

Finding beauty in detritus in the Mojave Desert

Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Museum of Assemblage Sculpture in Joshua Tree. “No Contest (Bicycles)” (Helen Gordon/CC BY 2.0)

Mike McPhate
The California Sun

In the Mojave Desert, a post-apocalyptic menagerie of 100 or so sculptures rises from the dust.

Visitors, often arriving from long distances, wander among the large works built from junk: toilets, television sets, tires, broken keyboards, and other found objects.

There is a snake-like installation made from lunch trays, walk-through structures filled with castoff clothing, VCRs, bottles, and folded newspapers, and bowling balls fashioned into a gigantic Newton’s cradle.

This is Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Museum of Assemblage Sculpture, the life’s work of one of California’s most fascinating artists.

Purifoy was born in rural Alabama in 1917. He fought in World War II, then emerged later as an influential assemblage artist in 1960s Los Angeles, where he created sculptures from the rubble of the Watts riots and led the Watts Towers Art Center.

In 1989, he fled to Joshua Tree. “I wanted to do an earth piece,” he once explained to a journalist, “and you can’t get that much land in Los Angeles to do an earth piece.”

For the next 15 years, Purifoy constructed his magnum opus on a 10-acre lot at the end of a dirt road. The high-desert setting — silent, vast, and severe — seemed to heighten the strangeness of the works.

Purifoy died in 2004 at the age of 86. The Noah Purifoy Foundation was created to look after the open-air museum, a mission that has been tempered by the artist’s stated belief that the desert itself was his collaborator.

“I do assemblage. I don’t do maintenance,” Purifoy told the L.A. Times. “What nature does is part of the creative process.”

Still, the foundation has worked to prolong the life of the sculptures — touching up paint and adding guy wire to make sure things don’t fall — while acknowledging that some of it will be lost to the elements.

“Obviously there’s diminishing returns on a lot of the work,” said Joseph Lewis, the foundation’s president. “But some of it will stand the test of time.”

Lewis said Purifoy’s legacy, beyond his desert shrine, is in the inspiration the African-American artist spread throughout the art world — highlighted in a major retrospective at Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2015 — especially within the black community.

“His conceptual footprint is very, very large,” Lewis said, “and we want to make sure that that is put into the history books and into the canon.”

Make 'contact' with alien experts at Joshua Tree event

Giant Rock Convention, Landers, 1966. (Courtesy Morongo Basin Historical Society)

Denise Goolsby
The Desert

MORONGO BASIN — Tim Gaul had an extraterrestrial experience — in sales.

Gaul, an artist who graduated from Indio High School, found out how mainstream the fascination with other possible life has become when he rolled out his newest necklace creation earlier this week at a festival: porcelain alien faces — featuring those familiar almond-shaped eyes.

He sold dozens within a few days.

Although Gaul doesn't think a bunch of E.T.s are walking the Earth, he doesn't rule out the idea that other beings exist.

"I believe there's life on other planets," he said. "Maybe there's a race of other people on other planets."

And if there are, they aren't evil.

"Or they would have taken us out already," he said.

Extraterrestrials, ancient aliens, crop circles, contact experiences and UFO sightings are among the many out-of-this-world topics that will be explored during the "Contact in the Desert" four-day conference beginning Aug. 8 in Joshua Tree.

The second such conference, it features scientists, researchers, archeologists, best-selling authors and experts featured on History Channel shows such as "Ancient Aliens" and "Hangar 1."

It's in "stark contrast to UFO conventions famous for attracting fanatics in foil hats," according to organizers.

The event coincides with the Perseid meteor shower — one of the brightest meteor showers of the year — which occurs every August, peaking this year between Aug. 10 and Aug. 13.

The location of the conference is significant.

"Joshua Tree has a long history of sightings," co-organizer Paul Andrews said. "We think that, scientifically, there's something about the area that is attractive to this phenomena."

Just as us earthlings are drawn to Joshua Tree — its other-worldly beauty amplified by a sense of spiritual serenity — visitors from other worlds might also be lured by the charm of this secluded, sprawling high desert sanctuary.

George Noory, host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show, "Coast to Coast AM;" Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, host of "Ancient Aliens;" and Erich von Däniken, author of "Chariots of the Gods," are among the headliners of the event, which features a lineup of nearly 40 speakers, including local historian Barbara Harris, who has studied the Morongo Basin communities, specifically Morongo Valley, Landers and Joshua Tree for the past 30 years.

Harris said the history of the area's connection to UFOs dates back to at least 1947 when George Van Tassel — an aircraft mechanic and flight inspector who worked for Douglas Aircraft, Hughes Aircraft and Lockheed — left Southern California's aerospace industry and moved his family to Landers, site of the mysterious Giant Rock, a massive, freestanding boulder standing seven stories tall.

The 25,000-ton behemoth, purported to be the largest freestanding boulder in the world, covers 5,800 square feet — the size of an estate-size home in the Coachella Valley.

"That's where all of the UFO stuff began," she said. "Van Tassel started having visions or connections with space beings from Venus."

During one of these encounters, he received some advice.

"They told him, 'You human beings are coming along OK as a species. However, when you finally get to the place where you 'get it' you die.' They gave him some information on how to build the integratron — a time machine or rejuvenation device to help extend human life."

The one-of-a-kind, all-wood parabolic dome-shaped structure was built on a powerful geomagnetic vortex. Construction began in 1954 and he worked on it until his sudden death in 1978.

The structure, which still stands today, is open to the public.

Van Tassel put on open-air conferences called the Interplanetary Spacecraft conventions, which began April 4, 1953.

"In the 50s and 60s, as many as 10,000 people found themselves driving to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the desert to listen to George Van Tassel speak, to listen to contactees," Harris said.

Harris believes UFO activity — and sightings — are related to specific times in history.

The upheaval of World War II and the development and use of nuclear weapons may have drawn intelligent life closer to Earth, she said.

"Certain people believe the UFOs and the E.T.s come here as a support system to the human race. They're here, basically, to help us grow as a species. They were showing up so we wouldn't destroy ourselves."

"During this time period, people were just starting to come out of their shells and talk about UFOs, talk about X-Files and talk about government conspiracies. At the same time, things were happening in Roswell," she said.

Harris said people living in the high desert at the time had such an interest in UFOs that a newsletter was published — known as The Smoke Signal — that reported specifically on UFO sightings.

Interest in aliens ebbed in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

"There are times when the subject has its peaks and its lows, depending on media coverage," said Nick Redfern, an author and lecturer who writes about a wide range of unsolved mysteries including Bigfoot, UFOs, the Lochness Monster, alien encounters and government conspiracies.

"Fortunately today, there's a great deal of media coverage and attention given to the subject. History Channel, Nat Geo, Discovery. The more attention it gets, the more people listen to it."

Redfern, who is a featured speaker at the conference, will present a lecture on "The Pyramids and the Pentagon" and a workshop, "The Real Men in Black."

In the past, the media would laugh at the subject, poke fun and make jokes about "little green men," he said.

"The stereotype is a 40-year-old UFO researcher living in mom and dad's basement," he said. "The reality is, most people, we have normal lives, but we just happen to be interested in unusual subjects. It's not like it's an obsession. It's a fascination which I've made into a job."

If you go

Contact in the Desert

Joshua Tree Retreat Center, 59700 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree

Date: Aug. 8 - Aug. 11

Cost of four-day pass: Single: $250; Couple: $475

All lectures and panels are included. Workshops, intensives, tours and meal plans sold separately.

To order tickets, call (760) 365-8371 or visit contactinthedesert.com

‘Gunfights’ entertain visitors at Pioneertown

Cattle rustlers getting justice from the lady gunfighters. (Courtesy of  GUNFIGHTERS FOR HIRE)

Warren Horton
Riverside Press-Enterprise

Holy Jehoshaphat! What in tarnation is going on these days?

So many people are coming back and askin' questions 'bout the gunfighters and when are they gonna shoot someone and where is the marshal when he should be keepin' his eye out for the town drunk who seems to run around this quiet town all liquored up in his red long johns chasing that poor young saloon girl all over the street.

I just don't know what to think nowadays.

Last year all these people came into town and watched that poor old drunk with the excessive flatulence problem. It wasn't his fault, since he ate all that chili over at Miss Kittie's place.

God rest them poor souls what stood behind the drunk.

Then there are those two fools, God rest their souls, that couldn't figure out who was the fastest on slappin' leather. All they had to do was to shoot a little hole through that giant nickel, but then again smarts weren't in their vocabulary.

The town dun kept me busy last year with all them shootin's and the like, but then again, if they ain't a'shootin' each other, I'd be outta work.

Even the town Padre – that'd be me – gotta have some fun ever' now and then over to the local saloon and bath house.

Now I supposin' that the marshal knows exactly what he is a'doin'. Like the time them rowdy cowboys come inta town and tried to sell all them stolen cattle. They sassed him and cussed at him and just about spit in his eye, the eye without the patch on it, but the marshal, he dun stood his ground and let them cowboys git shot in the back like they deserved.

Made me a heap of money that day.

Well the word around town is that the shootin' is gonna start at 2:30 in tha afternoon Sunday on Mane Street. I guess I better go clean my preachin' duds and mark the pages in the Good Book for when I gotta convince those cowboys to behave. But I supposin' it is all worth it to help those that need our help from the folks that stop by to see the shootin' and hollerin' and donate somethin'.

Wildflowers season subtle this year

Sand verbena populate the west side of Donnell Hill in Twentynine Palms. (Darrell Shade photo)

By Kurt Schauppner
The Desert Trail

In spite of a recent rainstorm, local wildflower expert Darrell Shade did not have good news for this year’s wildflower season in the Morongo Basin.

“This is going to be a very poor wildflower season,” he said.

“The February rain saved what little bit of wildflowers we are seeing now,” Shade said. “As you drive west on Highway 62, you see the yellow splashes of color provided by desert dandelions. They are mostly on the north side where drainage from the pavement was heaviest.”

The large white flowers of the datura or jimson weed are beginning to appear as well, he said, adding that the 3-foot-high shrubs with the yellow flowers and bladder-shaped fruits are bladder-pod.

“Driving around town, you can see the dandelions on many street corners and roadsides. Here and there are a small number of notch-leaf phacelia with their purple flowers,” Shade said.

Small patches of brown-eyed evening primroses can be seen as well. The creosote bushes are blooming everywhere.

“They are a pretty sight with their shiny, waxy coated leaves covered with yellow flowers and little white fuzzy fruit. Draped over shrubs in some places are the star vine, with fragrant flowers,” Shade said.

Joshua trees have been blooming in Joshua Tree National Park for a couple of weeks now. They are mostly seen from Queen Valley to the Hidden Valley campground area.

“There are a few beavertail cacti in full bloom with their large pink flowers along the drive into 49 Palms Oasis parking lot,” he added.

Shade also noted a nice sandy area on the northeast corner of Park Boulevard and Geology Tour Road where sand verbena and woolly marigolds are providing splashes of pink and yellow.

“The nicest show of wildflowers will be at the west entrance in the next few weeks, where it is greenest,” he added.

High desert sightings: Something is out there

Barbara Harris, who is giving guided tours and a lecture Friday at Giant Rock as part of the Contact in the Desert conference, says local residents placed a 1947 Crosley car on the top of the huge boulder by nailing spikes into the rock and lifting it up with rope, block and tackle. This photo appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in 1951.

Bruce Fessier
Desert Sun

Full disclosure: I saw a UFO one afternoon in the summer of 1981.

I was driving through the curvy section of Highway 62 between Morongo Valley and Desert Hot Springs when a winged vessel, the likes of which I had never seen, flew between —not over —the hills, sandwiching the road. It paused and hovered for a moment, like a helicopter, and then accelerated faster than a Lear jet. By the time I got down the hill a minute later, it was gone. Without a trace.

I told a grocer in Morongo Valley about it and he wasn’t fazed. He said lots of people saw UFOs there. He attributed it to the Marine base in Twenty­nine Palms trying out experimental vessels.

I accepted that and just waited for that flying vehicle to be publicly unveiled. Three decades later, I’m still waiting.

That’s why I don’t think of the people attending this weekend’s Contact in the Desert convention at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center a bunch of kooks. I actually felt more sane after interviewing one of the speakers, Barbara Harris, chairwoman of the Morongo Basin Historical Society, who will give a lecture and tour of Giant Rock near Landers on Friday morning.

“Where you said you saw that, I have documentation,” she said. “Probably in the ’70s, there was a list where they had watchers who were calling in —a constant flow of sightings in that particular area. In their little town newspaper, people were writing what they were seeing and all these people were talking about the UFOs in that area. So that particular space, it’s very common for sightings.”

I lived in Joshua Tree in 1981 and have made regular trips to Joshua Tree National Park ever since. I attended the Joshua Tree Retreat Center when it was the Institute of Mentalphysics and I heard the story of how its founder, Edwin Dingle, was guided to that spot by a guru in China and how Frank Lloyd Wright and his son, Lloyd, designed the complex on what has been called an energy vortex.

I had heard Joshua Tree has the highest rate of UFOs in the nation, but never knew who measured those things. Harris, 56, said what drew Dingle to Joshua Tree also inspired Cabot Yerxa to build his pueblo in Desert Hot Springs, George Van Tassel to build his Integratron near Giant Rock and hold UFO conventions there in the 1950s, and actor Ted Markland to take celebrities to his hill in west Joshua Tree National Park to hear the voice of an ethereal being.

“The high desert has a special, unique, you might say ‘attraction’ within the world,” Harris explained. “There is a special ley line called the 33rd parallel. It’s used in astronomy to arrange where you mark your sightings to the North Star. The 33rd parallel is really an auspicious type of parallel line in the world and for some reason it’s very provocative and has a lot of synchronicities. The area up here in the high desert, we sit on the 33rd parallel and it’s noted for the most UFO sightings in the world. It sits on the same parallel as Roswell (New Mexico). It’s also the same parallel where the Japanese bomb went off. It also sits on the same parallel as the Bermuda Triangle. It’s also on the same parallel line where the Phoenix lights have happened.”

I noted Joshua Tree also is a popular place to take hallucinogenics such as magic mushrooms and peyote. The late Markland hosted Timothy Leary’s wedding at his Yucca Valley home with massive doses of LSD. I asked if that might be partially why the high desert leads the nation in UFO sightings.

Harris, like my Morongo Valley grocer, thinks it has more to do with the area’s proximity to the Marine base. But she won’t rule out Van Tassel’s assertion that he received the technology to build his Integratron from Venus.

Based on science?

Van Tassel worked on the Integratron from 1954 until his death in 1978 —two weeks before it was scheduled to open. He built it, partially upon the research of engineers Nikola Tesla and Georges Lakhovsky, as a “nonferromagnetic” structure to study the rejuvenation of people’s cells, anti-gravity and time travel. Howard Hughes reportedly invested in his experiments.

Harris doesn’t lecture on Van Tassel because she says he pulled some fraudulent stunts to attract business to further his research. But the Integratron is an engineering marvel and many visitors say its sound baths have therapeutic value. Harris notes the technology for his research didn’t exist before Van Tassel claimed to have had contact with someone from Venus.

Harris, who co-owns Adset Graphics in Yucca Valley, prefers to talk about Giant Rock, the seven-story, 5,800 square-foot free-standing boulder. Nomadic Indians used it as a site to contact the dead, Harris said. Legend has it that a Hopi shaman predicted before 1920 that man’s destiny in the 21st century would be foretold by the way Giant Rock would split. If it split in half it would mean the Earth Mother would not accept prayers for mankind. But if it split on the side, then man’s prayers would be answered and a new era would be revealed.

On Feb. 23, 2000, the Hi-Desert Star reported that a slice of the boulder split off at 8:20 a.m. on Feb. 21 after a group led by spiritual leader Shri Naath Devi spent two days praying and meditating at Giant Rock. Devi then declared “a great shift” was at hand.

Harris has interviewed a woman at that prayer session. She doubts they fulfilled the legend.

“To me, it was some people capitalizing on the moment,” she says. “This rock is millions of years old, 25,000 tons, seven stories high. It defied millions of years of wear and tear. Why did it pick Feb. (21), 2000 to split?”

She’ll explore that and her own 30-year study of UFOs in the high desert at Contact in the Desert. She’ll help kick off a three-day event featuring some of the biggest names in science and metaphysics to explore ancient legends. Harris says 500 people are expected.

Space lineage

Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, the star and consulting producer of the TV show “Ancient Aliens,” who is leading a workshop at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, says he’s never seen a conference quite like this one.

“This is a really, really great conference to attend if you’re interested in talking in person to the people that have appeared on ‘Ancient Aliens,’ ”said Tsoukalos, an associate of “Chariots of the Gods” author Erich von Daniken. “I am always incredibly grateful to be not only invited to speak at these things, but also to go to them and meet people interested in these topics because, back in the early ’90s, the average age of conferences like this was in the 80s. Now there are young people coming and that to me clearly indicates a craving for knowledge —knowledge that clearly exists.”

Tsoukalos believes von Daniken’s theory that ancient aliens have been seeding mankind for centuries. He says their visitations are the reason there are missing links in the evolution of species and paradigm leaps in civilizations. He also believes aliens are still visiting our planet.

“According to the Ancient Astronaut theory I subscribe to, we are essentially their offspring,” said Tsoukalos. “We’re all hybrid beings —half human, half extraterrestrial. This will one day be determined (by) geneticists. So, if you’re a parent and you have kids, you’re interested in what they’re doing for the rest of your life. So, I think that is the reason they’re still here —to keep an eye on our progress or to simply see how did the ‘experiment’ work out?”

Tsoukalos doesn’t necessarily believe we’ve had contact from Venus. He doesn’t want to know where the aliens are from because, he said, “That to me adds another level of speculation that actually turns off the general public to our ideas. I think it is better to approach the general public with just the idea that we’ve been visited.”

He’s excited about the gathering of such other experts in their fields as Jason Martell, George Noury, Michael Cremo and Graham Hancock. There are 31 speakers giving lectures and workshops and Michael C. Luckman, founder of the Cosmic Majority, will do a live stream. The event also coincides with the Perseid Meteor Shows, which are always spectacular in the high desert.

So, I can agree with Tsoukalos when he says, “It’s definitely going to be a star-studded event.”

Summer Evenings In the Desert

Commentary | The Hidden Desert

The hour of sunset in the Mojave Desert | Chris Clarke photo

by Chris Clarke
KCET.com

It's hot in the desert right now. Triple digits last week in the Mojave a little earlier than usual, August weather arriving in June, and I spend most of my days indoors at the writing desk. That writing desk has a built-in alarm, though: it's next to a west-facing window with an overhang. When the sun shines in my eyes, sunset's an hour off, and it's time to walk out into the desert.

Even when the day is hot, at 3,500 feet sundown brings pretty rapid cooling. The day's stored heat radiates up into the sky. The breeze raises the hairs on my neck. 95° seems sweet after a triple-digit day, and the mid-80s sweeter still, and the slanting, coloring light draws me deeper into the desert.

Outside my house is a mature palo verde. It's flowering this month, sweet-scented yellow bean flowers that tempt passersby to lean in, breathe deeply, and come away with a face full of scratches from palo verde thorns. That's the voice of experience speaking.

In that long hour before the sun drops down behind San Gorgonio Mountain a million little flies and wasps come out to drink palo verde blossom nectar, all but invisible against the darkening sky. Invisible but not unseen: not long after the bugs come out, so do the bats. In my yard, three or four pallid bats tend to come out each night to keep the pollinators' population down a bit. They get bolder as the sky grows darker, and those in my yard have grown accustomed enough to me that they inspect me at remarkably close range, hovering three feet from my face for fifteen or twenty seconds.

When I lived in Nipton five years ago, my back yard faced out onto almost 200,000 acres of open Mojave, and I would go there in the evenings and watch the shadow of Clark Mountain sweep across twenty miles of desert. From a distance it looked as sharp as a knife's edge. As it drew closer, as the sun's disk began to hide in increments behind the mountain's summit ridge, that edge dulled. It became a long, shallow gradient from light to dark. The bats came out at the edge's mid-point, when the sky had turned from blue-white to salmon. The lesser nighthawks came out then as well, swooping more aggressively than the bats at their insect prey.

Nighthawks haven't discovered my yard in Joshua Tree, at least not that I know of. The bats don't have that company in the airspace around the palo verde.

In the square mile of desert behind my house, the cactus wrens start slowing their pace. They're one of the few birds here that's most active in mid-day, even in the hottest afternoons. They flit between the Joshua trees' limbs, their breasts' whitish speckles glowing pinker as they reflect the lowering sun's light. Crissal thrashers and Gambel's quail try to catch a few last beaksful of food, running around in the desert underbrush.

With the sun low in the sky, a remarkable thing happens for those animals that live close to the ground: the desert is suddenly both well-lit and full of shade. The shadows of the low shrubs start to fill all the open ground between them, offering a chance for animals to forage without getting broiled.

Lizards have a complicated relationship with shade in summer. In the mornings the larger lizards seek direct sun to boost their body temperature. In mid-day they've had enough and stay beneath the shrubs. Side-blotched lizards and Great Basin whiptails, common around here, take advantage of late afternoon's spreading shade to forage for ambling insects. On my last walk I watched as a whiptail launched itself at an Eleodes beetle. The beetle stood on its head at the lizard, which reconsidered its decision. Eleodes squirts a noxious chemical weapon out of its hind end at potential predators. The headstand is a warning. Most animals that have eaten a previous Eleodes don't have to think twice about backing off.

One can walk off into the sunset only so far. Eventually the sun sets all the way and you have to turn around and walk back. The shadow of San Gorgonio fills the Morongo Basin the way Clark Mountain's filled the Ivanpah Valley, and the far slopes of the Sheepholes stay brightly lit enough to silhouette the Joshua trees for the next half hour.

Of course, the whole notion of the "end of the day" is a subjective one. One person's dusk is another person's alarm clock. Across the desert, as the bands of red fade along the western horizon, a family business opens its doors for the new workday. Their yipping song carries on the wind, announcing the beginning of the evening's hunt. I'll hear them again at 4:00 am, if I'm lucky enough to be awake.

Water rates raised for county desert customers

By Courtney Vaughn
Hi-Desert Star

SAN BERNARDINO — Water-rate increases for San Bernardino County Special Districts customers were approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

Rates for County Service Areas in Landers, Pioneertown and Morongo Valley will rise July 18.

The rate hikes will ensure that user fees pay for district operations, according to Jeff Rigney, director of the Special Districts Water and Sanitation Department.

The county received letters of protest from each of the local districts, but none of the areas yielded enough letters to stop the increases, county staff reported.

Notices of the proposed increases were mailed to property owners, but many tenants, who pay the water bills for a property, did not receive notice.

If one more than half a district’s property owners protest fee increases, the additional fees cannot be levied.

Property owners from around the county lamented the county’s water rate structure Tuesday during the Board of Supervisors meeting.

Judy Corl-Lorono, a director of Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency and a Landers resident, spoke to the board as a resident Tuesday.

“I’m here to speak for the seniors, unemployed, those who are on food stamps,” Corl-Lorono said. “We have to trust you to do your due diligence …. It appears that your rate increases are on auto pilot, giving rate payers a 50 percent increase over the next three years.”

Corl-Lorono said she often talks to seniors in the county’s outlying areas who say they must choose between bathing or providing water for pets.

“It’s a disadvantaged community and this is a really big rate increase for a community,” Marina West, general manager of Bighorn-Desert View and a special districts customer, said Friday.

West doesn’t believe county water ratepayers have been given sufficient explanation of why the rate increases are needed. She said many customers have had trouble getting pertinent budget information from the county’s special districts department.

“I don’t think they have much accountability. In the grand scheme of county operations, special district areas out here could be just a rounding error,” West said.

Within the Morongo Basin’s four county water districts, the monthly fee to maintain service on a 3/4-inch meter ranges from $29.36 to $58.78. Increases on monthly fees and water consumption rates range from 19 percent on monthly fees in Landers and Pioneertown, to 51 percent on consumption rates for higher water users in Morongo Valley.

Most county water districts have raised fees each year, but this year marks a bigger jump for some districts than in previous years.

The higher fees will sustain district operations and allow the department of water and sanitation to establish reserve accounts and contingency funds in each of its special districts. The fees will not be used to improve water quality, Rigney said.

He explained by phone Friday that the county’s water districts typically have large areas of infrastructure to maintain, but a very small base of rate payers to cover the costs.

“It essentially comes down to economies of scale,” Rigney said. “We’re just trying to get the districts to where they need to be to sustain the infrastructure.” Rigney anticipates that eventually, rates will be more stable once the district has sufficient funding. He said the special districts department has reduced its operational and internal costs, in addition to reviewing water rates.

Rural water customers could face higher fees

By Courtney Vaughn
Hi-Desert Star

MORONGO BASIN — Residents in three areas of the Morongo Basin could be getting higher water bills soon.

The county Board of Supervisors will review rate increases for county water customers in Morongo Valley, Landers and Pioneertown Tuesday, on behalf of the county’s special districts department of water and sanitation.

Property owners were mailed notices of the proposed rate hikes in each of the county’s four local districts. Increases would vary in each district.

In Landers, County Service Area W-1, monthly fees are proposed to jump 19 percent and customers will be charged $1.05 more per unit of water. In Pioneertown, customers with a 1-inch meter will pay 33 percent more every month if the plan goes through.

Morongo Valley has two water districts operated by the county. In Little Morongo Heights, the current monthly fee of $57.25 will jump to $58.78 and consumption rates will go up $2.07 per unit over last year’s rates. Customers who enter the second tier of water use will pay $2.55 more per unit of water than last year.

Morongo Valley’s other district, CSA 70, zone W-3, would be affected the least, with monthly fees increasing less than $2 and consumption-fee hikes of about 10 cents per unit.

A letter to customers states the higher rates will help the county establish an operations contingency fund and replacement reserves in each district to cover the cost of repairs and daily operations.

Citizens’ groups have mounted opposition to the proposed fee increases, gathering signatures of property owners for petitions.

Landers ratepayers have submitted a request to Supervisor James Ramos’s office, asking the Board of Supervisors to delay the vote to allow for more time to gather signatures from customers.

Energy company halts plans for wind project

A wind energy project proposed for Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa will not move forward after plans were terminated by Desert Mesa Power. The company has been testing wind conditions at the site since 2011.

By Courtney Vaughn
Hi-Desert Star

PIPES CANYON — A proposed utility-scale wind energy project slated for Black Lava Butte and Flat Top Mesa will not move forward.

The Bureau of Land Management received a notification Thursday from Desert Mesa Power, LLC that it plans to terminate its right of way grant for wind testing.

Desert Mesa is owned by Element Power. The company installed two meteorological towers atop the buttes in July 2011 to test wind conditions on the public lands there.

Wind not conducive

In its letter to the BLM, the company stated it “does not believe that the wind resource at the site is conducive for further consideration for utility scale wind energy generation.”

California Desert Coalition and Save Our Desert released a joint statement Friday, saying the area should be off limits to industrial development.

“The work isn’t finished by any means,” Frazer Haney, president of SOD, stated. “We need to ensure permanent protection for these remarkable landforms...”

Both conservation groups collected thousands of signatures on petitions opposing the wind energy project.

SOD has been surveying the area’s flora, fauna and geological formations to register the buttes as important archaeological sites with the county museum.

According to the CDC, Desert Mesa Power planned to install 400-foot tall wind turbines on the buttes if wind patterns were favorable.

In November 2012, the Yucca Valley Town Council passed a resolution in opposition of the wind project, citing concerns of a scarred landscape and the destruction of biological resources. April Sall addressed the council, saying the proposal for a wind energy project in Pipes Canyon was left over from the Green Path North project previously proposed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“Our perseverance and hard work has paid off, and the enlightened public voice has been heard again. We are pleased that Element Power is withdrawing their application and that we are one step closer to maintaining our viewsheds and protecting the resources in and around the buttes,” Sall stated in a news release.

A representative from Element Power could not be reached for comment.

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.

Jackrabbit Homestead: Artists, Off-Roaders, and the American Dream Writ Miniature

By Kim Stringfellow
KCET.org

Jackrabbit homesteads are only for folks who have a bit of pioneering blood in their veins. The land generally is rough, no water is immediately available, more or less road building has to be done. But fortunately there are many Americans who find infinite pleasure in doing the hard work necessary to provide living accommodations on one of these sites--and cabins are springing up all over the desert country.

--Desert Magazine, 1950

Beyond the proliferation of big box chains, car dealerships, fast food joints, and the nameless sprawl located along California State Highway 62 the desert opens up. Out there, where signs of familiar habitation seem to fade from view, a variance appears in the landscape in the form of small, dusty cabins --mostly abandoned--scattered across the landscape. The majority of the existing shacks, historically found throughout the larger region known as the Morongo Basin, lie east of Twentynine Palms in outlying Wonder Valley. The curious presence of these structures indicated that you are entering one of the remaining communities of "jackrabbit" homesteads left in the American West. The mostly derelict structures located among the occasional inhabited ones are the remaining physical evidence of former occupants who were some of the last to receive land from Uncle Sam for a nominal fee through the Small Tract Act of 1938.

One of the many land acts designed to dispose of "useless" federal lands from the public domain, the Small Tract Act authorized the lease of up to five acres of public land for recreational purpose or use as a home, cabin, camp, health convalescent, or business site to able-bodied U.S. citizens. If the applicant made the necessary improvements to his or her claim by constructing a small dwelling within three years of the lease, the applicant could file for a patent--the federal government's form of a deed--after purchasing the parcel for the appraised price (on average $10 to $20 an acre) at the regional land office. This highly popular mid-century homestead movement reflects the quintessential American desire to claim territory and own a piece of the land even if the property in question is virtually "worthless" from an economic perspective.

Although some cabins have been passed down from the original jackrabbit homesteaders to family members for recreation and other purposes, today the majority of the area's jackrabbit homesteads have fallen beyond repair, lending a ghostly and feral presence to the landscape. Others have found new function as primary, full-time residences with modifications, often referred to as "biltmores" by area residents. A small, but growing community of artists and musicians fleeing rising housing prices and general urban ills of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are reclaiming and re-envisioning the structures as artist studios or as creative retreats. Inventive enclaves forming within this geographically defined area are inspired by the Morongo Basin's spacious desert backdrop, its perceived tranquility, and a desire to form a sense of community within a rural environment. Many have migrated to the region with aspirations uncannily akin to the original homesteaders and share similar outlooks or values with them.

In their quest for renewal and reinvention, musicians and other artists have converged on this part of the desert during the past half-century for the creative stimulation that the openness of the place provides. Cosmic, country-rock music icon Gram Parsons, who frequented Joshua Tree often, died there; and other musicians, such as Tim Easton, Gram Rabbit, Ann Magnuson, and Victoria Williams have homes there.

Artists see the desert as a place of refuge and as a source of inspiration. Joshua Tree and its vicinity are home to a well-documented community of creative types. Bob Arnett, Diane Best, Helena Bongartz, Chris Carraher, Shari Elf, Perry Hoffmanm, Mary-Austin Klein, Jack Pierson, Randy Polumbo, and Andrea Zittel are some of the diverse group of artists living throughout the Morongo Basin and who also own cabins originally built by jackrabbit homesteaders. There have been numerous in-depth articles in both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times concerning the artists' presence in the area. Zittel, an internationally-known artist living in Joshua Tree, co-hosts the High Desert Sites, a biannual series of experimental, site-specific art projects, providing an alternative space for both local and out-of-town artists. Helena Bongartz employs the architectural structure of the cabins directly in her art, using the fascade of an abandoned shack near Amboy to project her video work at night.

Historically, the region has also served as a place to build alternative communities, including those of gays and lesbians. It is not known how many gays and lesbians settled in jackrabbit homesteaders, but there is speculation that some are believed to have done so. A long-time lesbian resident refers affectionately to her neighborhood as the "gay ghetto," a tightly knit community home to many practicing artists who have restored cabins into artist studios and very distinctive creative retreats.

As structures for the imagination, the abandoned cabins have become a catalyst for various human projections, where physical and symbolic constructions of space play out over time. If you look closely, you may also find that the cabins reveal a personal text that describes their former occupants in a much more intimate way. Chris Carraher, an artist and cabin dweller in Wonder Valley, asserts: "The homestead cabin is the other icon that figures this place for me. A pervasive relic of a small-time working-class fantasy land-rush, it is the American Dream writ miniature. Abandoned, ghostly, habited, or reclaimed, the cabin is a lone prop that sets the stage of this tremendous theater at the edge of civilization and wildness, a porous vessel through which the desert and human pass, and pass again."

About the Jackrabbit Homestead Project:

Jackrabbit Homestead is a project produced by Kim Stringfellow exploring the cultural legacy of the Small Tract Act in Southern California's Morongo Basin region near Joshua Tree National Park through a physical installation of photographs, maps, documents, and other related materials. Another component of this project is the Web-based multimedia presentation featuring a free, downloadable car audio tour component available at www.jackrabbithomestead.com. The accompanying book, Jackrabbit Homestead: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape, 1938-2008 was published in 2009 by the Center for American Places. The Web site and audio tour were funded by the California Council for the Humanites California Story Fund initiative and were released in March 2009.

Pioneertown Locals Fight Potential Wind Farm

KPSP-TV

Palm Springs - Leaders in our Valley are looking toward clean energy jobs to get people back to work - that means more solar and wind power.

However, just up Highway 62, a group is fighting a potential wind farm in Pioneertown. That's where Portland-based Element Power is already leasing 4,030 acres from the Bureau of Land Management for green-energy production.

The proposed project is still very early in the testing phase - for now the company is only allowed to place four 60-meter tall meteorological testing towers to check the wind viability in the area but local residents are already furious about the project.

Pioneertown local Elyzabeth Turvey built her home overlooking the mesas surrounding the tourist destination.

"It's peaceful, it's beautiful, the stars at night are clear and the shooting stars are amazing - and the views," Turvey said. The meteorological towers have her worried about the development of the land.

"With that, it means roads and fencing and everything else involved with it," Turvery said. "I do not want it to look like Desert Hot Springs."

The project manager from Element Power, Jackie Kossman, says the project still has about two years of testing before the company will decide whether building a farm in the area is worth the investment. Then, it is up to the Bureau of Land Management to approve any projects. While the BLM is allowing Element Power to test the site, any project proposal will be accompanied by environmental reports and public comment.

"People have ample opportunity - well, maybe not ample, but they certainly have an opportunity to contribute their voices to this project," said Mickey Quillman, of the Barstow Field Office.

Quillman says he has been inundated with emails about the project. He encourages locals to get involved in the public process.

Pioneertown will pay for its water

A Letter from Gay Smith
Pioneertown Property Owners Association
Hi-Desert Star

I would like to set the record straight — Pioneertown water users are not going to rip off Yucca Valley.

We have a serious water problem, both quantity and quality, that the county has been trying to solve for the last 10 years. Before that time we had the best water in the whole area, but with prolonged drought, the water table dropped, which caused nitrates, arsenic and heavy metals to leach into the water line that is provided to the community by eight wells, two of which are no longer on line due to the high concentrates of cancer-producing contaminates.

In 1999, we started receiving letters along with our high water bills, warning us not to drink the water.

In 2009, the state Health Department sent the county Special Districts a letter stating that the water situation in Pioneertown must be fixed, or fines will be imposed on the water users.

Many of us, besides paying for water we cannot drink, buy bottled water and/or have reverse-osmosis systems under our sinks. The cost that was stated in a Wednesday Guest Soapbox for a reverse-osmosis system is just the tip of the iceberg. Every six months you have to hire a plumber to have the four filters changed. The filters are not cheap, ranging in price from $30 to $130 for each one.

You must remember, too, that we have to bathe in this water, and we feed it to our pets. We have had many strange illnesses and deaths to our pets that cannot be fully explained. Pioneertown residents have also experienced a high rate of cancer in its citizens for a small community.

The county has looked into dozens of ways to fix our problem. Each has its own problems and can, in many cases, cause more problems than are fixed. They have been working with the Mojave Water Agency to come to a conclusion that would be fair to all.

The people of Pioneertown are willing to pay their fair share. We will be paying for our water to the county as we now do and they in turn will pay the Mojave Water Agency for water, which will be banked in the underground holding area in Landers. The water would then be sent in Hi-Desert water pipes to another location. For the use of the pipes, Hi-Desert would also get some of the water allotted to Pioneertown.

The engineers found that the best route would be over Skyline Ranch Road, but that route was nixed by the residents on Skyline Ranch Road. They did not want the 8-inch pipe to go down the middle of the road, which would be covered and returned to its original state. This route would certainly be much cheaper to the people living in Pioneertown.

Since that route was taken off the table, the alternate route is up Pioneertown Road, which is much more expensive.

The water that we pay for and bank must then be sent to the settling pond on Pioneertown Road and then pumped up the middle of Pioneertown Road. This is a public road and would not be on a preserve or on private land. There will be a small parcel of land on the side of Pioneertown Road owned by the Conservancy that a tank will have to be situated on.…

I don’t think moving from the area is an option for any of us. This is like telling the people of Yucca Valley if they don’t like the sewer system, to move.

We are not about destroying the enviroment. The pipe will be underground and covered. But most important of all, we are not taking water from the people of Yucca Valley and we are paying for what we get.

Flash flood warning issued for Mojave preserve

From Staff Reports
Desert Dispatch

A flash flood warning is in effect for areas within the Mojave National Preserve and the Morongo Basin area until 4:45 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. A flood advisory is also in effect near Joshua Tree National Park.

Flash flood activity from a thunderstorm near Kelso in the preserve was detected at about 3 p.m. Thursday. Motorists along Kelbaker Road south of the Kelso Depot and Cima to the east of Kelso, according to the weather service. Other dirt roads within the Mojave preserve may be washed out.

Most deaths related to flash floods occur in cars. Motorists are warned not to drive cars into areas where water covers the road.

Park battles desert invader

By Kurt Schauppner
Hi-Desert Star

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK — With the annual wildflower season just beginning to blossom, officials from Joshua Tree National Park and the Morongo Basin Conservation Association are taking up arms against a desert invader, the Sahara mustard.

Volunteers are being sought to remove the plant from the Pinto Basin inside the national park.

Work teams will gather at 8 a.m. today and the next two Saturdays in March at the Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Center at 74485 National Park Drive in Twentynine Palms.

Participants are asked to bring water, gloves, snacks, hats, sunscreen, pruners and clippers.

According to the National Park Service, invasive plants like the fast-growing Sahara mustard suppress native wildflowers by taking all the soil moisture needed for spring germination.

They create a continuous fuel source by connecting desert habitats, worsening the size and intensity of wildland fires.

Invasive plants are are considered a poor source of nutrition for native wildlife, including the desert tortoise.

“It’s become a pretty big problem for the last five years,” park science coordinator Victoria Chang said Monday of the Sahara mustard. “We’d like to contain it as much as possible.”

Chang said Sahara mustard tends to germinate before native species.

“They tend to get a head start, which is why we try to battle against it,” Chang said.

Sahara mustard is not the only invasive plant causing worry in the national park.

Chang said park officials also are worried about the tamarisk, a large desert tree that is an opportunistic non-native plant that establishes itself in riparian habitats and sucks up all the water.

“It comes out very easily and will crowd out native plants,” she said, noting that park officials use a cut stump method and federally approved herbicide to attack tamarisks.

“It is an ongoing battle,” she said.

Fountain grass is another invader being battled in the park, Chang said.

The grass is sold as an ornamental plant and spreads after being planted in people’s back yards.

HWY 62 Art Tours start Saturday

By Kurt Schauppner
The Desert Trail

MORONGO BASIN — Art and artists will once again be the focus of attention in the Morongo Basin in late October and early November as the open studio art tours, redubbed the HWY 62 Art Tours, return, thanks in part to the Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council.

“We are trying to make this more recognizable,” Twentynine Palms artist Mita Barter said of the tour’s name change. “A lot of people from out of the area don’t know where the Morongo Basin is.”

A lot of them, however, do know where Highway 62, also known as Twentynine Palms Highway, can be found.

“It is the artery of the Morongo Basin. We like to think of it as the ARTery of the Morongo Basin. It is the road that connects us all,” Barter said, comparing Twentyine Palms Highway to Route 66. “This is our mother road.”

The tours, giving residents and visitors a chance to visit local artists in their studios, will visit the west side of the Morongo Basin, including Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley, Pioneertown, Flamingo Heights, Landers and Joshua Tree, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25.

Venues during the first weekend will include the Purple Agave Art Gallery, Water Canyon Coffee Company, the Wishbone Gallery and the Integratron

Tours will take place in the east side of the Morongo Basin, including Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms and Wonder Valley, the next weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Venues during the second weekend will include the Morongo Basin Life Drawing League, 29 Palms Creative Center and Gallery, 29 Palms Art Gallery and the Wonder Valley Labyrinth.

Some venues, including the Hi-Desert Nature Museum, the Red Arrow Gallery, Crossroads Cafe, Studio Godot and True World Gallery, will take part in the tour on both weekends.

Something new for this year’s tours will be a music component, with musicians playing at many of the studios on the tour with help from local musician and sound engineer Ted Quinn.

Maps to each of the tour venues will be available at the Yucca Valley Chamber of Commerce, 56711 Twentynine Palms Highway, the Joshua Tree Chamber of Commerce, 61325 Twentynine Palms Highway, and the Twentynine Palms Chamber of Commerce, 73660 Civic Center Drive, and in the Hi-Desert Star and Desert Trail.

Tour participants will also have the opportunity to purchase full-color programs for $10 online at www.hwy62arttours.com.

The two-weekend event will also see a celebration of Joshua Tree National Park’s 15th anniversary as a national park from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25 at the Starlite Courtyard in downtown Joshua Tree.

The entrance is between Instant Karma Yoga and the True World Gallery.

Admission is free.

Live music will be played all day and beer and wine will be served after 5 p.m.

Food and beverage vendors will be on hand, or participants are invited to bring takeout from one of the local restaurants.

If you go;

What: HWY 62 Art Tours

When: Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24, 25 and 31 and Nov. 1

Where: Artists studios around the Morongo Basin

Information: http://www.hwy62arttours.com/

Council halts annexation bid

By Rebecca Unger
Hi-Desert Star


Jim Harvey, president of the Homestead Valley Community Council, speaks for the member associations.


YUCCA VALLEY — The Yucca Valley Town Council voted 4-0-1, Mayor Frank Luckino recusing himself, to withdraw its application to include unincorporated Yucca Mesa in its sphere of influence Tuesday night.

For the past year, the Town has faced increasing criticism by Yucca Mesa residents for what they perceived as Yucca Valley’s secrecy in filing the application with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission.

Mesa resident Elizabeth Karman formed the Stop Yucca Mesa Annexation Coalition and peppered the countryside with red “Stop” signs. She urged the mesa and surrounding communities to fight the application process, winning hearts and minds with images of towering streetlights, cheek-to-jowl housing developments and lanes of 18 wheelers where the two-lane blacktop of Old Woman Springs Road fades into the horizon.

Karman said five years ago she and her husband moved to the mesa to avoid the “urbanization” of Yucca Valley.

“In 2008 we were startled to discover that an effort to extend a sphere of influence on the mesa was already under way,” she told the Town Council. “We were offended that relatively few people knew about this.”

The grassroots organizer told of collecting 2,400 signatures against the application and conducting a survey. Karman stated that per the survey, 99.5 percent of the mesa’s residents do not want to be part of the Town of Yucca Valley.

“We don’t want to share your problems by being forced to help solve them,” Karman said.

“We will never want to be a part of you, and we will always reject you as our government. We love our mesa!” she declared.

Her sentiments were expressed by the next several speakers.

The Homestead Valley Community Council, the umbrella organization for citizens of Yucca Mesa, Flamingo Heights, Landers and Johnson Valley, took up the cause, and President Jim Harvey spoke on their behalf Tuesday.

“We believe that putting Yucca Mesa into the Town of Yucca Valley’s designated sphere of influence would have a far-reaching detrimental effect on the collective interests of the four HVCC communities, and on the established effectiveness and cohesiveness of the council that represents them,” said Harvey.

Local Agency Formation Commission Executive Officer Kathleen Rollings-McDonald gave a presentation explaining the effects of a sphere of influence before the meeting was opened for public comment. She stayed to answer technical questions from the council members when public comment closed.

She gave councilman Bill Neeb the details of the complicated voting process that would have to take place before a true annexation of borders would be possible.

“If Yucca Valley removes its application for sphere of influence, does that mean that LAFCO will stop working in that area?” asked Neeb.

“We have to complete the service review and we are mandated by law to do so. We will evaluate that sphere of influence,” Rollings-McDonald replied.

The Town’s involvement in the sphere of influence began when the county consolidated fire districts and county officials suggested Yucca Valley annex the mesa into its sphere of influence to follow other districts’ boundaries.

The council followed the suggestion, much to some mesa residents’ dismay.

“I believe that quality of life has to do with our relationships with our neighbors,” said councilwoman Lori Herbel.

“I’m hopeful that whatever happens, we will all continue to be neighbors, because we don’t know when we’re going to need each other.”

However, Herbel also understood the Yucca Mesa residents want to be left alone. “With that, I would support the withdrawal of the sphere of influence,” she said.

Sympathizing with the public’s general mistrust of government, Mayor Pro Tem Chad Mayes admitted the Town “didn’t do a very good job” of meeting with Yucca Mesa residents to explain the sphere-of-influence process.

“I think it is appropriate at this time for the Town of Yucca Valley to withdraw its application,” Mayes said in agreement with Herbel.

Luckino was absent from the proceedings, calling it a “perceived conflict of interest.” He is the chief financial officer of the Hi-Desert Water District, and the Town’s sphere of influence would have included the area currently serviced by the water district.

“It’s not illegal; it’s more how it’s perceived,” Luckino said.

Air pollution linked to increased fire threat

Fire-fueling plants thrive on nitrogen-enriched soil

Air pollution may indirectly contribute to the increase of wildfires in the desert. Fire-stoking weeds now thrive in the desert soil, enhanced by the nitrogen in the soil deposited by air pollution. (Jay Calderon, Desert Sun file photo)

Keith Matheny
The Desert Sun

Air pollution from engine exhaust — largely carried here from Los Angeles by the wind — isn't just harming people's health. It's also pushing native plant species toward extinction in and around the Coachella Valley, and indirectly contributing to increased wildfires in the desert.

Edith Allen, a University of California, Riverside botany professor, has spent years working with a team studying the impacts of engine exhaust pollution on native and invasive plant species in parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including the Coachella Valley.

The research has found that car exhaust is inadvertently making plant fertilizer — nitrates, a form of the naturally occurring nitrogen that plants can readily use for food, Allen said.

The nitrates drop out of the atmosphere and onto the soil, where rain allows plants to absorb it through their roots, Allen said.

“Up to a point it's a good thing,” she said. “But we also know that weeds take up nitrogen. They're better at taking it up than crop plants or wildland plants.”

The nitrogen is naturally flushed away over time in areas where it rains frequently, Allen said. But in the desert, with only a handful of rainy days in a year, the nitrogen is able to accumulate, she said.

Invasive weeds were accidentally introduced to the region through movement of people, crop seeds and livestock over centuries, Allen said.

“In the desert, they are from the dry regions of Europe and North Africa,” Allen said.

Exhaust-related air pollution is helping the invasive weeds to flourish.

“Because they take up nitrogen more rapidly and grow more rapidly, they produce more seeds,” Allen said. “They are more competitive than the native plants and they replace the native plants.

“Areas that once were covered with native vegetation — including areas of the Coachella Valley — are covered with with invasive plants from the Mediterranean.”

Change in fire cycle

In the western valley and areas in and around Joshua Tree National Park, the plants thriving on the exhaust-provided nitrates are often invasive grasses.

“Those exotic grasses are the ones that are effecting the fire ecology in the park,” said Joe Zarki, a longtime ranger at Joshua Tree.

“They create carpets out in the desert where previously we had a lot of open, bare ground. When they die every year, they create fuel.”

It's leading to wildfires that are more intense and happen more often, experts said.

The desert burned “very infrequently” over hundreds of thousands of years, Allen said. But the cycle changed around the mid-1980s, she said, as air pollution worsened in the Los Angeles area and moved into the region.

“Now what we see is some areas of the desert burning whenever there is a wet year,” she said.

“There are areas that have burned three times since the 1980s. That's not part of our natural fire cycle. There's something different going on.”

The most severe of the more frequent desert fires was the Sawtooth-Millard fire in July 2006.

The lightning-started fires combined to burn more than 85,000 acres in the Morongo Basin near Yucca Valley and in the San Gorgonio Wilderness north of Cabazon. They led to a man's death, cost more than $21 million to fight and nearly $12 million in property damage.

In July 2005, the Mojave National Preserve, near the old mining town of Kelso north of Twentynine Palms, had its largest wildfire in modern history, a lightning-started blaze that burned more than 70,000 acres.

Cameron Barrows, a research ecologist at the UC Riverside Center for Conservation Biology, sees a clear connection between engine exhaust pollution and the more intense, more frequent wildfires.

“You end up with very high concentrations of nitrogen from the Banning Pass to Snow Creek and the Desert Hot Springs area, and more towards Joshua Tree” National Park, he said.

“Not surprisingly, that's where most of our wildfires have been.”

A vicious cycle

The pollution-created nitrogen in soils, the invasive grasses and wildfires all create a vicious cycle that works against native desert species — Joshua trees, junipers, pinyon pines, chaparral, creosote bush and more.

“Once the fires go through, the desert vegetation is not adapted to fire,” Allen said.

“It takes a long time to recover, and in fact it does not recover. What it turns into is a greater abundance of invasive grasses.”

Zarki notices the trend at Joshua Tree National Park.

“We're seeing a type conversion from older, more mature type plants to exotic grasses and annual wildflowers,” he said.

“There are unknown ecological consequences to that. If you're a plant or animal that's best adapted to junipers and pinyon pines, and they're getting burned up and not getting a chance to re-establish themselves, there is a significant impact.”

The phenomenon isn't isolated to the Coachella Valley and high desert.

“It's an international problem,” said Andrzej Bytnerowicz a senior scientist studying air pollution with the U.S. Forest Service's Southwest Research Station in Riverside.

“We have huge problems in China, for instance, related to air pollution acting as plant fertilizer.

“I think we have to be much better in publicizing what we know. Ozone has been discussed for three, four, five decades. But nitrogen deposition, it's been maybe talked about for 10 years.”

Though the long-term ramifications of the pollution's effect on desert plant life look dire, Allen said she remains hopeful that the situation will turn around.

“Now that we have a federal administration in Washington that is willing to allow California to take the lead, I think air pollution issues are going to get better,” she said. “I think the air is going to get cleaner and some of these issues about invasive grasses and fire are going to get better.”