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.

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.”

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.

County plans to pipe water into Pioneertown

Yucca Valley district may supply neighbors

By Jimmy Biggerstaff
Hi-Desert Star




Project areas of two proposed pipelines to bring water to Pioneertown.




PIONEERTOWN — The environmental impacts of a proposal to supply water to this community’s 114 water customers was discussed at a Pioneertown Property Owners Association meeting at the church on Mane Street April 7.

Guest speaker Jim Oravets, San Bernardino County engineering manager, began his presentation by outlining the well-known challenges this community has with its water supply.

There are two, Oravets explained: quality and quantity.

Of eight existing wells, two are unusable, one has very high arsenic and fluoride levels and the remainder exceed the maximum contaminate level for arsenic or uranium.

Additionally, there is an insufficient supply to serve the town. Regulations require that the county provide the maximum day demand with the largest production well out of service.

The maximum capacity of wells here is 28,000 gallons per day, with a required maximum day demand of 35,000 gallons per day. However, well pumps turn off after two to three hours.

No new water meters have been sold here for a decade. New homes either drill their own wells, which further depletes the scant, poor municipal supply, or purchase hauled water.

The county is required by law to provide water for its residents. Herein lies the challenge — where to lay the pipeline and from where to import the water?

Three options have been explored:

• Run a pipeline up Pioneertown Road and pump in Hi-Desert Water District water;


• Run a pipeline across Skyline Ranch Road and use water from the Reche Basin in Landers; or


• Sink a well in the Pipes Canyon Wildlands Conservancy property.

A fourth option generally considered infeasible is to treat the existing supply with in-home, under-the-counter filtration systems.

Regarding drilling in the Pipes Canyon Preserve, Oravits said, “There were some differences that could not be resolved and the offer was taken off the table.”

Skyline is favored

The county advocates the Skyline Ranch pipeline and pump station, which staff says entails putting down about three miles of line and would produce a projected 100 gallons per minute of water imported from Landers.

According to Oravets, most comments sent to the county supported this option.

Officials are seeking grant money for the project, which will comply with California Environmental Quality Act requirements. Herein lay a rub with residents vis-à-vis the county.

Oravets figuratively tip-toed through several common questions posed about environmental concerns:

• Will Skyline Ranch Road remain open during pipeline installation?


• Are easements required? [Yes, or condemnation by eminent domain.]


• Will this open up Skyline Ranch area to development? [No.]


• Does the project give Hi-Desert Water District 200 gallons per minute to get Pioneertown residents 100 gallons per minute? [The additional capacity is for emergencies.]


• Will the water be drinkable? [Yes.]


• Will Hi-Desert Water District control Pioneertown’s water supply? [Pioneertown would contract with HDWD to provide water.]

The water will be drinkable, Oravits said, eliciting murmurs of approval from the audience.

The county also supports a proposal for recharging State Water Project water into Pipes Wash, a project deemed by some officials as necessary to export water from the Reche Subbasin to supply drinking water to Pioneertown.

“Our basic issue is exportation of water out of Reche Subbasin violates state law,” Marina West, general manager of Bighorn-Desert View Water Agency, said after the meeting.

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.

The desert and green power: A love triangle

The pristine Mojave. Clean energy for a city that needs it. Do environmentalists have to choose?

By Michael Martinez
Chicago Tribune

PIONEERTOWN, Calif. — April Sall is a keeper of the Mojave Desert and its mountains, tending a private conservancy in the same canyon where her grandmother homesteaded in the 1920s.

Once considered wasteland, this expanse of sunshine and wind is now a prized battleground between unlikely opponents. For generations, conservationists like Sall's family have guarded the landscape, but 21st Century demands for renewable energy are threatening to crash into the pristine desert, now deemed a gold mine for solar, wind and geothermal farms.

Unlike offshore drilling and other oil and gas ventures in which developers and environmentalists are obvious adversaries, renewable energy is increasingly pitting two kinds of green advocates against each other as the nation seeks alternative sources in the face of record oil prices and global warming, both sides say.

The issue bears upon building a new infrastructure—such as gargantuan transmission towers or wind turbines—to connect remote areas where clean energy is being harvested while conservationists vigilantly protect the land and its life.

Big plans, big stakes

Such conflicts have played out in the Midwest, but the stakes are acute in California, where new state laws demand industry cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and require private utilities to generate 20 percent renewable energy by 2010.

Near Pipes Canyon—where Sall, a preserve manager for the non-profit Wildlands Conservancy, resides—a group led by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is considering building a leg of transmission lines between a substation outside Palm Springs and one in Hesperia, about 80 miles away.

Called Green Path North, the lines would ultimately connect Los Angeles and other communities to the Salton Sea's 2,000 megawatts of geothermal power—enough to juice 2 million homes—as well as solar and wind plants. The utility group will select from six potential routes, including one as long as 313 miles, but a dispute over a "preferred" route through Pipes Canyon and the broader Morongo Basin has residents fuming.

"There's some conflict due to what's been described as a feeding frenzy for renewable energy in the desert," Sall, 28, said as she walked through a landscape of mesas and the Sawtooth Mountains that surround Pipes Canyon and adjacent Pioneertown. The setting is so evocative of the Old West that Roy Rogers and other cowboy actors built Pioneertown in 1946, and Hollywood made more than 200 movies and TV serials here, such as "The Gene Autry Show," "The Cisco Kid" and " Annie Oakley."

"If you're going to destroy conservation and pristine lands, then yeah, how green is it in the end?" Sall asked. She favors cities building solar plants on warehouse roofs, for example, but the utilities say the desert's geothermal fields provide a steady stream of power and do not rely on weather conditions as solar and wind power do.

Still, the dispute has led to tense meetings, and residents set up a Web site condemning the renewable-energy transmission lines through their communities.

No easy answer

As Congress and presumptive presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama struggle with the nation's energy crisis, developing alternative energy poses conflicts too.

"We're really at the forefront of a discussion that is certainly going to be repeated throughout the state of California and nationally as well," said David Nahai, general manager and chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The nation's biggest municipal utility, the department has set a goal of providing 35 percent renewable energy by 2020, up from the current 8 percent.

"All of us are going to face this challenge of where to build transmission corridors in a way that is going to impact the local communities as little as possible," he said.

The farther the green source is from urban users, the greater the risk of controversy, industry leaders say.

"It's interesting that we consider some of these areas as pristine and we don't want to put turbines or solar or transmission lines there, but they are suitable for [housing] development. There's sort of an irony there," said Mick Sagrillo, president of the non-profit Midwest Renewable Energy Association.

In the Mojave's Morongo Basin, open space advocates fear transmission towers—as high as 220 feet, with rights of way as wide as 330 feet—would endanger a wildlife corridor. But Los Angeles officials said they haven't determined tower sizes.

The California Desert Coalition, which opposes the towers, says the Los Angeles utility identified the Morongo Basin as the "preferred" route last year when helicopters landed on private property and the utility's crews laid survey disks and markers in the area. Later the utility apologized, calling it a "premature" move.

Residents want the transmission lines confined to an existing Southern California Edison corridor along Interstate Highway 10, but those lines are running at capacity, Los Angeles officials said.

Nahai, who joined the Los Angeles utility last year after the controversial helicopter surveys, acknowledges mistrust among angry residents, whom he visited last month in a meeting that was heated and raucous.

"We need to continuously talk to people and need to gain their trust and confidence," Nahai said.

Blazes leaving scars on parks

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise



Pipes Canyon after the Sawtooth fire. Some of the pinyon-pines here were over 1,200 years old. Nearly all were killed. The Joshua trees were hundreds of years old.

More than four years after the Old Fire swept through the San Bernardino Mountains, a major campground and trail at a state park remain closed; sixteen months after the Sawtooth Complex Fire raged across the desert near Yucca Valley, a popular hiking and equestrian preserve has yet to re-open.

And another state park, nestled against the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains, was badly damaged by last year's Esperanza Fire before the public even got a chance to see the scenic landscape that was awaiting groundwater contamination cleanup.

And more recently, the Slide and two Butler fires near Fawnskin and Running Springs damaged campgrounds and hiking trails, including a five-mile segment of the Pacific Crest Trail that will remain closed until the spring when debris and burned trees will be removed, said Paul Bennett, a recreational officer with the forest's mountaintop district.

Fires that have marched across the desert and mountains in recent years have severely scarred popular Inland recreation areas, often requiring costly and lengthy recoveries. Since the 2003 Old Fire, more than 100,000 acres of parkland, forest and preserves have been damaged, prompting at least $5.1 million in repairs.

At Silverwood Lake State Recreation Area alone, the damage toll was $3 million from the 2003 Old Fire and the floods that followed. Bridges, restrooms, sewer lines, roads, guardrails, a fishing dock, the Pacific Crest Trial and other paths were damaged, and major construction projects continue today.

Officials at Mojave National Preserve in northeastern San Bernardino County spent $1.1 million fixing gravel roads that were damaged by floods that followed the Hackberry Complex Fire, which burned for six days in June 2005 and swallowed more than 70,000 acres in the preserve, said Larry Whalon, the park's deputy superintendent.

At Pipes Canyon Preserve east of Pioneertown, the damage was more physical than financial. The Sawtooth Fire so badly charred pinyon pines, some dating back more than 1,000 years, that they may not sprout new life. And the junipers and Joshua trees may not fare much better.

A graveyard of hundreds if not thousands of blackened Joshua trees, some with their weakened limbs bending downward in a bleak landscape, remind April Sall of what was once a thriving preserve for hikers and equestrians at the crossroads of two ecosystems: the Mojave Desert and the eastern San Bernardino Mountains.

"It was a really neat canyon," said Sall, who manages the preserve owned by the Wildlands Conservancy, a nonprofit in Oak Glen. Sall said she expected a wildfire to some day hit the preserve, but not one that would destroy 90 percent of it.

"We expected the fire to be more patchy and more mosaic, but it was total devastation," she said of the July 2006 fire.

Costly repairs

At Silverwood Lake, crews are working to replace four large bridges that link a three-mile, dirt trail skirting the reservoir for bikers and hikers. The trail has been closed since the Old Fire burned through four years ago. At $697,000, the bridge project is the costliest repair.

"Without this bridge, it doesn't allow for access to some very beautiful parts of the park," said park superintendent Kevin Forrester as he stood by one of the wooden bridges under repair.

The area known as Miller Canyon surrounds an offshoot of the lake and the trail is at the base of steep hills marked by manzanitas, some whose limbs are still blackened. It will probably be another year before the area is reopened.

"The area is very unstable," Forrester said. "We still have a lot of work to do."

He is hoping for some good rains this winter to shore up the hillsides with some vegetation to keep debris from sliding down.

Forrester said it's frustrating to keep closed portions of one the region's few state parks, given the burgeoning population in the area. But, he said, they've done their best as much of the funding trickles in from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Across the lake in Cleghorn Canyon, an equestrian campground has remained closed since 2003, when fast-moving flames severely damaged the camp's bathroom and showers. One benefit of designing a new structure, Forrester said, is that it will be accessible to people with handicaps.

Another state park in Potrero Canyon south of Beaumont will open in the near future once groundwater contamination, a remnant of a now-closed rocket testing facility, is cleaned up. The cleanup was underway before last October's Esperanza Fire burned nearly 90 percent of the Potrero unit of San Jacinto Wildlife Area, said Scott Sewell, wildlife habitat supervisor for the California Department of Fish and Game.

A slice of Old California with its large oaks, creeks and boulder-studded hills, the park's trees and shrubs are recovering with the help of cool, moist weather that drifts in from the coast, Sewell said.

"As an outdoor enthusiast, I really want to see it open for nature walks, birding, or mountain biking, horseback riding, that's the enthusiast in me," Sewell said. As a supervisor, he said, "we want to make sure it's completely safe."

Hard to heal

At the Pipes Canyon Preserve, recently renamed the Pioneertown Mountains Preserve, it's a seven-mile trudge through badly burned areas to get to the 10 percent of the 33,000 acres that escaped the flames.

In a dry creek bed at the head of several hiking and horse trails surrounded by still-charred hillsides, a few orange spikes of Indian paintbrush and the orange-red blooms of a California fuchsia are the few bits of color and natural life that have reemerged.

Like elsewhere, scant rain and strong winds have made it tough for seedlings to take hold, Sall said.

"Mostly we have to let nature take its course," she said, "there's not a lot of active restoration we can do."

The preserve staff already did what active restoration was possible. Crews planted 400 Joshua trees, Mojave yuccas and chollas along roads and by the preserve headquarters so as not to disturb native seed banks in the open land and what might grow back naturally. The trees were transplanted from housing developments in Yucca Valley where it's illegal to chop them down, said Robert Kirschmann, the city's associate planner.

Ranger Christopher Siddall drives around hauling a 500-gallon water tank so he can water the transplants with a hose.

Sall said she hopes winter rains will be enough to spur the re-growth of groundcover so the preserve can reopen in the spring. If not, the preserve may open then for limited use on weekends, she said.

Whalon, at the Mojave National Preserve, said a good dose of winter rain is also needed there to heal the desert, which is easy to scar and hard to heal.

"Winter rain tends not to run off," he said. "The (summer) monsoon rains are fine, but they tend to erode more."

Grim Toll

Sall's eyes nearly tear up and her voice chokes with emotion when talking about the fire's grim toll: dozens of animal carcasses -- jackrabbits, coyotes and others -- that she had to pick up herself. Her ties to the land are deep: her grandmother homesteaded the land in the late 1920s and her father was raised there.

The name was changed to the Pioneertown Mountains Preserve about five months ago after land in and around the town were donated to the Wildlands Conservancy, enlarging the preserve beyond Pipes Canyon, said David Myers, the conservancy's executive director.

"Pioneertown is going through a hard time," Myers said, "so we thought it would be good for the esprit de corps to call it that." Some 55 homes in the Yucca Valley area and Pioneertown, originally built in the 1940s as a movie set for Westerns, were destroyed in the Sawtooth Fire.

It's difficult not to reopen the preserve to the public, Sall said, conceding there has been some pressure from hikers and equestrians wanting to use the trails that wind through streams, desert willows, cottonwoods, and scrub oaks and ascend to Onyx Summit in the San Bernardino Mountains.

"But given the devastation," she said, "it's best to let this place heal a little longer."

Video: Restoration continues at Pioneertown Mountains Preserve following the 2006 Sawtooth Fire.

Coalition gathers support for stopping Green Path

Hi-Desert Star



YUCCA VALLEY — A community-wide public meeting to present plans to stop the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Green Path north corridor project will be held at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the Yucca Valley Community Center.

The California Desert Coalition is holding the meeting and asks everyone to join the group to provide input and learn more about Green Path North.

For information, call the CDC at 365-0900 or visit http://www.cadesertco.org/.

The Green Path North is one of several alternatives contemplated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to transport energy into L.A. This particular route would cut through Desert Hot Springs, Big Morongo Preserve, Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Pioneertown, Pipes Canyon, Flamingo Heights and Landers on its way to Hesperia, according to the CDC.

In July, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power submitted applications to the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service for right-of-way access on federal lands for the power path.

At that time, the utility’s Commission President H. David Nahai said a public meeting would be held in the Hi-Desert in later phases of the proposal process.

He also disclosed the estimated date for the power line’s operation is November 2013.

Partners in the venture are the City of Los Angeles, the Imperial Irrigation District — where geothermal energy is being produced and where production of solar energy is proposed — the Boston, Mass.-based Citizens Energy Corporation and the L.A. Department of Water and Power.

It is the position of the CDC that the Green Path North corridor is unnecessary, inappropriate and will negatively affect the Hi-Desert’s quality of life.

Video: Record Wildfires Ravage Mojave Desert

The deserts of Pipes Canyon in southern California's Mojave Desert had never had a recorded fire until this year.

But this summer about 90 percent of the canyon was devastated when lightning sparked a raging blaze.

As fires become more frequent in the historically fire-free Mojave, experts say that a variety of factors, including the introduction of alien grasses, might be fanning the flames.

Witness the destruction in Pipes Canyon, and learn about the unprecedented issues that are creating a recipe for disaster in the desert.

Desert Fires' Damage Will Last

It will take centuries for plant life to recover. Many experts say invasive vegetation is largely to blame.

By Janet Wilson, Times Staff Writer
ktla 5 [Los Angeles, CA]


Sawtooth fire as it moves through the Morongo Valley desert landscape.

April Sall stood in the charred remnants of a Joshua tree forest, bark peeling off melted black limbs. Above her, ridges once thick with 1,000-year-old piñon and juniper pines were scorched bedrock and stumps.

More than 90% of the surrounding Pipes Canyon Preserve was consumed in last month's Sawtooth blaze. It was one of half a dozen fast-moving fires this summer that burned 65,000 acres of the Mojave Desert, fueling debate over whether the desert is burning more frequently and explosively as a result of invasive weeds, smog, development and climate change.

"It's heartbreaking to see," said Sall, a biologist who manages the preserve and whose grandmother homesteaded the land a century ago. "We'll never see those piñon or juniper trees again in our lifetimes, nor will our children, nor will their grandchildren. It's a bitter pill…. This land isn't meant to burn."

Many scientists agree, saying the recent blazes offer fresh evidence that deserts across the Southwest are undergoing a profound shift, as ancient native pine, shrubs and cactuses give way to young, highly flammable weeds and grasses.

"Right now we're losing very large pieces of landscape," said Todd Esque, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Henderson, Nev., who studies the cause and effect of fires in the desert. "It's happening in Joshua Tree National Park, it's happening in Mojave National Preserve … up in southwestern Utah … and in Arizona. We lost 750,000 acres of desert to fire in Nevada alone last summer."

This summer, five blazes have seared parts of Joshua Tree, where a fire only every few years was the norm for the last 50 years.

Esque and other researchers say that unlike forests and chaparral, the sparsely vegetated desert is not meant to burn frequently.

"The public has come to understand that fire is a necessary part of the life of forests," Esque said. "That is not the case with deserts. We have a major problem going on."

A vocal minority disagrees, contending there is no clear-cut evidence of far-reaching change. They blame this year's fires on bumper crops of wildflowers nourished by heavy spring rains two years ago. According to the theory, dried remnants of the prolific blooms fueled a 50,000-acre fire in the Mojave National Preserve last summer and in this year's conflagrations.

"The winter of 2004-05 was the wettest ever in 100 years of recorded data in the desert. We had a phenomenal crop of annual native wildflowers, and it was dry the next year and it stayed there," said Richard Minnich, a professor of Earth sciences at UC Riverside. "It's flash fuel of 1 to 2 tons per acre. What's really scary is, there's still a lot of it out there."

Scientists do agree that it will take centuries, if not millenniums, for the desert to recover.

"It won't be on a timeline we humans would like, but it will happen," said Tasha LaDoux, Joshua Tree National Park's botanist.

Inside the park, new growth provides fodder for the debate over whether the fragile, arid landscape is undergoing dramatic change.

At the scene of a 1995 fire, not a single juniper or piñon pine seedling has come up after 11 years. But healthy, 3-foot "pups" have sprouted from the roots of once seemingly dead Joshua trees. The pups may or may not survive, scientists say, because in drought years they may be gnawed by thirsty rodents and ground squirrels. Meanwhile, native apricot mallow, bright-green cheesebush and golden California marigold are blooming even in August.

Along a sandy road in the western section, the scene of a 1999 blaze that scorched 14,000 acres, a beige sea of grasses spreads beneath burned Joshua trees bleached silver by sun and rain. The new growth consists of native bunch grasses and a pair of noxious, ankle-scratching weeds.

These two nonnatives, known as red brome and cheatgrass, form highly flammable carpets between native shrubs and trees, and many scientists believe they are the main culprits behind increasing fires.

"These invasive grasses fill in the spaces between the desert plants. They carry the flame through at a very high rate, and much hotter. It spreads a lot faster," Sall said.

The weeds are also bad for animals.

"The ranchers call it cheatgrass because for the first few years it's good grass, but after that it cheats the cattle of their nutrients," Esque said.

Native to Mediterranean Europe and Asia, the weeds were probably blown across the West by the wind, tracked in by hikers' boots and construction equipment, and excreted by livestock. Researchers at UCLA and elsewhere say the weeds appear to capture nitrogen from smog-laden air more readily than native plants, eventually choking them out.

But Minnich of UC Riverside said years of drought had actually caused most of the red brome to die out, while annual native grasses remain safely stored in natural seed banks on adjoining, unburned islands of habitat.

Richard Halsey couldn't disagree more.

"You're going to see a solid blanket of yellow felt next year," he said, meaning a blanket of dried nonnative grasses. Halsey, a former biology teacher who is now a researcher and firefighter, was asked by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to evaluate the role of vegetation in the Sawtooth fire.

"No one else on the planet agrees with Rich Minnich," Halsey said. "I went out there during the fire and after the fire and looked…. Not only didn't I see the volumes of wildflowers he's talking about, but in the burn area specifically…. I had a hard time finding natives. The predominant fire fuel mix was cheatgrass and red brome."

Robert Webb, a hydrologist with the Geological Survey's Tucson office who has studied botany in the Mojave for 30 years, laughed when he heard about the debate.

"The truth is, they may all be right. The desert is very complicated. There is incredible local variability," he said. Echoing other scientists, he said, "Minnich often heaves these ideas out there that are different…. It's healthy, it makes us all look very carefully at our own data."

Webb is writing a paper with other researchers that looks at three post-fire scenarios for the Mojave, all plausible, all different. Rather than focusing on Joshua trees or pines, they studied ancient black brush, a gray-brown shrub that has evolved to withstand desert temperatures and scarce rain.

A single bush can survive thousands of years. But it is highly flammable, proof to Webb that fire is not natural in the desert. One scenario does show nonnatives replacing black brush and causing more frequent fires. But he said data gathered so far made that scenario "only slightly more likely" than two others in which black brush grows back.

"Some of those Joshua trees may sprout too," Wall said, referring to the Pipes Canyon Preserve. "They're an amazing tree."

But others say such a destructive fire in a preserve like Pipes Canyon did lasting harm.

Tom Scott, a zoologist affiliated with UC Berkeley and UC Riverside, said the canyon preserve encompassed "one of the greatest transition zones in North America. If you look at where it starts way up on top of the San Bernardino Mountains, and then descends down to the desert, you're covering this incredible array of habitats, from montane forest down to low desert."

Scott said there were probably smaller pockets of plants and animals that evolved over millenniums in nooks in the preserve, only to be wiped out by this summer's catastrophic fire.

"If we've introduced grasses that are driving fire much further than it used to go, and you've got a lot of these small patches that are really unique in terms of species, then you're erasing them with large conflagrations," he said.

Esque worries about vulnerable desert species such as the reclusive desert tortoise, Scott's oriole, logger-headed shrike and least Bell's vireo songbirds, as mature shrubs that offered shelter are replaced with grasses.

"When you have less cover, with that goes less diversity," he said.

Webb is most concerned about warming temperatures in the desert. Besides causing less winter snow, warmer weather generates more summer thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Lightning started all the fires that ravaged Pipes Canyon Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park this summer.

Others said urbanization, motorized recreation and military activities were also taking a toll on the natural desert.

"What will be the one thing that does in the desert as we know it? It's not one thing. It's the onslaught of all these things," Esque said. He said there was little that could be done to turn back the clock. Many nonnative weeds are too far spread to be dug out, while native seeds are not widely available and can cost millions of dollars to gather and plant.

Beyond planting a bit of native seed, Sall said, she plans to let Pipes Canyon come back on its own, however long it takes.

Greg Hill of the Bureau of Land Management's Palm Springs office said his agency will take a similar approach to other burned areas in the desert.

"We'll let it regenerate naturally," he said. "It's the largest big chunk of undeveloped land left in Southern California."