How one man plans to make billions selling Mojave desert water

Scott Slater wants to pump billions of gallons to LA and other drought-hit cities - and make $2.4bn in the process

Scott Slater’s Cadiz Inc plans to tap the eastern Mojave aquifer of water he says would otherwise evaporate. (Cadiz Inc.)

Rupert Neate
The Guardian

Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814bn gallons of water from under the Mojave desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2bn (£1.3bn) doing so.

“Yes, it’s quite a lot of money,” Slater, the 57-year-old chief executive of Cadiz Inc, says as he stands in front of a scale model of the project in the foyer of the company’s office on the 28th and top floor of a LA city center office block. “It’s worth whatever the community who wants the water is willing to pay for it to meet their demands.”

Cadiz owns water rights associated with 45,000 acres of land along Route 66, about 75 miles north-east of Palm Springs. The holdings were built up by the company’s founder, Keith Brackpool, a British horseracing impresario, who came to the US after admitting having breached financial disclosure laws in the UK in the 1980s.

The company biggest investors, some of whom have been waiting for Cadiz’s water to flow to LA for more than a decade, include the New York hedge fund Water Asset Management and Crispin Odey’s Odey Asset Management in London.

Slater has already got contracts to sell the water for $960 an acre ft (the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of land in a foot of water). That works out at $2.4bn over the 50 years of the company’s water extraction deal with San Bernardino County. His problem, however, is convincing politicians, regulators and the public that pumping water 200 miles from the desert aquifer to LA is a good idea.

Scott Slater, CEO Cadiz Inc

“People see this development as a private sector initiative and they have a very visceral, negative reaction to that,” Slater says.

The price of water in California has been steadily rising, as has demand from a growing population, while the state struggles with four years of severe drought. Slater says water is worth as much as $2,200 an acre ft in San Diego, where it is shortest supply. A decade ago the price was less than $100, he says.

Drought is good news for Slater and Cadiz. “In a condition of scarcity, all water, all water that’s reliable, becomes more valuable,” Slater says. The company’s share price spikes every time a drought emergency is declared, but the shares have still lost more than 80% of their value since 2007 because of repeated regulatory setbacks in Cadiz’s quest to tap the eastern Mojave aquifer.

In the latest setback, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ruled that the company cannot lay a 43-mile pipeline alongside an existing railway line to transport water to the Colorado river aqueduct and on to the cities of the Californian coast. It means Cadiz will have to seek federal approval for the pipeline, which will trigger a long and expensive environmental impact review.

Slater, who was a water rights lawyer for 30 years before taking over as Cadiz’s CEO in 2013, is not giving up on the railway pipeline without a fight. He accuses the BLM of misinterpreting 19th century railway law, and says: “If we can’t get them to follow the law, we’ll do what we need to do, pursue administrative and judicial remedies.”

He says the logistics of the project are pretty simple, and that the company could start pumping enough water to supply 400,000 people by 2017. “I know it will work,” he says, dressed in an purple open-collar Burberry shirt and jeans.

Cadiz has plenty of enemies - environmentalists, local ranchers, protectionists and Native American tribes - but none more fierce than Senator Dianne Feinstein.

“I remain concerned the Cadiz project could damage the Mojave desert beyond repair and believe the BLM decision to deny the right of way is the right one,” said the veteran Democrat, who in 1994 help create the Mojave national preserve. She believes it could be threatened by the Cadiz project. “The bottom line is that right now we need more responsibility in how we use our water, not less.”

David Lamfrom, the director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s California desert and wildlife program, said he believed that “full examination of the Cadiz Inc proposal will once again prove that it is unsustainable and that it will harm our desert national parks, communities, businesses, and wildlife”.

Slater says his plan is environmentally “benign” and will conserve water that at present is lost from the aquifer via evaporation from dry lakes. He says the 50,000 acre ft of water a year the company would extract would “otherwise evaporate, which is far more of a waste than people drinking it”.

“None of the water we are going to take fell on the earth in the last 100 years. This is millennial water. It takes centuries from the water falling at the upper end of our watershed and then follow a migratory path to down where we are,” he says.

“Our project hypothesis is that we construct a well field here,” he says, pointing at a point on the scale model. “And intercept the water as it goes down the hill before it can become hyper-saline and evaporates. We are substituting our wells for the natural evaporation process that sends the water into the atmosphere and wastes it.”

In addition to environmental concerns, others object to a private company being able to make billions from water. Slater says they do not understand the law, which in California states no entity can own water but they can buy, sell and trade the right to use it.

“There are people that think water is a human right and confuse privatization with the right to get water under economic terms,” Slater says.

“This is the United States of America and we have private property here. This is not a communist country. We own land, and land use is an attribute of property ownership,” he says. “Food doesn’t stay on the farm it was grown on. We share our food, we share our energy, we share our oil and gas. I can sell land to anybody. Why would I treat water any differently?

“The use of water is owned. It’s not like someone is calling up God and saying ‘make it rain’. It is sold as a right, just like you sell a house.”

Old Woman Mountains get a touch of new

The landscape in the Old Woman Mountains Preserve in San Bernardino County. The Native American Land Conservancy recently completed a project to improve trails and other features in the preserve. (Native American Land Conservancy)

Skip Descant
The Desert Sun

Hikers and other visitors to the Old Woman Mountains in San Bernardino County can now set out on improved trails with more informational kiosks and other upgrades.

The Old Woman Mountains Preserve — 2,500 acres in the eastern Mojave Desert — has completed a first phase of improvements intended to better connect the ancient landscape to modern visitors and native populations.

"It's a stunning landscape. And these trails are designed to introduce it to a person walking. It's a very easy terrain, and tell them what you're looking at, why it's here, why it matters and how it was used by the ancient peoples," said Kurt Russo, executive director of the Native American Land Conservancy, which leads the project.

"Three of the great deserts of the West all coincide on our preserve," Russo explained, pointing out the Mojave, Great Basin and Colorado deserts come together in this tiny corner of the Old Woman Mountains Wilderness Area near the tiny town of Essex. "So some species you'll find in each of those, you will find on our preserve."

The Native American Land Conservancy was able to complete the project with a $376,000 grant from the California State Parks Off Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division grant program, and more than $100,000 from the Bureau of Land Management, which offered supplies and technical support. Environmental groups and private land-owners also participated in the project.

"It was a great collaboration," Russo said.

"We provided advice on the development of their grant proposal," said Mike Ahrens, field manager for the Bureau of Land Management office in Needles.

"Once the grant was awarded and received, we provided logistical and coordination support for project implementation," he explained via email. "We also provided some of the materials for the project from a cache of materials that we had set aside for these types of projects."

Planning for the project began in December 2013, with the final proposal submitted in May 2014.

"And then we got word that it was funded in July of 2014," said Russo, adding construction began in January of this year.

"And we finished all of the construction phase in about seven weeks, which was way ahead of schedule," Russo added.

One of the key goals of protecting and preserving these lands has to with education and research, but also passing on "the spirit of the place" to native and non-native visitors.

"These places are very important for passing on conceptual knowledge, not just for flora and fauna, but the spirit of the place," said Russo.

"I have witnessed transformative moments among the youth, who go out there with the elders and sing the folk songs that come from there. And they sing them there, to the children, at night under the stars … and it's a very moving experience," he added.

The Old Woman Mountains Preserve is a cultural and biological sanctuary that once served as the meeting place for multiple American Indian tribes. Rock art, dating back 600-800 years, can be found throughout the Old Woman Mountains. The area is also home to more than 30 species of migratory birds, a third of all the native plant communities in California, as well as endangered and protected animal species like the desert tortoise, Bighorn Sheep and the golden eagle.

The Native American Land Conservancy, based in Indio, is a 501c3 organization founded in 1998 that includes the participation of tribal communities in California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Troubled by the loss and desecration of sacred landscapes in traditional territories, the NALC was formed to acquire, preserve and protect these historic sites and landscapes. NALC has owned, and provided protective management for, the 2,560-acre Old Woman Mountains Preserve since 2002.

A ceremony and blessing, along with a tour of the preserve was held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 23, 2015.

Massive Solar Power Project for California Desert Scrapped

The proposed Palen Solar Electric Generating System. (Palen Solar Holdings)

by Chris Clarke
KCET.org

The consortium of solar companies seeking to build a 500-megawatt solar power tower project in Riverside County has formally withdrawn the project's application from consideration by the California Energy Commission.

The Palen Solar Electric Generating System had just received tentative approval from the Commission this month to build one of two planned 750-foot solar power towers in the eastern Chuckwalla Valley.

But on Friday afternoon, project owner Palen Solar Holdings formally withdrew its petition on behalf of the project, which likely means the project is dead -- at least for the foreseeable future.

Originally approved by the commission in 2010 as a large parabolic trough solar project, Palen changed hands in 2012 after its original owner Solar Millennium went bankrupt. Bought by BrightSource Energy, who later brought Abengoa Solar on as a project partner, Palen was redesigned to incorporate BrightSource's proprietary solar power tower technology, in which two 750-foot towers with boilers on top would be surrounded by tens of thousands of mirrors. The independently targetable mirrors, called heliostats, would have focused concentrated solar energy -- "solar flux" -- on the boilers, which would then have generated steam to turn turbines.

The project had come under fire for its potential threat to migrating birds from that concentrated solar energy after BrightSource's smaller Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System began burning birds that flew through that plant's flux fields. Commission staff had estimated that each of Palen's two towers would pose more risk to birds than all three of Ivanpah's towers combined.

After a contentious series of hearings in which environmentalists and Native activists challenged Palen's likely impact on wildlife, visual resources, and Native cultural values, the commission recommended in December 2013 that the project's tower redesign be denied -- then reversed itself this month when Palen Solar Holdings agreed to build the projct one tower at a time, with the possibility to add thermal energy storage capability to the project at a later date.

Friday's withdrawal came as a surprise to observers of the process. BrightSource Energy Vice President Joe Desmond told ReWire in a phone conversation Friday afternoon that the withdrawal was made after careful consideration of all the factors involved. "We're withdrawing the project in the interests of a renewable energy solution that best reflects the interests of all the stakeholders in this process," Desmond told ReWire. "We're grateful to the California Energy Commission for their meticulous and careful consideration of our petition to amend [redesign] this project."

A formal statement by Palen Solar Holdings released Friday, signed by Desmond, said:

After carefully reviewing the proposed decision recommending approval of one tower, we determined it would be in the best interest of all parties to bring forward a project that would better meet the needs of the market and energy consumers.
We believe concentrating solar power, and specifically tower technology with thermal energy storage, can play a key role in helping California achieve its clean energy goals by providing the necessary flexibility needed to help maintain grid reliability. In addition, we are committed to bringing projects to the market that follow sound and responsible environmental measures to ensure all impacts are avoided, minimized or compensated for properly.

With the withdrawal in place, almost certain to be accepted by the commission, any new move to push the project forward would involve restarting the somewhat lengthy and cumbersome commission approval process. That is, unless the proposal was essentially identical to the earlier parabolic trough version of the project approved in 2010. It's worth noting that Palen Solar Holdings partner Abengoa Solar has extensive experience in building and operating parabolic trough solar power plants, including the Mojave Solar project near Harper Lake.

It'll be interesting to see how the project shapes up, if at all, in the next year. In the meantime, we'll have reaction to Palen's withdrawal from supporters and opponents on Monday.

They Kept Ward Valley Nuclear-Free

COMMENTARY | THE HIDDEN DESERT

Ward Valley (Photo: Center for Land Use Interpretation/Creative Commons License)

by Chris Clarke
KCET.com

It's an embarrassing admission for a confirmed California desert rat like me, but I've never been to Ward Valley. Not really. Oh, I've crossed the valley near its north end on Interstate 40 dozens of times. I've done the same thing where Route 62 crosses the south end of Ward Valley. But I've never gotten off the highway, never walked out onto the valley floor among the low creosote and yuccas and chollas and just breathed.

There's no particular hurry: Ward Valley's hundreds of square miles of open desert will be there when I get around to visiting. 20 years ago that wasn't a sure thing.

Ward Valley is a broad, sloping basin that runs north-south for about 65 miles, an undeveloped stretch of desert that connects the eastern ends of Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. It's essentially a big bowl of creosote, undisturbed except for a few dirt roads here and there and by World War II-era tank tracks still struggling to heal after 70 years, flanked by the Old Woman and Paiute mountains to the west and the Sacramento, Stepladder, and Turtle mountains to the east. Homer Wash, a broad, meandering and braided seasonal watercourse fringed with acacia trees and ocotillo, runs along the floor of the valley. Dropping 3,000 feet in its journey of more than 50 miles, it eventually drains into Danby Dry Lake.

Uphill from the wash is creosote and gravel, dissected by smaller tributaries that feed Homer Wash when in flood. At an altitude running from 3,000' at its north end to around 600 at its south, Ward Valley is thus excellent habitat for desert tortoises. Thirty years ago tortoise population densities ran as high as 120 adults per square mile.

It's one of those places in the California Desert where you can find yourself 20 miles off the pavement without much problem, camping out in the open without seeing another human being for days, aside from those traveling overhead on their way in and out of LAX. Or so I've been told.

This is where California almost put its final dump for low-level nuclear waste.

"Low-level nuclear waste" sounds relatively innocuous, as such things go. "Low level" can't be as bad as "high-level" waste, right? One imagines a bit of medical waste, a contaminated rubber glove or a boot here and there, set safely out in the middle of the desert for a few years to allow its radioactivity clock to run down. The truth is a lot more complex. "Low level" and "high level" are administrative terms, not scientific ones. Low-level waste does indeed include things like gloves and boots, as well as other materials that have become contaminated through exposure to radioactive material. It is generally far less radioactive than, say, spent nuclear reactor fuel. But low-level waste can actually contain spent fuel in minute amounts, irradiated tools, pieces of decommissioned reactor buildings, and so forth. The U.S. Department of Energy projected that Ward Valley's proposed nuclear waste dump would quite likely have received shipments of waste contaminated with some of the longest-lived radionuclides generally handled as waste, including radioactive isotopes of cesium as well as strontium and even plutonium.

Over the years, in fact, Ward Valley's proposed nuclear waste dump might have hosted as much as 100 pounds of plutonium.

The plan was part of California's attempt to comply with a 1980 federal directive, Public Law 96-573, which delegated responsibility for handling low-level waste to individual states, or groups of states. In 1982, the California legislature passed AB 1513, which among other things directed the state's Department of Health Services (DHS) to start looking for a place to put California's low-level waste, and to find a dump operator to manage the stuff.

One company after another was selected by DHS to run a potential California low-level waste dump, and then one after another backed away when they figured out the potential liabilities. Finally, DHS landed on U.S. Ecology, a company with a somewhat Orwellian name that ran a number of low-level waste dumps across the country, including one near Beatty, Nevada.

U.S. Ecology took some time to decide where to propose the dump. The company considered alternate sites in Silurian Valley, north of Baker, and in the Panamint Valley near Ridgecrest and Lone Pine. In March 1988, the company announced it had found its preferred site: on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the north end of Ward Valley.

By then California had joined a waste disposal "compact" of states including Arizona and the Dakotas, meaning that radioactive waste from those states would likely be coming to Ward Valley. What's more, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- which had power to order waste to any appropriate low-level waste dump -- could send shipments from anywhere in the country to the proposed Ward Valley dump.

When it got there, the waste would be put in unlined trenches in the valley's gravelly soil covering about five football fields' area. There it would be vulnerable to windstorms, flash floods, and other disturbances, and free to leak radioactive materials into the surrounding desert.

In the late 1980s, California's antinuclear movement had dwindled somewhat from its peak during the Diablo Canyon years, but a few organizations took up the fight. There was the Committee to Bridge the Gap, based in Los Angeles. There were Northern California's Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition and Greenaction. Activists from the Sierra Club and CalPIRG and the Abalone Alliance other such groups delivered testimony at public hearings, distributed petitions, and alerted their memberships. I played a peripheral role myself, putting out a special Ward Valley issue of Terrain, the Bay Area environmental monthly I edited at the time.

But the core of the movement to oppose Ward Valley didn't come from the coast. It came from people whose ancestors have lived in the desert for millennia. Though California's native desert people had been historically slow to involve themselves in "white people's politics," the notion that Ward Valley might be graced with nuclear waste dangerous for thousands of years roused members of the nearby Chemehuevi and Mojave people to action, as well as other Colorado River tribes including the Quechan and Cocopah.

The late Llewellyn Barrackman, an elder of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, put the tribes' opposition as succinctly as possible in a short piece in that issue of Terrain:

They intend to transport nuclear waste through our reservation and through the town of Needles. They have never asked our permission or held a hearing on this issue. There is no provision to train our people should there be an accident, no plans to deal with the terrible dangers of a nuclear waste transport accident.

We will be needing water to grow. There is much water beneath Ward Valley and it will eventually become contaminated. This is a terrible crime. Our poor desert tortoise never even had a chance. Both the tortoise and the land are sacred to us. We have used this land for thousands of years. We use the plants there to heal ourselves and renew ourselves. Now it will all be destroyed. It's wrong all the way around.

Over the decade of the 1990s, tribal resistance to the project grew. Elders held vigils both on the land and elsewhere; by the late 1990s, the vigils on the project site had become a full-scale occupation. Where the project's opponents had originally been a few coastal urban environmentalists, within a few years Native opposition was the face of the campaign to keep Ward Valley nuclear-free.

As I describe in Part 1 of this article, an unprecedented coalition of Native Californian desert tribes and other environmental activists fought the State of California to a standstill 15 years ago on a proposal to dump low-level nuclear waste in Ward Valley, about 20 miles east of Needles. The activists who fought the project had public sympathy on their side and expert political sensibilities. But they had something else on their side as well: science.

Though the plans for the Ward Valley dump had been in the works since Reagan was in the White House, and the project's Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) had already been released two years before he took office, most of the political maneuvering over Ward Valley took place during the Clinton administration. From the outset of his administration, Clinton and his Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt clashed with California Governor Pete Wilson over the dump site, though it seemed more out of a White House desire that the issue go away than anything else.

Two weeks before Clinton took office, Bush's Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan handed over 1,000 acres of Ward Valley to the California DHS, a necessary step in licensing the dump. The land transfer was halted almost immediately by U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel, after the Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition filed suit to stop the transfer.

That transfer would never go through, but we wouldn't find that out for another seven years.

In the interim, U.S. Ecology's proposal started taking serious hits. During the Bush administration, the Executive Branch and Wilson's office had worked hand in hand to make the dump happen, with BLM handling the environmental review process -- dogged by accusations of insufficient public comment periods -- and Wilson vetoing bills that would restrict operation of the dump. While the Clinton administration was by no means radically environmentalist, after 1993 the White House was less willing to bend rules to get the dump established.

In mid-1993 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed critical habitat for the desert tortoise, which had been listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1989. That proposed critical habitat included all of Ward Valley, adding significant complexity to the process of launching a nuke dump on federal land. By 1995, biologists studying Ward Valley tortoises noted a significant drop in numbers, and found that the newly discovered Upper Respiratory Distress disease was prevalent in torts in neighboring territories to which U.S. Ecology proposed relocating tortoises from the project site.

Likely the biggest blow to U.S. Ecology's plans came in the form of one of the smallest atoms in the universe: Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Though U.S. Ecology claimed that its unlined ditches wouldn't leak radioactive material into the water table, a study in April 1994 found the radioactive element deep beneath the company's Beatty facility, in geological conditions not too dissimilar to those at Ward Valley.

Though the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a report in mid-1995 declaring the proposed dump safe, two of the report's authors dissented -- previously unheard of for NAS studies of this kind. The two dissenting authors cited unknowns involved in leaching of radioactive substances through desert soils such as those in Ward Valley. Five months later, when the 1994 study of tritium migration at Beatty was released to the public, it turned out that the NAS report's authors had not had access to that crucial study when they wrote their report.

In other words, it turned out that U.S. Ecology's dump would almost certainly leak, and the company withheld that fact from federal investigators. The Clinton-Babbitt Interior Department was incensed, and President Clinton announced the land transfer would be put on hold until more studies of tritium migration were complete.

One of opponents' biggest concerns was that leaking radioactive material might make its way to the Colorado River, the water source for millions of people in Los Angeles and elsewhere. U.S. Ecology maintained that Ward Valley was a hydrologically closed basin, meaning that groundwater in the valley didn't have an outlet by which it could leave. The U.S. Geological Survey formally backed U.S. Ecology up in this assessment, but some of its staff geologists weren't so sure.

In February 1993, a year before U.S. Ecology quietly learned that tritium had leaked more than 360 feet deep into the soil beneath its Beatty facility, USGS scientists Howard Wilshire, Keith Howard, and David Miller -- Mojave Desert geology experts all -- wrote a letter to newly appointed Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt stating that they'd not been consulted during the Ward Valley environmental assessment process leading up to the publication of the final EIS in 1991. When Babbitt's office asked the three for more details, they responded with a detailed memo describing geological problems with the EIS -- most chillingly, saying that the EIS contained no information on possible hydrological links between Ward Valley and other basins. In other words, if there was any way that nuclear material could leak out of Ward Valley and find its way into the rest of the desert, or even the Colorado River, you wouldn't find that out by reading the project's Environmental Impact Statement.

In a longer report released at the end of 1993, Wilshire, Howard, and Miller provided a list of five possible routes by which Ward Valley groundwater might leak into the Colorado River, a map of which (included at right) was included in the later National Academies of Science report. Of the five possible routes by which groundwater from the Ward Valley dump site might conceivably reach the Colorado, three did so upstream from Parker Dam, where the intake of the Metropolitan Water District's Colorado River Aqueduct might have shunted the potentially contaminated water to the taps of (nowadays) about 17 million people.

What's more, as Wilshire and his USGS colleague Jane Nielsen pointed out two years later in an article in the Ward Valley issue of Terrain I edited in December 1995, the EIS severely underestimated the potential amount of water that might be filtering through the Ward Valley site:

Another important factor at the site is the flow of surface water to Ward Valley from drainages in nearby Lanfair Valley to the northwest. A low divide separates the south-flowing Ward Valley drainage from Sacramento Wash, which discharges surface water from Lanfair Valley eastward into the Colorado River valley. Examination of aerial photographs shows sediment from Lanfair Valley extending in plumes south of the present divide. To change the course of some Lanfair Valley drainages from Sacramento Wash to Ward Valley would take nothing more than a shovel and a few hours of diligent digging. Lanfair Valley drainages now going into Sacramento Wash could flow toward Ward Valley in a period of high rainfall. This would increase the catchment area used to calculate flood risk by a factor of about 25; a wider area catches more water.

More ominously, subsurface connections may exist between Ward Valley ground water and the Colorado River. Fractured and tilted upper plate rocks and detachment faults may lie at shallow depth beneath Ward Valley. Such rocks are exposed between Ward Valley and the Colorado River, a strong indication that they lie close to the surface in the Valley itself. If they do, contaminants in Ward Valley's ground water could flow into the Colorado River. Whether a groundwater connection to the Colorado River constitutes a significant risk depends on the actual (and highly disputed) composition of the waste intended for Ward Valley.

So the dumpsite would almost assuredly leak, and there was a non-zero chance that any leaked radioactive materials would, over time, find their way to whatever Los Angeles had in the 23nd century instead of lawn sprinklers. When it comes to environmental threats, that would seem to be a slam dunk.

And yet there were any number of environmental issues during the Clinton administration's tenure in which cold hard science went up business interests and lost. Look at Clinton's scientifically indefensible Option Nine forest management plan, which sacrificed actual science in the form of wildlife biology to the demands of a few timber companies. In fact, a few times after the Wilshire data became publicly available the Clinton administration appeared ready to sign off on the dump. In May 1995, for instance, Secretary Babbitt agreed to finally release the land for transfer to the state, so long as Governor Wilson made the Department of Health Services (DHS) abide by a few restrictions in the type of waste the site took in and how that waste was handled. Wilson said no. Within a few months, John Garamendi --- who was workng as Deputy Interior Secretary at the time -- tentatively offered to transfer the land without conditions.

But Ward Valley had something that other Clinton-era wildland issues often lacked: a committed base of people of color who'd declared their steadfast opposition to the project.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this story, Ward Valley is of supreme cultural significance to people in the Colorado River Indian Tribes, as well as the Chemehuevi and other local Native people. After a period of gathering strength and determination, desert Native people made that importance known rather emphatically. After a public gathering on the site in October 1995, the local tribes -- with the support of antinuclear activists from throughout California -- made plans to maintain a continuous onsite vigil, to be supported by an emergency influx of supporters from around California if it looked like development was imminent. This onsite presence was managed by Native people, who assumed a leadership role in the occupation of the site, with logistical aid provided by the Morongo Basin-based Desert Environmental Response Team. Onsite presence varied from a few people holding the "fort" to gatherings of 700 or more people during scheduled protests, many of whom went home to organize support in their far-away towns. The Native protest at Ward Valley became a cause celebre.

The Native role in opposition to the Ward Valley dump site didn't just win wide support among other environmental activists. It also helped prevent the Clinton administration from assenting to the dump just to make the pesky issue go away. It was the same President Clinton, after all, who had signed Executive Order 12898 in February, 1994, which ordered federal agencies to note and correct environmental policies that disproportionately affect communities of color. Native people have long been disproportionately burdened by the effects of nuclear and hazardous waste dumping, a reality that was not lost on the feds dealing with Ward Valley. In December 1995, Tom Jensen, Associate Director for Natural Resources of the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), said in an internal CEQ memo:

"Interior Department officials, relying on the NAS analysis and recommendations, believe that the site can be operated and used with complete safety. Interior would like very much to move ahead with the transfer and put the Ward Valley conflict behind the Administration. That said, they believe that, as a political matter, the Administration simply cannot of its own volition agree to hand the site over in exchange for a check and an unpopular governor's promise to do the right thing."

In other words, the Native occupation -- which would continue for a few years after the memo -- had made the project politically unpalatable even for those in Interior who hadn't been swayed by the science. The political considerations also included opposition from non-Native people. The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer had both gone on record opposing the dump, for instance. But it's doubtful whether even they would have had the power to stop a project that both the Governor and the nuclear industry wanted, had not the Clinton administration feared news stories featuring Native people evicted -- once again -- from land they held sacred.

A decade and a half later, the Ward Valley dump is dead. But most of the people who opposed it are not. And the Ward Valley experience emboldened those who took part. It's hard to say how much the Save Ward Valley movement influenced the successful Quechan Tribe lawsuit against the Imperial Solar Two project in 2011, for instance, and Native opposition to other destructive projects is explicitly carried on in the spirit of the Ward Valley encampment.

And perhaps most importantly: Ward Valley still lives. What's left of its tortoise population still walks the washes unimpeded, and the rain that filters through its shallow gravles is no more radioactive than usual.

In an age of seemingly consecutive losses of desert landscapes, that's something to hold on to.

Interior Chief Salazar stepping down in March

FILE - In this March 9, 2009 file photo, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in Washington. Salazar will leave the Obama administration in March, an Obama administration official said Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)

BY MATTHEW DALY
ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who oversaw a moratorium on offshore drilling after the BP oil spill and promoted alternative energy sources throughout the nation, will step down in March.

A former U.S. senator from Colorado, Salazar ran the Interior Department throughout President Barack Obama's first term and pushed renewable power such as solar and wind and the settlement of a longstanding dispute with American Indians.

With Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson also leaving the administration and Energy Secretary Steven Chu expected to depart, Obama will have a clean slate of top officials overseeing energy and environment issues.

In a statement Wednesday, Obama said Salazar had helped "usher in a new era of conservation for our nation's land, water and wildlife" and had played a major role in efforts to expand responsible development of the nation's domestic energy resources.

Salazar said in a statement that the Interior Department was helping secure "a new energy frontier" and cited an aggressive agenda to reform oil and gas leases, which he said had increased offshore drilling safety.

Under his watch, the Interior Department has authorized nearly three dozen solar, wind and geothermal energy projects on public lands that provide enough electricity to power more than 3 million homes, Salazar said.

Obama has vowed to focus on efforts to bolster renewable energy in a second term while continuing to expand production of oil and natural gas. He also has made it clear he will focus on climate change, an issue he has acknowledged was sometimes overlooked during his first term.

Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, a longtime Obama ally, is among those mentioned as a potential successor to Salazar, along with John Berry, director of the White House Office of Personnel Management. Berry is a former assistant interior secretary and the director of the National Zoo. Gregoire, whose term expired Wednesday, also is considered a candidate to head the Energy Department or the EPA.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., a senior member of the House Natural Resources Committee and a favorite of the environmental community, also is believed to be under consideration for Salazar's position.

Salazar, 57, entered the Senate with Obama in 2005. At Interior, he gained the most attention for his role in the drilling moratorium, a key part of the administration's response to the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. It was one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history and led to the unprecedented shutdown of offshore drilling.

Business groups and Gulf Coast political leaders said the shutdown crippled the oil and gas industry and cost thousands of jobs, even aboard rigs not operated by BP PLC. But Salazar said the industry-wide moratorium was the correct call and that his ultimate goal was to allow deep-water operations to resume safely.

"Today, drilling activity in the Gulf is surpassing levels seen before the spill, and our nation is on a promising path to energy independence," Salazar said in his statement Wednesday.

The moratorium was lifted in October 2010, although offshore drilling operations did not begin for several more months. Some Gulf Coast lawmakers continue to complain about the slow pace of drilling permits under the Interior Department, which renamed and revamped the agency that oversees offshore drilling in the wake of the spill.

Salazar also approved the nation's first offshore wind farm, Cape Wind, off the Massachusetts coast.

On land, Salazar has promoted solar power in the West and Southwest, approving an unprecedented number of projects, even as oil and gas projects continued to be approved on federal land.

Salazar also oversaw the settlement of a multibillion-dollar dispute with Native American tribes that had lingered for more than a decade.

Throughout his tenure, Salazar tangled with oil companies. He criticized the George W. Bush administration for what he called a "headlong rush" to lease public lands, saying officials treated oil and gas executives as if they were "the kings of the world." Soon after taking office, Salazar suspended 60 of 77 leases in Utah that had been approved under Bush, setting a confrontational tone that would continue the next four years.

Jim Noe, an oil executive and head of a shallow-water drilling coalition, said Wednesday that Salazar's actions "hurt the industry, thousands of workers and the small businesses and communities that depend upon them. We hope that future leadership at the Interior Department will be able to take a more balanced approach to natural resource development."

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said Salazar worked to strike a balance between responsible energy development and vital environmental protection.

Salazar set a sound foundation for solar and wind power on federal lands, while protecting areas where development does not make sense, Beinecke said.

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune hailed Salazar for opening seven new national parks and 10 wildlife refuges while protecting Arctic areas from offshore drilling.

Salazar's leadership "has helped put our nation on a path where protecting our natural legacy and wild lands is a priority, not an afterthought," Brune said.

Massive turbines rise in Ocotillo

By Alejando Davila | Staff Writer
Imperial Valley Press

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

Video: Pattern Energy's Ocotillo wind farm takes shape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rising turbines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bigger picture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long-standing concerns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In addition, Pattern dismisses Ewing’s allegations.

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

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

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

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

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

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