Water worries: The drying of the West

The Colorado River and the civilisation it waters are in crisis

Lake Mead's "bathtub ring" at Hoover Dam.

The Economist

STANDING on the Hoover Dam and looking upstream at Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, the visitor notices a wide, white band ringing the cliffs. Nicknamed “the bathtub ring”, this discolouration comes from minerals that were once deposited on the volcanic rock by the Colorado River and have become visible as its level has dropped. It is one sign of a water crisis that threatens America’s south-west.

Other reminders abound. Farther upstream there are dry docks, jutting out ominously into desert, where boats were once moored. In one finger of Lake Mead buildings that were abandoned in the 1930s, as the water of the newly dammed river rose and submerged them, have eerily begun reappearing, like a ghost town.

The main reason why Lake Mead, currently only 40% full, has been getting emptier is a decade-long drought. Whether this is a cyclical and normal event, or an early sign of climate change, is unclear. But even if the drought ends, most scientists think global warming will cause flows on the Colorado River to decrease by 10-30% in the next half century, says Douglas Kenney, the director of a water-policy programme at the University of Colorado Law School.

The other reason, says Mr Kenney, is the rapidly increasing demand for the river’s water. The Colorado provides much or most of the water for many cities and farms in seven states—Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California—before it peters out in the sands of Mexico.

In the northern states, its water supports cattle empires. In its southern stretch, especially in California’s Imperial County, the river irrigates deserts to produce America’s winter vegetables. And all along the way, aqueducts branch off to supply cities from Salt Lake City and Denver to Phoenix and Los Angeles. The metropolis closest to Lake Mead, Las Vegas, gets 90% of its water from this one source.

That is why Las Vegas is a canary in the mine shaft, as Pat Mulroy, the boss of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, puts it. The Las Vegas valley gets its water through two long channels drilled through the rock. The first taps the lake at 1,050 feet (320 metres) above sea level, the second at 1,000 feet. Lake Mead’s water level is now near its record low, at 1,086 feet. Within a few years it could leave Las Vegas’s first intake, or even both, dry.

The threat to Sin City is a good example of the four dimensions—physical, legal, political and cultural—of water in the West. For the physical, the standard response is to summon the engineers. Ms Mulroy already has them digging a third intake at 890 feet. Given the weight of the water on top, this is fiendishly difficult and will not be ready until 2014. Ms Mulroy also wants to pipe groundwater from the rural and wetter northern counties of Nevada to Las Vegas, but that has caused a vicious row.

Another response is to call in the lawyers. This was the preferred approach a century ago, in the era of the “water wars”. Starting with the Colorado River Compact of 1922 and continuing with statutes, a treaty with Mexico and case law until the 1960s, a truce was achieved. Called the Law of the River, the resulting regime determines who along the river has what right to how much water.

At least, it does in theory. The problem is that the law took shape after two decades of record water flows, which became the basis for allocation. As a result it apportions more water than there is in the river. For decades that did not matter, since there were so few people. Then the cattle, fruit and people using the river multiplied.

The law’s seniority rules theoretically mean that, for example, the taps to Las Vegas would be shut completely before a single lettuce-grower in California’s Imperial County lost a drop. This “idiocy of who gets cut first and second”, as Ms Mulroy calls it, gives rise to the political dimension. These days, co-operation has supplemented, if not wholly replaced, the old rivalries among agricultural and urban users, and among the seven states. Nevada and Arizona, for example, have a water-banking partnership, whereby Arizona stores excess water in its aquifers so that Nevada could use it in a pinch. In California, the water utility of Los Angeles has bought water rights from farmers in Imperial County. But arguments persist.

The final dimension is the culture of the West. Does every middle-class house really need a lawn in a desert? Ms Mulroy has already started paying Las Vegans to rip out their turf and opt for desert landscaping, which can be chic. Her own husband put up a fight but lost. So out went that lawn, too, just as the low-flow toilets and taps came in.

Feinstein reintroduces desert protection bill

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Tuesday reintroduced legislation that would create two national monuments covering more than a million acres in the Mojave Desert.

The California Desert Protection Act of 2011 is similar to a desert bill the California Democrat introduced in late 2009, but this one is more focused on land conservation efforts.

The earlier bill also sought to streamline approvals of alternative-energy projects.

Feinstein said in a statement Tuesday that she would work separately with other Western senators on energy legislation that would allow "quicker development of renewable energy projects on private and disturbed public land."

The new bill would:

Create the Mojave Trails and the Sand to Snow national monuments, protecting 941,000 acres and 134,000 acres of federal land, respectively. Mojave Trails would be mostly south of Interstate 40 and west of Needles; Sand to Snow would be north of Interstate 10 between Cabazon and Joshua Tree National Monument.

Add land to Joshua Tree National Park, Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. The additions would include the remote Castle Mountains near the preserve and a strip of land known as the Bowling Alley near Death Valley.

Protect nearly 76 miles of four waterways in and around Death Valley and the San Bernardino Mountains.

Designate new wilderness areas, including about 250,000 acres near Fort Irwin.

Designate four existing off-highway vehicle areas in the California desert as permanent.

"This bill protects the great wide spaces of the Mojave," said supporter David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. "Places like the Castle Mountains, the Bowling Alley and Sand to Snow are part of the beating heart of the Mojave Desert."

San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who represents much of Mojave Desert area, said he is concerned about bill's effect on the region's economic potential.

"Putting more land off limits for mining, for mine exploration and for development, I'm not sure that, in this economy, is what we need to be doing right now," he said.

Technology reviving mine

Molycorp winds up in position of power

Scott Honan, environmental manager for Molycorp Minerals, talks about the Molycorp rare earth mine near Interstate 15 in Mountain Pass. (LaFonzo Carter)


Wesley G. Hughes
Redlands Daily Facts

MOUNTAIN PASS - No one was on their way to Vegas 1.3 billion years ago when a large, high-quality deposit of rare earths formed here.
Molten rock was pushing up through the Earth's mantle in eastern San Bernardino County and leaving a sizable deposit of the metals just poking its nose through the planet's surface.

Uranium hunters stumbled across it around 1950 - rare earths are often found in the company of heavier radioactive metals - and eventually it came under the ownership of Molycorp, a Colorado mining company.

Today, according to Molycorp CEO Mark A. Smith, "potential buyers are beating down the door to get those rare earths," which Molycorp stopped mining in 2002 because of environmental problems - and China could do it cheaper, anyway, he said.

Things change. China has virtually cut the world off from its supply of rare earths.

The Asian nation has the world's largest deposits, but Mountain Pass is No. 2, experts say, and Molycorp is back in the race.

Why should we care?

Rare earth metals - or oxides - are vital commodities for a range of products, from smart phones to smart bombs.

And the company's Mountain Pass Mine promises to make lots of money for Molycorp.

It's potential customers can breathe a sigh of relief now that there is another source of the elements. They are so relieved they have pushed Molycorp from a 52-week low of $12.10 on the New York Stock Exchange to a Jan. 5 high of $62.10. It has moderated a bit since the high and closed at $42.99 on Friday, down $3.55 on the day.

Molycorp is tearing down its old plant and building a $500-million operation about 15 miles from the Nevada border to mine and process the ores.

The company celebrated earlier this month with a groundbreaking and barbecue for the board of directors, top management and employees at the site. They are calling it Project Phoenix, Smith said.

But not everyone is happy with the operation.

A national environmental group, Western Watersheds project, criticized Molycorp's 8.6-mile proposed gas pipeline, which it says traverses protected desert tortoise habitat.

Western Watersheds filed a complaint Jan. 14 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, seeking to halt the Ivanpah Solar Project, which it says got an inferior examination in its Environmental Impact Statement to help it meet a deadline. That deadline has been extended a year to Dec. 31, and Western Watersheds wants a proper EIS done, which it predicts will halt the power project being built by BrightSource Energy.

"We want it to go away," said Michael Connor, California director for Western Watersheds.

He was unfamiliar with Molycorp's core project, but the pipeline was mentioned in the complaint his group filed.

Still, the Mountain Pass project is gaining interest from potential customers, cut off from China's rare earths but interested in what's in Molycorp's huge open-pit mines.

"We are getting attention - a lot of attention," Smith said on the day of the barbecue.

He expects the new plant to be operational by mid-2012.

SAFER MINING?

Jim Sims, Molycorp's director of public affairs, and Scott Homan, the company's environmental manager, explained to visitors at the mine how environmental problems that played a role in halting production back in 2002 have been eliminated by new technology.

Before Molycorp halted production, the company piped liquid residue - mostly salt water - to evaporation ponds in Ivanpah Dry Lake - a scant 10 miles from Mountain Pass.

During a process of putting rinse water through the 8-inch plastic pipeline, pressure got too great. The pipe burst in several places. A buildup of radioactive material inside the pipe led to contamination of the aquifer under the dry lake.

That raised a public outcry that included concerns from county regulators and environmentalists and the shutdown.

During earlier operations, Molycorp had been the biggest user of hydrochloric acid west of the Mississippi River, Sims said. The acid was used to separate the rare earths from the ore. In order to stop the acid's action after separation, Molycorp neutralized it with sodium hydroxide and the product of the combination became salt water.

But by using electricity with chemistry, a process known as electrolysis, to treat the salt water, Molycorp found they could change it back into its original hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide.

Voila! The chemicals could be re-used almost endlessly. No longer will 15 to 25 tanker trucks full of acid be arriving each day at Mountain Pass and no longer will the salt water be piped to Ivanpah Dry Lake for evaporation. Nor will it get the chance to build up radioactive scale inside the miles of drainpipe.

In addition, Molycorp will no longer buy the most expensive electric power Edison sells. It will generate its own. Another 8-inch pipeline is to be built to carry low-polluting natural gas, which will be used for power generation and to reduce the use of diesel at the mine.

For Molycorp, these moves have given immense benefits: The company has dramatically reduced its environmental impact and has led it to claim it has cut its costs to half those of the Chinese today. And Sims said that soon Chinese costs are likely to double because of environmental changes Chinese miners are being forced to make. More good news for Molycorp.

CONCERNS

All that could be jeopardized by Western Watershed's complaint.

Molycorp said repeatedly that it had "crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's" and it had no more hoops or hurdles for the project.

That said, the company faces a hearing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, it was learned Friday. A Molycorp spokesman could not be reached for comment Friday afternoon.

And there's still environmental concerns over the tortoise and the pipeline.

When Connor - the California director of Western Watersheds - was told about some of Molycorp's efforts to be environmentally friendly,he said: "That doesn't help the tortoise."

BENEFITS FOR THE COUNTY

County officials are excited about the project.

They are predicting it will have long-time benefits for the county through new jobs, for business and for property and sales taxes.

Most of the 700 construction jobs for the new plant will come from near and far. Most of the 300 permanent jobs will most likely be filled by Las Vegas residents, because it is closer to Mountain Pass than population centers in California.

But First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, whose district includes Mountain Pass, called the project "great news. It's been a long time coming.

"I think we will put a lot of people to work. I just don't have the numbers. It's a major mining operation that will use a lot of trades and professions."

Mitzelfelt also predicted Molycorp will be buying supplies locally.

Sims, Molycorp's director of public affairs, confirmed that.

"Molycorp is trying as much as possible to buy equipment and supplies in San Bernardino County," he said.

SUCCESS?

Molycorp officials say that they don't know the full extent of the rare earth to be found at Mountain Pass. They won't know until they dig for it, they assert.

Since 1865, various minerals have been mined in the historic Clark Mining District, where Mountain Pass is located, according to the project's environmental review.

For 57 years, Molycorp and its predecessors have recovered bastnasite, which contains 14 rare earth elements.

Its initial use was as a concentrate called mischmetal, which was used as flints for cigarette lighters and in some metallurgical applications.

In the 1960s, the EIR continued, additional mineral recovery operations were added to allow separation and recovery of individual rare earth elements, including europium, a critical element for making color television.

At the time, Mountain Pass was the world's only commercial source of europium.

Subsequent rare earth elements were produced, and Molycorp plans to mine more, bringing to 10 of 14 rare earth elements that will be produced at what is now a 55-acre site, with plenty of room to expand.

The 55 acres is part of more than 2,000 owned by the company, which also has federal mining claims for the next 30 years on another 8,000 acres.

With a limited world supply of rare earths, Molycorp is in a good financial position, said Christopher Reed, chemistry professor at UC Riverside.

The marketplace - whether its for oil, gold or rare earth elements - is full of cut-throat players, Reed said.

As for Molycorp, he said, "Time is on their side. In the longrun, they really can't fail."

Unfettered vistas restored in remote valley

This is one of the massive pits left behind after years of gold mining at the Hart mining area. Those pits will remain amid other reclamation efforts. Several new uses for the land have been suggested.

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

As road graders moved earth for a huge solar power array in northeastern San Bernardino County, the reverse occurred in a remote, nameless desert valley about 30 miles way.

There, utility crews removed the 18 miles of power lines, leaving the lush stretch of the Mojave Desert more like it was in 1900, before gold was discovered in the hills.

Finishing the job in early January, the crew used a crane to hoist 5,000-pound bundles of wire onto a flatbed truck bound for a Las Vegas scrap yard. They also hauled away piles of creosote-soaked utility poles. The work is part of a reclamation effort by Castle Mountain Venture, which is cleaning up after a decade of open-pit mining.

Returning land to a wilder state bucks the trend in Southern California's deserts, where energy developers are in a rush to tap the vast spaces and ample sunshine and wind to help meet the nation's clean energy needs. If all the pending applications were approved, wind and solar projects would cover as much as 880 square miles of public land.

Yet the valley's fate is far from clear.

Conservationists and at least one legislator want it added to the Mojave National Preserve, which surrounds it. An energy developer wants to buy the former mining land to conserve as wildlife habitat -- compensating for habitat destruction elsewhere. And a wind energy company wants to build wind turbines there and erect new power poles along the same route where workers just finished taking the old ones down.

David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, has been monitoring the power line removal with great interest.

Earlier this month, after the poles were down, he drove the 140 miles from his home in Barstow to the no-name valley.

Pivoting full circle, he saw only grassland, Joshua trees, hills, mountain ranges and sky -- no buildings, fences, wires or pavement. Inspiring, he said.

"This is one of the few places left where you can see as far as 25 miles without seeing the hand of man," he said.

The 18 miles of electrical lines had paralleled a dirt road for 20 years, carrying power to the open-pit mine in the Castle Mountains near the Nevada border. Gold was discovered there in 1907.

The modern-day mine produced 1.34 million ounces of gold and about 400,000 ounces of silver in about 12 years, according to the mine manager. The digging stopped in 2001.

In addition to removing the utility poles and wires, Castle Mountain Venture also has shaped the spent ore into contours that mimic the landscape and re-established native plants. The huge open pits will remain.

Coveted Land

Lamfrom wants to see the whole area -- the 7,600 acres owned or claimed by Castle Mountain Venture and more than 21,000 acres of public land surrounding it -- added to the Mojave National Preserve.

Adding the land to the preserve is one of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's legislative goals. A bill introduced last year by the California Democrat to create two desert monuments included provisions to add the Castle Mountains area to the preserve. She said she plans to reintroduce the proposals this year.

When Congress created the preserve in 1994, the area was excluded because of active mining operations.

A boost to preservation efforts could come from Oakland-based BrightSource Energy Co., which is building a 5.6-square-mile solar energy project in the Ivanpah Valley off Interstate 15 near Primm, Nev. Construction is under way for the first array of mirrors that will focus sunlight on a tower, where steam will generate electricity.

The energy company wants to buy 7,600 acres from Castle Mountain Venture to make up for desert tortoise habitat lost to the Ivanpah development. The first phase of the BrightSource project already has displaced 23 tortoises, a species threatened with extinction.

Such a deal would prohibit future mining, making the land an even stronger candidate for inclusion in the national preserve.

BrightSource's land-acquisition proposal is under review by the state energy commission, the BLM, California Department of Fish and Game, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Unanswered Questions

Complicating efforts to restore the valley to a wilder state are the pending wind development application and questions about whether tortoises actually would live in the area, as BrightSource envisions.

Oak Creek Energy Co., which has wind farms in the Tehachapi area, filed an application with the U.S. Bureau Land Management to develop wind turbines on thousands of acres of public land near the mine.

Ed Duggan, the company's executive vice president, said wind energy can be developed there in conjunction with conservation efforts. The company would mostly use existing roads and other disturbed areas, he said.

If the various agencies approve BrightSource's plan to buy the former mining land, it might not benefit tortoises much, according to some observers.

"It's pretty poor habitat," said Mike Conner, California director of the Western Watersheds Project, a conservation group that has followed efforts to bring large energy developments to the desert.

A wildlife survey of the mining area done last March found tortoise burrows but no live animals, and Juan Hernandez, a biologist retained by the mining partnership.

Replacement habitat should be of equal or better quality than the habitat destroyed, and the proposed replacement land just isn't as good for tortoises, Conner said.

U.S. Geological Survey scientist Kristin Berry, who has studied the animals since the 1970s, said tortoises are found only occasionally at elevations above 4,000 feet. The land BrightSource wants to buy ranges from 4,100 to 5,200 feet.

Hernandez said about 3,200 acres of the land under consideration has plants that tortoises eat, including desert dandelion, lotus and notched phacelia.

Mick Lynch, the mine manager, said tortoises were fenced out of the mining area about 20 years ago, but those fences have since been removed so the animals can return.

In addition, tortoises are expected to migrate to higher elevations as the globe warms, according to the land-buy proposal BrightSource submitted to the California Energy Commission and other agencies.

Bighorns At Play

Lamfrom and Hernandez said protecting the land around the mine would have conservation benefits beyond providing habitat for tortoises.

The area includes a rare ecosystem of native bunch grasses and a forest of full-sized Joshua trees.

Adding the area to the preserve could allow for reintroduction of antelope-like pronghorn, which are second only to the cheetah in running speed. The grazers are believed to have been hunted out by gold miners in the early 20th century.

The area also is a route for bighorn sheep making their way between the Piute and New York mountain ranges. Lynch said he often has seen bighorns running up and down the steep slopes of mine pits. "They are like kids at a playground," he said.

Lamfrom is hopeful that the deal will win approval and the land can become part of the Mojave National Preserve. "This could be the finest example of high desert grasslands in California," he said.

Renovated depot in Kingman opens this spring

February open house will mark end of decade in red tape limbo

Dusty footprints still spread across the floor of the newly-renovated Kingman Train Depot Thursday morning. The depot will be turned over to Amtrak in early spring, which will then add the finishing touches on its new waiting room there, including furniture. (JC AMBERLYN/Miner)

James Chilton
Kingman Daily Miner

KINGMAN - Renovation work on the historic Kingman Train Depot was completed late last year, but it may still be several months before Amtrak customers can expect to utilize the facility.

According to Kingman Public Works Projects Manager Kyle Taylor, the city is currently waiting for Amtrak to move into the structure, something he said isn't likely to happen until spring.

"The city doesn't have control over that, but I did speak to Amtrak (Wednesday) and they're looking to hopefully put some of their equipment in there in March or April," Taylor said. "It wouldn't be until after that that it would open up to Amtrak passengers."

The 103-year-old train depot had been in limbo for nearly a decade while the city wrangled with various governmental agencies to get the proper clearance for the project, which only got underway last summer. The rehabilitation, which was made possible through a $600,000 grant from the Arizona Department of Transportation, has seen the construction of a new platform, new exterior and interior work, and the creation of a space that has been set aside for use as a railroad museum - an appropriate

move given the city's namesake Lewis Kingman, who performed survey work for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad.

"It's basically the eastern half of the building is the museum and the western half is Amtrak," Taylor said. "There's two rooms on Amtrak's side. One room is going to be just a waiting room and the other part is going to be Amtrak's staff area."

Taylor said the exact details of who will run the museum and what objects will be featured there have yet to be decided. Public Works has taken proposals from both the Whistle Stop Railroad Club - a group of railroad hobbyists and former career employees - and the Mohave Museum of History and Arts. A final proposal for the museum is likely to come before the City Council for approval in the coming months.

In the meantime, however, Taylor said the city does plan to host a ribbon-cutting and open house for the newly-renovated train depot sometime in February, when members of the public will finally be able to get a glimpse at contractor T.R. Orr's interior handiwork.

"It'll be on a Saturday, probably the second or third Saturday I think," Taylor said. "Toward the latter part of February."

Feinstein vows to pass new Desert Protection Act

By BEN GOAD
The Press-Enterprise

WASHINGTON - Sixteen years ago, the clock was ticking on landmark legislation to protect millions of acres of Inland Southern California's mountains, rivers, washes and rugged desert land.

One minute remained on a 15-minute vote for the bill more than a decade in the making. It was the last day of the October session in the U.S. Senate, and Democrats, unbeknownst to them, were facing a Republican takeover that would have made passage of the bill all but impossible.

Just then, Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, of Illinois, delayed by a faulty garage-door opener, burst into the chamber and cast the deciding vote on the bill championed by freshman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, sealing the creation of the Mojave National Preserve, and the Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks.

No such luck this time around.

Feinstein, D-Calif., late last year once again introduced legislation to preserve vast swathes of Southern California desert. But efforts to pass the Desert Monument Protection Act of 2010 before Republicans claim control of the House and add to their numbers in the Senate next month fell short, doomed by a flurry of other national business.

Yet Feinstein, who spent more than a year building support from area off-roaders, solar energy and environmental groups before introducing the bill, said she is undeterred by the prospect of a tougher political landscape in the next Congress.

"I have had a 20-year vested interest in the desert -- in seeing that it's protected and that what solar is there is appropriate for the area and does not destroy the flora, the fauna, the beauty," Feinstein said this month before the Senate adjourned for the year. "I am relentless in that regard."

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

In total, the legislation would bar development on more than a million acres in San Bernardino County's High Desert and northwest of Palm Springs. The largest component is the 941,000-acre Mojave Trails National Monument, encompassing dry lakes, mountain ranges and other terrain on both sides of Interstate 40, south of the Mojave National Preserve.

It also would establish the Sand to Snow National Monument stretching across 134,000 acres from San Gorgonio Peak to the desert above Palm Springs.

The larger monument would incorporate 266,000 acres of former railroad land that was deeded by an Oak Glen environmental group to the federal government in the 1990s for preservation. The Wildlands Conservancy acquired the land through private donations and turned it over to the federal government with the understanding that it would be protected from development.

The group was outraged to learn in recent years that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management had begun accepting applications on that land from solar energy firms, who saw the land as perfect for alternative power plants. The conservancy's concerns provided the initial impetus for the bill.

Feinstein and her staff, over many months, built a coalition of support for the bill from recreation groups, the energy industry, off-roaders, local governments, the military and others with competing interests in the desert.

SELECT DEVELOPMENT

The bill would designate permanent off-road vehicle play areas to ensure continued recreation options. It also would require federal agencies to identify zones within their jurisdiction where renewable energy production is in the public good. Those firms whose applications were accepted and would be displaced by the monument would get first crack at developing projects in those areas.

The bill won support from the Obama administration and received a mostly warm reception during a hearing in May before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. But concerns remain, particularly among some Republicans who oppose limits on development and adding to the government's land management responsibilities. The 1994 desert bill, for example, got support from only 12 of the 42 Republicans then in the Senate.

At least one Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn, of Oklahoma, opposes the bill on those grounds, his spokesman said soon after it was introduced.

Inland Rep. Jerry Lewis, who represents portions of the High Desert that would be impacted by the bill, has not taken a public position. But Lewis, R-Redlands, has raised concerns about locking up areas that have been used for mining, energy development and military training exercises.

Feinstein considered attaching the bill to a huge end-of-year spending package to fund federal government operations. That might have lessened opposition since her proposal would have reflected a small part of legislation seen as essential to keep the government running.

But faced with expiring Bush-era tax cuts, ratification of a major nuclear arms treaty and the repeal of the military's ban on openly gay service members, Congress opted to pass a stopgap resolution to keep current funding levels. Feinstein had to shelve the idea and shift focus to re-introduction of the bill in the next Congress.

'AN ABSOLUTE FIGHTER'

Few lawmakers are better suited to collect support across party lines than Feinstein. Now in her fourth term, Feinstein has forged important relationships with her Republican colleagues and has gained a reputation as a moderate on many issues.

But she's also unyielding in her pursuit of wilderness protections, said Elden Hughes, a longtime desert environmentalist who was closely involved with both the 1994 bill and the current legislation. If the earlier bill is any indication, she will have to be.

Sixteen years passed from the time then-Rep. George Brown, D-San Bernardino, introduced the first version of that bill to the day 16 years ago, when Feinstein saw her version approved.

"She's an absolute fighter," Hughes said. "She will hang in there."

Board Accepts Grant for Victor Valley Museum

Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt
Mitzelfelt Memo


The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors authorized the County Museum to receive a grant to fund programs at the soon-to-reopen Victor Valley Museum in Apple Valley at 11873 Apple Valley Road.

"The museum will provide educational outreach programs to at least 1,500 students in 20 schools throughout the Victor Valley," said Supervisor Mitzelfelt. "Funds will also be used to purchase equipment and supplies to develop and present public programs at the Victor Valley Branch Museum, reaching more than 1,250 residents in a series of Family Fun Days and informal gallery programs."

The County Museum will receive $9,000 of Community Foundation grant funds from the San Bernardino County Museum Association to serve High Desert residents during in-school "Museums on the Road" programs. The County Museum has received this grant funding annually since 2005. Starting this year, funds will also be used to develop and provide public programs at the newly acquired and remodeled Victor Valley Branch Museum in Apple Valley.

The Victor Valley Museum, first opened in 1993, was donated to the county in January 2010. With funds provided mostly by Supervisor Mitzelfelt, the County Museum immediately began renovating the facility to align the museum with the County Museum's important American Association of Museums accreditation standards. All collections, exhibits and programs are being evaluated and refurbished to present the cultural and natural heritage of the High Desert region in a way that supports state educational standards.

The effort to renovate a 14,000-square-foot facility is no small assignment. Crews are currently making the museum compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. New flooring and lighting have been installed, and the interior and exterior have been repainted. The thousands of collection objects are being evaluated; school programs are being developed, and 95 percent of the exhibited elements have been completed.

Once crews are done with the renovations, museum staff will need a month to populate the interior with exhibitions. Reopening is anticipated for January 2011.

Boxer, Reid huddle over strategy for massive resources bill

Colleagues enlist Reid's help with last-ditch push for massive water, lands, wildlife package

By Paul Quinlan, John McArdle and Patrick Reis
E and E Publishing

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Harry Reid (D-NV)



The full-court press is on to assemble and pass a monumental package of waterways, public lands and wildlife bills in the final days of this Congress.

Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last night to discuss packaging a slew of waterways bills that won bipartisan endorsements from her committee with measures that emerged with similarly broad-based support from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee aimed at protecting more than 2 million acres and creating new national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and wildlife sanctuaries.

"It was great," Boxer said of her meeting with Reid. "What we're doing is we're talking to the Republicans now who voted for all the bills in my committee to see if they will go along with doing a package of bills."
Boxer added it was unlikely that such a bill could pass the Senate with unanimous support; thus, work is under way to obtain the necessary 60 votes.

"I think we have a good chance because they are bipartisan bills," Boxer said.

Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle declined to discuss the meeting's outcome but said a package was possible. "We do not discuss private meetings, but this is on a list of possible items for consideration this work period," she said in an e-mail.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's National Parks Subcommittee, said his committee's bills have "broad support" and that he was working down a list of Republican colleagues to ask if they would be supportive.

"There's a lot of conversation occurring right now," Udall said. "There's been a lot of hard work the last two years, and it would be disappointing, to say the least, if a lot of these targeted bills died because the Senate couldn't find the time to move them forward."

Others, like Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), who sits on Boxer's committee and hopes to pass a Great Lakes bill he is co-sponsoring as part of the package, spoke more pessimistically about the odds of success in a badly divided Senate chamber with an already swamped agenda for the lame-duck session.

"I think it's a problem getting anything done at this stage in the game," Voinovich said. "Anything now is going to be tough."

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who wants to include a Chesapeake Bay bill that would backstop the Obama administration's ambitious, U.S. EPA-led effort to clamp down on farm and stormwater pollution, also warned of the long odds.

"Lame ducks are always uncertain," Cardin said. His bill, the most controversial of the waterways bills, eventually won bipartisan committee support after negotiations with the GOP. "Significant changes were made because of their concerns. I think we got it right."

Environmental groups continue to push for action on what they say would be a landmark package. The waterways bills up for consideration, which sailed through Boxer's committee in June, would protect and restore the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, Long Island Sound, Gulf of Mexico and San Francisco Bay. Most would authorize, but do not appropriate, money for EPA to set up new program offices relating to the major waterways, award grants and increase accountability.

The Pew Charitable Trusts is running an ad in tomorrow's editions of Roll Call and Politico that will urge Republicans and Democrats to pass the bipartisan wilderness legislation, which the ad says would "give permanent protection to more than two million acres of breathtaking landscapes in thirteen states -- from Washington State's Alpine Lakes to Idaho's Boulder-White Clouds to Tennessee's Upper Bald River."

"Hunters, anglers, business leaders, conservationists and other local citizens who've worked together to get these measures this far are counting on Congress to take action before it adjourns," the ad says, against a backdrop of New Mexico's Organ Mountains, which include lands in line to receive protection.

Demolition crews take down Carl Bray house

The Carl Bray House and Gallery was demolished and will soon be replaced with an “interpretive exhibit” to showcase artifacts from the historic site. (Courtesy of the City of Indian Wells)

Mariecar Mendoza
The Desert Sun

The last of the Carl Bray House and Gallery has been torn down to replace what the Indian Wells City Council called an “attractive nuisance” with a safer alternative.

Demolition of the more than 50-year-old building began last week, with final work completed Wednesday, Indian Wells officials said.

On Nov. 4, the City Council approved the demolition and gave the green light for city staff to move forward with work on an “interpretive exhibit” to showcase artifacts from the historic site.

The demolition was the result of more than a year of debate between city officials and residents who wanted to preserve the historic building.

The building was named after Bray, an artist known nationally for his desert landscapes and smoke tree paintings and has been a staple of the city since the early 1950s.

The city purchased the 14,148-square-foot site in January 2009 for nearly $260,000 claiming the structure posed a “safety hazard.”

The city spent $56,000 for the environmental impact report and legal services needed to ensure a vetted process.

The demolition cost about $58,000, said Community Development Director Corrie Kates.

Had the city decided to rehabilitate the building, city officials said it would have cost an estimated $960,000.

“We tried our best to save something of old Indian Wells,” said Adele Ruxton, president of the Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation, who fought to preserve the historic site.

“I hope that whatever appears as the interpretive exhibit on the Carl Bray site really depicts not only the artist who lived and worked there, but tells the story of old Indian Wells when it was but an Indian Village.”

Dennis Schramm to Retire

Mojave National Preserve
NPS Digest

Dennis Schramm, Superintendent of Mojave National Preserve for the last five years and a 33-year-veteran of the National Park Service (NPS), is retiring on December 3rd .

Dennis completes 12 years at the Preserve, including seven years as a management assistant, from 1995 to 2002, a tenure that spans the first seven years of the park’s existence.

He began his NPS career in the Denver Service Center in February 1978 as an environmental specialist and planner. In his park service career, he worked in three California parks, including Lava Beds National Monument, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and the Preserve. His career also includes assignments in the Alaska Regional Office and at the park service’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Dennis especially prizes his eight years in Alaska, where he was fortunate to travel throughout the state working on mining and hazmat issues in the parks. He is particularly proud of the extensive hazmat clean-up work that was completed in Denali National Park & Preserve, Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve.

Dennis served on the National Wilderness Steering Committee during his tenure in Washington, D.C., and he was pleased to be part of the team that rewrote management policies in 2005. Dennis also lead a national team of planners in the development of the updated management planning policies and handbook and, in particular, the new planning training course for NPS.

Dennis was honored to be assigned to duty in Washington, D.C., in 2007 to help develop plans for the celebration of the parks national centennial in 2016. He also was privileged to serve as deputy superintendent at Yosemite National Park in 2009. Other assignments included serving as the Pacific West Region superintendent representative to the Natural Resource Advisory Group for three years and, most recently, as NPS representative on the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative initiative.

Dennis is proud of his five years as superintendent at Mojave and of the many accomplishments of his dedicated staff. His management of the Preserve focused on building support for the park, on turning around troubled relationships with stakeholders, and on starting the first friends group for the Preserve. He was also extensively involved in external issues and in working across agency boundaries on landscape scale conservation.

Dennis has extensive experience in the Mojave Desert through his NPS assignments and his formal education and a deep life-long connection, having grown up in the Mojave. He was reared mostly in Las Vegas and attended undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Dennis had the good fortune to conduct his graduate studies in Death Valley, studying the plants of the Black Mountains.

He and his wife, Marcia, also an NPS employee, have three grown children. They plan to relocate to the Denver area in the spring of 2011 where they can be closer to their grandson, Mason.

Acres may be fenced off for protection of endangered plant

By KAREN JONAS, staff writer
Barstow Desert Dispatch

NEAR FORT IRWIN • About 14,000 acres of land near Fort Irwin could be fenced off and closed to off-roading in order to protect an endangered plant if a proposed critical habitat plan is approved.

The Lane Mountain milk-vetch is a perennial plant in the pea family that grows only in the west Mojave Desert north of Barstow. Fish and Wildlife Services is proposing to designate a total of 14,069 acres for protection of the plant in two separate areas.

Some off-roading enthusiasts are upset that the land is being fenced off and believe that the desert should not be closed to off-roading.

“Off-roading is the way of the desert,” said Mike McCain of Barstow. “That’s how you get around.”

McCain is a member of the American Motorcyclist Association and has put in a complaint about the potential critical habitat area. He also said that he has found the milk-vetch plant in a different area that will not be considered part of the critical habitat area.

The public comment period on the economic impact of the critical habitat proposal will be open until Dec. 3.

About 21 percent of the land is privately owned, 70 percent is owned by the BLM and 9 percent is owned by the Department of Defense. The designation of critical habitat would prohibit activities that could endanger the milk-vetch plant, including off-roading, surface mining and wind energy development.

The BLM is already in the process of fencing off part of the land in order to prevent people from off-roading in the area. The agency has been working on the fencing for over a year and should be completed with the most critical areas by the spring, according to William “Mickey” Quillman, resource supervisor for the Barstow field office of the BLM.

Quillman said that the fencing is being put in place where excessive off-highway vehicle use has been occurring and that it is being done as funding permits. The area is already designated limited use, which means that vehicles can only travel on designated paths, but there are some who drive across the restricted areas despite the rule.

Most of the year, the milk-vetch exists in a dormant state below the surface, said Ileene Anderson, biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity. The growth period for the plant occurs in the late winter or early spring, which is also a popular time for off-roading.

Anderson said that the milk-vetch was important because it lives in such a restricted area.

“It’s a plant species that has a very, very small distribution on the planet,” said Anderson. “It’s a perennial plant that stays around for a number of years.”

Lois Grunwald, a spokesperson for the Ventura Fish and Wildlife Office, said that an endangered species could be an indication that the ecosystem is in trouble.

Anderson also said that the recent milk-vetch surveys show that more plants are dying than sprouting and it was unclear why the plants were doing poorly in spite of adequate rainfall.

Water: Lake Mead Is at Record Low Levels

Is the Southwest Drying Up?

Posted by Bryan Walsh
Time

Droughts and overconsumption are sucking Lake Mead dry. (Ethan Miller/Getty)

The Hoover Dam may be the Eighth Wonder of the World, but to me the more impressive achievement has always been Lake Mead, the man-made reservoir—which can contain nearly 10 trillion gallons of water—that the dam holds back. Lake Mead is a vast, living tank of water in the middle of the Nevada desert, as unexpectedly remarkable as Las Vegas itself. But the lake is also a keystone in the complex irrigation system that keeps the parched states of the American Southwest wet with the waters of the Colorado River. Las Vegas gets 90% of its water from Lake Mead, and the sight of the rocky reservoir filled to the brim has always been a reassuring sign for a town built on luck.

But those days are long gone. The past decade has seen a precipitous decline in Lake Mead's water levels, as a stubborn, multi-year drought and continued growth in the Southwest have combined to drain the reservoir. The jagged rocks that form the boundaries of the reservoir are marked with bathtub rings, showing how far the water has fallen from the high point. And it's getting worse—as Felicity Barringer of the New York Times reports, some time this Sunday morning the water level at Lake Mead fell lower than it has ever has since it was first filled during the construction of the Hoover Dam 75 years ago. On Sunday the water level had dropped to 1,083.18 ft, and it had fallen further to 1,083.09 ft this morning. As this historical graph (PDF) from the Bureau of Reclamation shows, Lake Mead is entering uncharted territory—a thought that can't be comforting for the millions of people who depend on the lake to fill their faucets. As Barry Nelson, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Barringer:

This strikes me as such an amazing moment. It's three-quarters of a century since they filled it. And at the three-quarter-century mark, the world has changed...This is the place where the mega-dam began, and it may be the place where it ends [because of] climate change and new constraints on water supplies.

What's causing Lake Mead to dry up—and what does it mean for the Southwest? The one undeniable cause is simple growth—Las Vegas has grown from 25,000 people in 1950 to some 2 million today. That means more lawns, more laundry, more swimming pools, more car washes—in general, more straws sucking the water out of Lake Mead. And of course Las Vegas isn't the only area in the Southwest to experience booming growth over the past few decades. From Denver to Phoenix to Los Angeles, the once lightly populated West has exploded, even as farmers in the region draw more water from the system to irrigate the desert.

But the Southwest has also been caught in a devastating drought that has now gone on for more than 10 years, one that has reduced the region's water supplies even as growth has further stressed them. Drought is a natural phenomenon—especially in the desert, go figure—and there have been varying levels of rainfall in the region just in the 75 years since Lake Mead was first filled. But the scary thing is that the territory might be more vulnerable to drought than it seemed during the 20th century—a time period that may have been unusually wet on a historical scale. A 2007 panel organized by the National Research Council found evidence that mega-droughts had occurred in the Southwest more frequently than had been thought, and that "drought episodes are a recurrent and integral feature of the region's climate." The Colorado River Compact—which divides up water supplies for seven U.S. states and parts of Mexico—was drawn up in 1922, based on river flow data going back to the 1890s, a time of unusual wetness. We may have built the Southwest with a false sense of water security.

Then there's climate change, an X factor for future water supplies. It's difficult to gauge what impact, if any, global warming may have had on the current drought and on dropping water levels. As always, it's virtually impossible to filter out climate change as a cause for a natural disaster amid all the noise and static of other factors. But as the recent report from the government U.S. Global Change Research Program shows, the Southwest is already rapidly warming, reducing the spring mountain snowpack that helps feed the rivers of the region. We're likely to see increasing temperatures in the future, with more frequent drought and increasingly scarce water supplies. (See the rather alarming graph above.) Climate change won't be the only cause behind the drying of the West, but could make a bad situation much, much worse.

As it stands now, Lake Mead only has to drop a few more feet—to 1,075 ft—before a new water distribution system would kick in, reducing deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. It's possible that water managers may be able to avoid that catastrophe by diverting additional supplies from Utah's Lake Powell upriver, which contains about 50% more water than Lake Mead does. (Powell has risen more than 60 ft. since 2004, in part because the upper-basin states on the Colorado River don't use their full allocation, as opposed to thirsty states like Arizona and Nevada.) You can count on that plan going forward—if Lake Mead's water level were to drop beneath 1,050 ft., it might become impossible for Hoover Dam's hydroelectric turbines to work, turning a water shortage into a power panic as well. But what's clear is that in a hotter, drier future, the Southwest will have decisions to make about how it can best husband its limited water resources. A West of burgeoning cities and suburbs and a West of irrigated farms may no longer be able to coexist.

Madeleine Pickens purchases Nevada ranch, hopes to relocate wild horses there

Wild horses run as they are gathered by the Bureau of Land Management in the Conger Mountains of Utah on Sept. 8. (Jim Urquhart / Reuters)

Martin Griffith
Associated Press

RENO, Nev. — Madeleine Pickens, the wife of Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, has bought a sprawling Nevada ranch to serve as a wild horse sanctuary that would keep mustangs on the range instead of in government-funded holding facilities.

If approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the move would mark the first time the government has released a large number of mustangs to such a facility.

Pickens is hoping to initially relocate 1,000 horses to the 14,000-acre Spruce Ranch about 70 miles east of Elko. Eventually, she wants to return all 34,000 horses in government-funded holding facilities and pastures to their natural habitat.

"It's such a huge beginning," Pickens told the Associated Press. "I plan to buy more property out there. There's such an overload of horses in government holding."

Pickens said BLM Deputy Director Mike Pool expressed support for the plan during meetings with her last month in Washington.

BLM officials said they recently received a formal written proposal from Pickens and must review it before taking an official position.

"We're encouraged by the recent meetings with her," BLM spokeswoman Celia Boddington said. "We're looking forward to working with her to put the wild horse program on a sustainable track."

Pickens purchased the ranch, which she plans to rename the Mustang Monument preserve, for an undisclosed price. The property comes with grazing rights on 540,000 acres of public land.

Pickens also is negotiating to buy an adjoining 4,000-acre ranch that has grazing rights for 24,000 acres of public land.

Pickens first proposed establishing a wild horse sanctuary in 2008 after the BLM said it was considering euthanasia as a way to stem escalating costs of keeping animals gathered from the open range.

However, the BLM rejected her initial proposal, saying it involved the use of public land where wild horses did not exist when the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was enacted in 1971. Federal law restricts mustangs from such areas.

Jerry Reynoldson, a consultant to Pickens and a former aide of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the latest proposal addresses that issue, and wild horses have historically lived in the area.

"What was always holding this sanctuary up was she didn't own a ranch," Reynoldson said. "Everything changed when she bought the ranch. This moves it from the conceptual talking stage to reality."

Under Pickens' latest proposal, a nonprofit foundation would care for the animals with a government stipend of $500 a head, per year. An education center and lodging facilities would be built, and the preserve would be fenced to confine horses.

"[The] wild horse eco-sanctuary will give them their natural habitat back, along with a place that Americans can come and view the horses and learn about the land and American culture," said Stacie Daigle of Pickens' Saving America's Mustangs group.

About 33,700 wild horses roam freely in 10 Western states, about half in Nevada. The BLM set a target level of 26,600 horses and burros in the wild to protect the herd, the range and native wildlife, and rounds up excess horses and offers them for adoption.

Those that are too old or considered unadoptable are sent to long-term holding facilities, where they can live for decades.

Of the $63.9 million designated for the BLM's wild horse and burro program in fiscal 2010, holding costs exceeded $38 million, BLM spokesman Tom Gorey said. More than 8,000 horses are in short-term holding and 25,700 are in long-term pastures in the Midwest.

"The BLM has a moral and fiscal responsibility to do something because they took the horses off public lands and created this debacle," Pickens said.

Bobcat kits snuggle in tree

By Rebecca Unger
Hi-Desert Star

Photo by Julianne Koza

PIONEERTOWN — Julianne Koza and her friend LynAnne Felts were cruising down Pipes Canyon Road on their way to the Orchid Festival last Saturday morning when they stopped short at an unusual sight — a pair of bobcat kittens.

“We thought we saw house cats up a Joshua tree,” Koza said. “Then we saw the tufted ears and realized those guys will never be house trained!”

Koza and Felts got out and jumped around to get the bobkittens’ attention. “They were quite unconcerned about our presence,” remarked Koza. “Like all cats, they knew we were there but didn’t care.”

Koza said she took “millions” of photos, and is happy to share some of them with Hi-Desert Star readers.

“It pays to always have your camera with you, because you never know what treasures the desert may choose to display.”

Kane County Wins First RS 2477 Road

by Morgan Skinner
KCSG News Kcsg Television

(L-R) Kane County Commissioners Mark Habbeshaw, Daniel Hulet, Doug Heaton with State Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab) next to recently erected RS2477 road sign on Skutumpah road. (Kane County photo)

(Salt Lake City, UT) - Kane County has achieved what is believed to be the first concession in Utah of the federal government agreeing to grant rights-of-way to a disputed road that crosses federal land.

The court stipulated change allows the county to assert control and access over 27 miles of the 33-mile Skutumpah road, a road leading to Cannonville within boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The victory comes as a result of a stipulation made by Department of Justice attorneys that could pave the way to resolve such disputes through negotiation, rather than litigation.

State Representative Mike Noel (R-Kanab) said this shows that the process can be simple and easy if the federal government cooperates in cases like these where you have roads that are easily determined to be the roads used and maintained within the county.

RS 2477 public highway rights-of-way were granted to states and counties from 1866 to 1976 to facilitate the settlement of the West. The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 repealed the statute but established "RS 2477" roads were grandfathered as valid existing rights-of-way.

In 1997, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt directed his department agencies to ignore RS 2477 rights-of-way prompting controversy and conflict. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency of the Department of Interior, closed and/or restricted numerous county roads across the West claiming that RS 2477 rights must be “determined” before the agency would validate existing rights-of-way. Since then the Department of Interior has avoided validating any RS 2477 road rights-of-ways.

For the last two years in federal court, the Department of Interior has denied Kane County had any rights-of-way to the Skutumpah Road. It informed the public, however, that Kane County should maintain it.

Kane County petitioned the court for an expedited hearing to validate the county's rights-of-way because of failure by BLM to maintain the Skutumpah road resulting in public safety hazards along the roadway.

In Monday's stipulation, the Department of Interior validated Kane County's rights-of-way for most of Skutumpah road. The court order stipulated Kane County has the jurisdiction to properly maintain, repair and manage the Skutumpah road as it has historically done.

Kane County filed a motion for summary judgment on July 22, 2010 with the court quieting title to Kane County’s RS 2477 public highway rights-of-way for eight roads which include:

1. The Mill Creek road, designated as Kane County road K4400 and including segments known as the Tenny Creek road K4410 and the Oak Canyon road K4405;

2. The Bald Knoll road, designated as Kane County road K3935;

3. The Skutumpah road, designated as Kane County road K5000;

4. The Sand Dune road, designated as Kane County road K1000;

5. The Hancock road, designated as Kane County road K1100;

6. The Swallow Park/Park Wash road, designated as Kane County road K4360.

7. The North Swag road, designated as Kane County road K4370; and

8. The Nipple Lake road, designated as Kane County road K4290.

These roads have long been Kane County public thoroughfares, the petition said, and continue to provide needed access from private and public lands to cities, schools, stores, places of employment, and recreational areas within Kane County. Where these eight roads cross public lands, the rights-of-way were granted by Congress through RS 2477. RS 2477 was an express grant of rights-of-way, the filing states.

Attorneys for Kane County, Janna B. Custer and Shawn T. Welch, said in their filing that the undisputed facts demonstrate Kane County’s acceptance of the express grant for the eight roads by showing at least ten years of continuous public use prior to October 21, 1976. The undisputed facts also demonstrate Kane County’s acceptance of the express grant through designation of these roads as Class B – County General Highways and/or Kane County’s improvement, maintenance, or repair of these roads at Kane County’s and the State of Utah’s expense.

Monday's concession by the federal government was prompted by the dangerous conditions of the unmaintained Skutumpah road which the Department of Justice attorney’s claim Kane County hasn't fully documented as used and maintained prior to October 21, 1976. Six-miles of Skutumpah road remain in dispute.

Mudslide Clean-Up Continues; Highway 395 Open

Thunderstorm-caused mudslide at Dunmovin, California, pushes a big rig off the northbound U. S. Highway 395 and into a culvert on Thursday, August 26, 2010. Video captured by Jeff Bradshaw of Laguna Niguel shows mud flowing from the southbound lanes and across the divided highway.

Written by Benett Kessler
Sierra Wave

After last Thursday's horrendous flood and mudslide across Highway 395 south of Olancha, Caltrans and others have worked constantly to clear the highway and now to free a big rig that was pushed down into a culvert by the flood.

Susan Lent, PIO of Caltrans, said that the roads are open, but there is a lot of clean-up to do. Intermittent lane closures continue as crews work to clean things up.

Lent said that an Incident Command meeting would take place at the mudslide site on Tuesday among representatives of Caltrans, the CHP, BLM, the Forest Service and DWP. Officials planned to discuss completing clean-up and removal of the big rig which is blocking a culvert.

The initial mudslide had caused complete closure of Highway 395 for several hours. Some motorists headed back to Ridgecrest and detoured through Death Valley although initially Highway 190 was closed due to flooding.

Crews were able to restore northbound and southbound traffic flow, although restricted, by Friday.

Flash flood warning issued for Mojave preserve

From Staff Reports
Desert Dispatch

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

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

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

Dozens of burros die at dried-up spring

By DAVID DANELSKI
The Press-Enterprise

Fenner Spring CA - Nearly 60 burros were discovered dead in and near a horizontal mine shaft in a remote Mojave Desert wilderness area late last week, federal officials said Tuesday.

The animals probably were seeking water from a spring inside the tunnel that apparently had dried up. In all, 56 burros died, most likely of thirst, BLM officials said.

Some of the animals had been dead for as long as two weeks and were decomposing in the 100-degree-plus heat, said a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Land Management. Bureau officials saved the lives of another 13 burros that were suffering from severe dehydration.

A helicopter delivered 750 gallons of water to the site, about 35 miles west of Needles, on Thursday. By the next morning, all of that water had been consumed. Another 4,000 gallons were brought in by helicopter and a county water tender and placed in portable troughs.

The survivors remained at the remote site on Tuesday but probably will be moved to the federal corrals in Ridgecrest, nearly 200 miles away, officials said.

While BLM officials believe the 56 burros most likely died from lack of water, they are checking the possibility that they consumed contaminated water in the mine tunnel, Briery said

Fenner Spring, inside the 6-by-6-foot tunnel, is a regular water source for wild burros, said BLM spokesman David Briery.

But the spring appeared to have dried up, he said. The next available source of water is about 12 miles away.

Briery said the burros had pushed as far as 30 feet into the tunnel.

"They just started piling in," Briery said.

Alex Neibergs, a BLM horse and burro specialist, said the spring probably was their only water source. He said one of the animals may have become stuck in the tunnel and blocked the others.

"I have never seen anything like it," said Neibergs, one of several BLM officials who went to the scene on Thursday and Friday .

The dead burros were discovered by a rancher who grazes cattle near the Piute Mountains Wilderness Area, Briery said. He tried to pull the bodies out of the tunnel with his horse, but couldn't, Briery said.

Working in temperatures as high at 105, BLM officials removed the bodies, then used heavy equipment to bury them.

Wild burros have roamed the Mojave Desert since they were brought to the area by gold and silver prospectors. The BLM regularly captures them and holds them in federal corrals in Ridgecrest. They are then made available for adoption.

An Artistic Apprenticeship

Surrounded by the vast Gila wilderness, learning to paint with the reclusive desert artist Carl Faber

"Desert Wash" by Carl Faber.

By Esther Jamison
Desert Exposure

I first met Carl Faber in 2007 when I visited Gila Hot Springs with my husband. Upon meeting Carl and seeing his artwork, several things were apparent to me: First, his painting was jaw-dropping in its detail and refinement, and I wanted to be able to paint like that. Second, it became clear he was looking for a serious student to whom he could pass on his knowledge.

I don't know how I had the nerve to ask such an accomplished artist to sit for me so I could draw his portrait. It seems in hindsight to be a particularly rash, if not a downright arrogant thing to do on my part. I have always liked to draw the portraits of people with whom I have a good rapport, but it is quite an intense thing to draw someone's portrait, and given my inexperience, somewhat risky. I think I hoped somehow this portrait of Carl would be my way of proving myself as worthy to study with him. Fortunately, the sketch turned out well and he was pleased with it. I felt an overwhelming desire to stay, and to commence my studies then and there. But it would take us over two years to return.

After saving money, quitting my teaching job in England, and going through the grueling US immigration process, we finally arrived back here. Because not much had been said two years ago on the matter, and because Carl's responses by email were noncommittal, I was a bit nervous about whether I was right in thinking he might want to teach me. So when I knocked on his door the morning after I arrived, getting him out of bed, I was very relieved to find I had not been mistaken after all.

"I'm not a practical person. I don't think you're very practical either," he told me equably. "Artists follow their dreams and don't really think about the practicalities. Not many people are like that."

Carl Faber studied commercial art at a vocational school in Delaware, and worked in sign painting, metalwork, business displays and silkscreening in Florida and California. He moved out to the East Mojave desert in 1972 to focus on easel painting, and to study the desert landscapes that have become his hallmark.

His unique artwork and simple lifestyle drew attention from local and national press during the 1980s. Looking through these newspaper articles, he complains that the Los Angeles Times described him as a "reclusive hermit," when in fact he was constantly talking to people who visited him. Groups such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Mojave Road brought many visitors, and gave him a constant stream of buyers.

Originally one of these visitors, his partner Adrienne Knute met Carl when he was living at the Rock House at Rock Springs, a Homestead-era building just off the old Mojave Road. Carl illustrated Adrienne's botanical study, Plants of the East Mojave, which was published in 1991 and reprinted in 2002. They first came to Gila Hot Springs in 2004, originally looking for a winter home. Despite winter temperatures being no warmer than the East Mojave, they fell in love with the place and it quickly became a full-time residence.

Once I was sure Carl was happy to teach me whatever I had the appetite to learn in terms of oil painting, I commenced my apprenticeship. For the first month, I went round to his house every day, waiting for whatever instruction or exercise he thought appropriate to give me. At the age of 30, I suppose I am a little too old to be thought of as an apprentice, but it certainly felt like I was undertaking something of that nature, and there was an old-fashioned feel to the arrangement — which, in Carl's words"would have nothing to do with money."

At first, Carl did quite a lot of talking. Once he saw I was paying attention to the degree necessary, information would stream from him in an unbroken torrent. He introduced me to the technical side of oil painting, but also to the spirit with which he undertook it. In one particularly memorable transmission, he described the process of painting a tree, seeing the posture of the branches in relation to each other, and using triangulation to capture the exact proportion and ratio. This was important, he explained, because in its very posture a tree expresses its struggle for survival, its struggle towards the light, towards divinity.

Carl described how his experiences of using LSD back in the 1960s shaped his perception of the natural world. "Not everyone sees what I see" he told me without arrogance. It is not that he sees things that are not there, but that he sees more clearly and vividly the detail of what is there, and what most people don't notice. By painting the delicate beauty of nature and by directing the eye towards its inherently poetic arrangements, Carl's artwork guides the viewer towards a broader perception of and appreciation for nature. "Nature is your greatest teacher as an artist, and it will teach you more about art than I ever will."

Carl lived for 33 years in the East Mojave desert, several of those years in solitude. "If you live for seven years in solitude, you learn patience. I used to want to finish my paintings in one day. There, I found I could go back the next day, the day after that, and if it took me three months to finish a painting, it wouldn't matter."

While he watched other artists go down the photorealism route, he developed his painting style through sustained observation in the immediacy of nature. This loyalty to how things appear to the human eye — rather than to the camera lens — gives his paintings an intimate realism. Carl can talk all afternoon on what he considers to be the superiority of field painting: "Far more information is gathered by the eyes than by the camera, for example in the subtle interplay between light and shadow, and in determining spatial relationships."

Carl showed me how to stretch canvas, using wooden frames, a canvas clamp and a staple gun. He started out with cotton duck, then he changed his mind and decided I should paint on his linen canvas. My first study of a skull on oil board turned out fairly well, and I think it did something to raise his expectations. "You're not a waste of time at all," he assured me. As we set up the still life he told me with a twinkle in his eye, "This time I'm going to accept nothing less than excellence."

As I sat down in front of a daunting still life, which included a pestle and mortar made of glass, I quickly buried the pencil drawing I transferred to the canvas under a layer of amateurishly clumsy paint. I sat there, listening to the bluegrass station on the satellite radio in his studio, wondering what to do now. "Nothing less than excellence." The silent reiterations of this expectation weren't helpful. I decided to quit for the morning and went inside to confess that my efforts were far short of excellence. I added plaintively that it was too hard. He nodded quietly but uncritically.

When I returned after lunch, he said, "Let's go and have a look at that nightmare out there." I watched, grateful and spellbound, as in a few deft strokes, he resurrected the painting, offering guidance, encouragement and a choice: Quit now, and we can scrub and save the canvas for something else. "This is a very difficult set-up. I just put these out there, and I was kinda surprised you wanted to paint them." He was offering me a way out. "Or, you could continue — but it's going to take a lot of fussing with before you're happy with it."

I thought for a while. His artistic intervention and encouraging words made up my mind. I could tell that, even though he expected excellence, I wouldn't be punished if I didn't produce it. The main thing he cared about, it seemed, was that I tried my best.

In December, when the uninsulated studio kept the lard oil solid until midday, I leaped at the chance to draw Carl's portrait again, as I knew it would happen next to the wood stove in the house. When I finished the portrait, I suggested perhaps it was not one to show the friend he had been trying to persuade to sit for me. With some trepidation I showed it to Carl.

"It's an honest portrait," he said generously, and he seemed happy with it as a study. Adrienne didn't like it. She looked at it and said, "Ugh."

"That's what she says when she sees me first thing in the morning," Carl joked.

The second portrait I did was slightly more user-friendly, but still didn't capture his gleeful spirit. Adrienne was not convinced by this attempt, either. I complained that it is difficult to see where his mouth and jawline are because of his beard.

Carl again defended my artwork by saying that Adrienne doesn't see him as he is now, but as he was when they first met 25 years ago. "She sees me as all young and handsome still." Carl stood up and cuddled her.

"Isn't he pretty?" she said affectionately.

When people ask him whether they can chat while he works, Carl replies, "You can talk to me about anything, as long as you don't talk to me about what I'm doing."

When I painted, Carl didn't talk to me about what I was doing, but he did talk about art, artists, galleries and stories from his past. I found myself putting down my brush and listening, particularly as he reached every now and then to get art books down from his shelves, to show me examples of artwork. After a while he would notice I've stopped painting, and he'd leave me in the studio alone. He'd just come in every so often to check how I'm doing, and offer guidance. He seemed to appreciate the fact that I was happy for him to take over with the brush to demonstrate or to correct something. Some students are very touchy, he said, wanting the painting to be all their own.

One morning I found Carl had done a self-portrait to demonstrate the use of white charcoal on tinted paper. I saw that Carl's sharp technique is the result of deft, single strokes with either pencil or brush, which creates a freshness and clarity in his work. I tend to go back and forth with lines until I get them right, producing a more muddy effect. He agreed with my self-assessment and thought up the next exercise for me to do.

As a sign painter, he learned calligraphy and the importance of accurate and deft brushstrokes. He set out an exercise with a lettering brush using tempura on newsprint. He showed me how to roll the brush to paint a thinner line, and left me for an hour to practice capital letters.

Feeling like a change from being inside the studio, I picked out a sycamore tree in their yard to do a study of. Carl stretched a good quality cotton duck canvas and I transferred my drawing of the tree to it. It is quite a logistical operation to get set up to paint outside, and Carl does not scorn the finer details of equipment; he treats finding the right palette and maulstick as just as important as what paint and brushes to use. He is certainly an expert at painting in the field. In his studio I came across a photo of him sitting on a stool in the middle of a river, painting the roots of an alder tree on the riverbank, with his equipment laid out in an archipelago around him. Carl still owns that painting, which I think is one of his most appealing.

"Painting these squares is going to become like water torture for you" he'd told me gleefully when he set me the task of completing a large color chart. As I sat in front of the wintry sycamore tree, its branches naked and mottled with complex pastel hues, I was grateful for the time-saving knowledge that allowed me to mix the right color faster, especially when every minute outside is metered out by how long I can stand the cold.

After about an hour of painting, I began to feel a dualistic tension building between me as the painter and the tree as the object of my painting. I sat still and tried to drop the unconscious barriers. My hands were almost numb and had lost much of their fine motor skill. I allowed my brain to slow down to accept the cold, and put up my hood. After a few minutes, I saw a new color in the bark of the tree, and by painting it in where I saw it, the tree on the canvas looked a little bit closer to being life-like.

After a couple of weeks of working on the tree, I was becoming slightly less enthusiastic and somewhat stuck, so Carl offered to help me put in some of the background, in order to illuminate the next priorities for the foreground. He is quite unusual as a painter for painting the foreground first, then doing the background, and then returning to the foreground; his main enthusiasm lies in the detail of the foreground.

He showed me a technique where he paints a branch across another branch (the paint from the first branch already having dried), then uses thinner to take away the paint that crosses the original branch. This leaves a clear and well-executed crossover of two branches, when normally an artist would be struggling to take the edge of the second branch accurately and convincingly up to the edge of the original branch.

My main desire in learning to paint in oils is to do portraits. I had in mind to paint our neighbor, a beautiful Native American woman with piercing gray eyes and straight gray and black hair. I told Carl that she was willing to sit for me, and his eyes twinkled in approval. He said, "You'll want to do a good likeness, a real portrait of Susan. But when you first start, you're going to get frustrated and you don't want to get frustrated in front of your model, because she will get discouraged. You'll also feel under quite a lot of pressure — so perhaps you should practice on someone else first."

I saw the sense in his words, so I enlisted my husband as model. He has fair skin, lively auburn hair, kind green eyes and, most important, much patience.

Carl fussed around getting us set up in his studio, making us coffee and bringing out cookies. I was a bit nervous about starting, but Carl encouraged me to jump right in with oils, since I have done several sketches of my husband in the past. The painting went through many stages of development, and since I went straight into oils without doing a preliminary sketch, my husband's features morphed alarmingly from day to day.

I became stuck at the impasse of not wanting to put too much paint down when I wasn't entirely satisfied with the structure, but equally not being able to get the structural lines right. Carl showed me how to use color to help find and define the correct form of the subject. He used the maulstick to point out specific parts of my husband's face, indicating areas of cool and warm shades, highlights and value changes. As I put the paint down more thickly and used richer colors with greater boldness, the structure of his face began to fall into place.

After finishing my husband's portrait and starting Susan's, I decided to return to the unfinished sycamore tree before its leaves came out. After painting for a couple of hours, I asked Carl, "What would you do next?" — a question I almost regretted, as he launched into a morale-dissipating list of things that he would change, and ways in which I hadn't done justice to the detail and mood of the tree. I thought to myself: That's the last question you should ask a perfectionist.

"The tree doesn't look like a map. What you've done is kind of like this — " He pointed to his camouflage jacket. "Look at how crisp the delineation is between this patch of bark and this one." He pointed to two closely colored patches of green with the maulstick. "And how this patch gradually shades from this to this color. And make sure you don't make these branches look like the limbs of some sea creature."

He spoke for several minutes in a similar vein. After a moment's silence I said, "I'm just not sure I could paint that kind of detail with a brush."

Carl must have detected some disheartenment in my voice. His eyes lit up as he chided me humorously, "Shame on you!" He proceeded to remind me of all the ways in which I could paint finer lines and manipulate them to get the desired effect.

Despite Carl dismissing the idea that my tools were inadequate for the task, I bought three of the smallest oil brushes I could find the next day in town. When I returned to paint the sycamore, my size 0 round gave me a renewed enthusiasm for the process, allowing me to put in the fine lines that Carl expected of me. The frustration I had experienced previously was forgotten.

After a couple of hours it started to rain, and I took the painting in to show Carl. I could tell that he was happy with my progress by the light in his eyes as he put it carefully on his workbench to dry.

Originally from England, Esther Jamison is an artist living in Gila Hot Springs.