Proposed Energy Corridors Threaten 1000 Acres of California Public Lands

Public Meeting Scheduled for January 10 in Ontario, CA

NewsBlaze.com


Denver (January 10, 2008) - The Mojave National Preserve, the California Desert Conservation Area, and the Pacific Crest, California, and Old Spanish trails could all be home to gas, oil and hydrogen pipelines and electric transmission facilities if the Department of Energy's plan to designate energy corridors though public land in 11 Western states moves ahead. Proposed corridors would also cut through or run along the border of many areas proposed for inclusion in the National Wilderness Preservation System.

"Although the Energy Department has made significant improvements in their proposed corridor designations, the proposed corridors still lack thorough consideration of the likely damage to federal lands and other places," said The Wilderness Society's Nada Culver, who has tracked the process since it began. "The proposal would have stark impacts for California's special places. Here and elsewhere, the Energy Department needs to come up with alternatives to minimize the number of corridors and maximize use of renewable energy, and it should include firm requirements to limit all projects to designated corridors."

The U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Interior are conducting a series of public meetings in January and February on the West-wide Energy Corridor Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). The first California meetings were Tuesday in Sacramento and the next will be tomorrow (Thursday, January 10) in Ontario CA at 2-5 p.m. and 6-8 p.m.

"This proposal threatens to undermine years of conservation efforts to protect the California Desert Conservation Area and other wild places throughout the state," said Brent Schoradt of the California Wilderness Coalition. "The draft plan fails to provide conservation guidelines or protection for California's treasured wild places."

The November 2007 "West-wide Energy Corridor Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement" (DPEIS) was issued by the Departments of Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Defense as outlined in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The plan proposes more than 6,000 miles of energy corridors through public land in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. Unless otherwise specified, the corridors would have a width of 3,500 feet (2/3 of a mile).

The agencies' west-wide proposed plan threatens to carve huge habitat-fragmenting corridors through hundreds of thousands of acres of public land, including national recreation areas, monuments, wildlife refuges, and more. The corridors are planned to "accommodate multiple pipelines (such as for oil, gas, or hydrogen), electricity transmission lines, and related infrastructure, such as access and maintenance roads, compressors, pumping stations, and other structures." Once these corridors are designated, energy companies will then push to "connect the dots" between far-flung segments of public land over thousands of miles of private and state lands, such as state parks and wildlife areas.

Public Meetings
January 10 at 2-5 p.m. and 6-8 p.m.
Ayres Hotel & Suites
1945 East Hold Blvd.
Ontario CA

Source: The Wilderness Society

Protection sought for Joshua Tree wilderness

Diana Marrero
Desert Sun Washington Bureau




Jay Calderon, The Desert Sun
Proposed legislation would expand the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument and designate nearly 40,000 acres in Joshua Tree National Park for conservation.

WASHINGTON - About 200,000 acres of public land in and around the Coachella Valley would be designated as wilderness areas under a bill the House is considering. Such a designation provides the highest level of protection under federal law.

"These areas are an impressive example of our continually changing landscape, as the San Andreas fault quite literally cuts through the region, creating unique peaks and views of the nearby Salton Sea," Rep. Mary Bono said during a hearing Tuesday in front of the House Natural Resources Committee.

Bono, R-Palm Springs, the main House sponsor, is working with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., on the legislation.

The legislation would expand the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument and designate nearly 40,000 acres in Joshua Tree National Park for conservation. Another 40,000 acres in the park would be designated as potential wilderness until the National Park Service settles property claims.

The lands provide habitat for threatened Peninsular bighorn sheep, the desert tortoise and bald eagles.

The bill also would designate 31 miles of four California rivers as wild and scenic: the North Fork of the San Jacinto River, Fuller Mill Creek, Palm Canyon Creek and Bautista Creek.

"These are places of respite from the fast pace of modern life," said Geary Hund, the associate director of the Coachella Valley Mountains Conservancy. The Idyllwild resident testified in front of the committee.

As the bill moves through the House, local advocates continue efforts to ward off development by buying remaining parcels of land within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto monument that are still owned privately.

Bill opponents say the designation would restrict people from using bicycles and other, mechanized vehicles in those areas and could make it tougher for land managers to control fires near homes. Bono said she has excluded certain lands for protections to take those things into account.

The Partnership for America, a conservative nonprofit that works on natural resource policies, said in a letter to the panel that Bono's efforts do not address their concerns. The group is headed by former Rep. Richard Pombo, who drew ire from environmentalists when he was chairman of the Natural Resources Committee until he lost his seat last year. Members of off-road vehicle and motorcycle groups signed the letter.

The bill was one of five the committee considered Tuesday. Together, they would add a half-million acres in five states - Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Oregon - to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Hund said the monument and other wilderness areas in Riverside County need protection.

"Lands such as these are increasingly rare in our world and we must make every effort to preserve them," he said.