Windmilling, a Dying Art, Hangs on in Texas

Mike Crowell, a third-generation windmiller, works on a windmill near Claude in the Texas Panhandle. (photo by: Axel Gerdau)

by Kate Galbraith
The Texas Tribune

CLAUDE — Working 35 feet above the flat earth of the Panhandle, a young man in a baseball cap loosened the bolts attaching a windmill to a steel tower.

“Ready?” came the shout from the ground. “Yeah, go ahead,” he hollered back. Slowly, the 500-pound windmill was lowered to the ground. A four-man crew expertly dismantled the wheel and replaced the motor, which had stopped working after it ran out of oil, and within an hour the windmill was hoisted back up and ready to spin.

“This is kind of hard to do when it’s windy,” said Mike Crowell, the crew’s 59-year-old boss, who said his crews sometimes work on as many as nine windmills each day.

Only a few dozen outfits like Crowell’s still exist in the Texas Panhandle, practicing the dying art of “windmilling” — fixing the old-style whirligigs that pump water from the aquifers. Windmills were crucial to 19th-century settlers of West Texas and the Great Plains because little surface water existed. Now, thousands of them — far smaller than the giant electricity-producing turbines that have sprouted around West Texas in recent years — still twirl in remote pastures. The windmills go where electricity cannot reach and cattle need to drink, though cheaper solar pumps are starting to push them out.

“Obama wants everybody to go green,” said Bob Bracher, the president of Aermotor Windmill, a company that has manufactured windmills for more than 100 years and still makes a few thousand of them each year in a warehouse in San Angelo. “Well, hell, we’ve been green since 1888.”

Much has changed since then. Now, some of Bracher’s sales go to what he calls the “enthusiasts’ market,” meaning people who want a windmill simply for its iconic look.

But the windmiller profession, celebrated by novelists like Larry McMurtry and Annie Proulx, still hangs on in remote corners of Texas. Crowell’s family has been working on windmills since 1896, when his grandfather traded 60 horses for a rig to drill wells. He learned the trade from his father and uncle, and now his two sons, both in their 20s, have joined the business. He has high hopes for his five grandsons, who occasionally come to watch the work.

“Some of the best features of being a windmill man is we go out on places that only a cowboy will see once in awhile,” said

Crowell, who sometimes works in the scenic Palo Duro Canyon as well as on vast ranches that have 80 or more windmills apiece.

But windmilling can be difficult and dangerous. Crowell needed stitches after another worker atop a windmill dropped a hammer on his head. Work goes on year-round, despite occasionally ferocious winds and ice storms, because if a windmill has stopped pumping water, cattle can die.

“It takes a certain kind of person to be able to stand that type of work environment,” Crowell said.

This year, the weather has brought extreme heat and drought — which has meant boom times for both Aermotor and Crowell Water Well Service, Crowell’s company. Desperate for new sources of water, Texas ranchers have drilled more wells and ordered more windmills.

“We have been very busy this summer because there’s no surface water, and the cattle sure need to drink somewhere,” Mr. Crowell said.

Now, however, things have gotten so bad that ranchers have sold huge numbers of cattle, so business is likely to slow during the winter.

“When there’s no grass and no cattle, there’s no need for water out of windmills,” Bracher of Aermotor said.

Windmills also face a competitive threat from solar pumps, which have recently made significant inroads. Crowell says he spends about 70 percent of his time on windmills but also works on solar pumps, which he began seeing in the Panhandle in the late 1990s.

“Nearly every rancher I know is contemplating going solar,” said Delbert Trew, who ranches on rolling prairie about 40 miles east of Claude, Crowell’s base. He got rid of three windmills about five years ago — they were too expensive to maintain, he said — and bought a solar-powered pump from an Oklahoma company called Robison Solar Systems.

Bill Hoots, a sales executive at Robison, said that things have been “extremely, extremely busy” until recently, though they are now slowing as in the windmill business as ranchers sell off cattle. Dan Prangsgaard, a spokesman for Grundfos, a Danish pump manufacturer, said that growth in the solar pump business has almost tripled in the last two to three years.

Windmills last about 60 years, longer than solar pumps, according to Brian Vick, the lead scientist for renewable energy at a federal agricultural research laboratory in the Panhandle community of Bushland. But windmills need more maintenance and the solar pumps — which are cheaper up front — are better matched to the summertime needs of cattle, he said, because August and September tend to have little wind and lots of sun.

“You have to haul some water out to the cattle during that period sometimes, especially if the winds are low,” Vick said.

Ranchers putting in windmills and solar pumps can get substantial subsidies via the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a branch of the federal Department of Agriculture. Under the N.R.C.S.’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Texas ranchers have recently been eligible for payments of about $6,000 for a solar pump installation atop a well that’s more than 300 feet deep, according to Troy Headings, a civil engineer in Amarillo with the N.R.C.S. The payment runs about $7,260 for a 10-foot diameter windmill, and the rationale, he said, is to make sure cattle graze the entire pasture, "rather than concentrating around one water source and completely denuding that area of grass."

The federal program can cover about 40 to 60 percent of the installed cost of a windmill or solar pump, according to Mr. Crowell.

Will solar pumps ever eclipse windmills in West Texas? Vick, of the Bushland agricultural research laboratory, said that the windmills have “still got a pretty good future for another 20 or 30 years or so.”

Plenty of ranchers still swear by the machines, whose design has changed little in a century.

Rocky Farrar, a rancher near Canadian, has about 15 windmills on his land, and although he installed a solar pump a few months ago, he still hasn’t turned it on.

“I’m just not ready to do that,” Farrar said. “I don’t know why.” He said he loves the sound of the windmills, which have given him little maintenance trouble over the years.

“I think as long as you have any old-school people left,” Farrar said, “you’re going to have windmills.”

Huge solar power plants are blooming in California's southern deserts

By Dana Hull
San Jose Mercury News

MOJAVE DESERT -- At first glance, California's vast Mojave Desert seems barren: mile after mile of dust, sand and scrubby creosote bush under a blistering sun. But the huge desert, which spans an area larger than West Virginia, is becoming speckled with gigantic solar power plants that are creating hundreds of construction jobs and, when complete, will generate electricity for millions of homes.

California's solar Gold Rush is under way, fueled by billions of dollars of federal stimulus funding and a new state law that requires utilities to buy a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. While the collapse of Fremont solar manufacturer Solyndra has dominated the news in recent weeks because it received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, several other solar companies that received loan guarantees appear to be thriving.

The project furthest along is BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which has been under construction for one full year and is currently being built on federal land near the California-Nevada border with the help of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee. BrightSource, which is based in Oakland, uses mirrors to concentrate the sun and turn turbines that generate electricity. When complete in 2013, Ivanpah will be the largest solar thermal power plant in the world, generating enough electricity for 140,000 homes.

Currently, more than 800 construction workers are on the sprawling 3,600-acre site, which covers an area half the size of Los Gatos. The steel shell of a massive tower that eventually will be taller than coastal redwood trees is rising from the dust near a parking lot filled with cars, trucks and construction vehicles. Most of the workers arrive before dawn to beat the searing late-afternoon heat, and engineering managers pore over plans in air-conditioned trailers.

Ivanpah is one of nine solar thermal power plants approved by the California Energy Commission last year. In addition, scores of other solar projects are in the pipeline. In August, the federal Bureau of Land Management was processing applications for 17 solar power plants in California's deserts.

Solar currently accounts for less than 1 percent of the state's electricity, most of which comes from natural gas, two nuclear power plants and hydropower. But advocates -- including Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown -- want solar to play a key role in the state's energy future, in part because each project generates hundreds of construction jobs. Brown hopes to add 20,000 megawatts of renewable generation -- about one-third of the state's current power needs -- to California's electric grid by the end of the decade.

"We use a lot of energy in California, and we have aspirations to electrify our vehicle fleet, our ports and to develop high-speed rail," said Commissioner Karen Douglas of the California Energy Commission. "We need significant amounts of utility-scale renewable electricity."

Public land at risk?

However, critics and grass-roots organizations such as Solar Done Right fear the West's last remaining tracts of pristine public lands are being industrialized by "Big Solar" in the name of clean energy, bringing irreparable harm to native plants and threatened species. They want "smart from the start" planning that allows renewable energy development in some parts of the desert while protecting the rest as conservation land. They want residents in the Bay Area and elsewhere to know that California's deserts are as beloved to some residents as its beaches, parks and redwood trees are to others.

"There's plenty of desert out there -- just put it in the right place," said Jim Lyons, senior director for renewable energy at Defenders of Wildlife, a national organization that opposes the proposed 4,613-acre Calico Solar Project east of Barstow because of its effects on desert tortoises, burrowing owls and bighorn sheep. "It's a lot like real estate: location, location, location."

Solar's potential

The Ivanpah facility embodies many of the hopes and fears of solar power plants in the desert. It will generate 370 megawatts of electricity, which BrightSource says will displace 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the plant's 30-year life. Google (GOOG) has invested $168 million in the project, while PG&E and Southern California Edison have signed long-term contracts to purchase the electricity.

"Solar thermal technology projects like Ivanpah are playing a vital role in helping us meet our state renewable goals while providing for a secure and sustainable energy future," Fong Wan, senior vice president for energy procurement at PG&E, said in a statement.

Unlike rooftop solar panels that directly convert sunlight into electricity, solar thermal plants concentrate the sun's rays with mirrors or lenses to boil water to create steam; the steam then turns turbines that generate electricity. Ivanpah consists of three separate power plants, each with a 459-foot-tall "power tower" and tens of thousands of mirrorlike "heliostats" -- 173,500 in all. While land has been cleared for the construction site, BrightSource has taken pains to leave much of the native vegetation intact. Thousands of pylons protrude from the ground amid vegetation that has been trimmed, but not plowed.

"This has the lowest environmental impact of any project in solar," BrightSource CEO John Woolard said in remarks to media members who toured the project. "We're using a minimal amount of water, and there is low impact on the soil and terrain."

But Jim Andre, a botanist and plant ecologist at UC Riverside, says native plants will not survive under the newly created shade.

"You're altering the conditions that the species have evolved in," he said. "It goes against conservation biology 101."

Concern about tortoise

The biggest environmental controversy at Ivanpah is the endangered desert tortoise. Though BrightSource expects to spend at least $45 million on everything from salaries for biologists to the purchase of thousands of acres of conservation habitat, activists worried about the tortoise protested outside the company's Oakland headquarters.

While alienating some environmentalists, Big Solar has many supporters among the ranks of the state's unemployed. Ivanpah is a welcome source of jobs in San Bernardino County, which has been hit hard by the housing crash.

Iraq War veterans Ross Bowlin and Kenneth Platten carpool more than 200 miles from their homes near Riverside to get to Ivanpah, and they share an inexpensive hotel room in Nevada during the workweek. Both obtained their jobs via "Helmets to Hardhats," an apprentice program that helps veterans transition to careers in the construction trades.

"Before this job I had no construction experience at all, and I was on unemployment for a while," said Bowlin, a former Marine who served two stints in Iraq. "But this job reminds me of being in the military, in that we have a job that's bigger than ourselves. We're facing an energy crisis."

Platten, who served in the Army, misses the adrenaline rush of war but says the sheer scale of Ivanpah gives him a different kind of thrill. The good wages -- about $35 an hour -- help make up for the long drive. In addition, he's used to the desert heat: The deserts of Iraq are even hotter than the Mojave.

"We're building the biggest solar thermal power plant in the world," he said, as he surveyed the power tower. "To see this going up is amazing. I can look out and know that I hauled some of that iron, and that's cool."

Sprouting like weeds

Ivanpah is not BrightSource's only project. The company has filed applications with the California Energy Commission to build two other large solar power plants: the 500-megawatt Hidden Hills project, in California's Inyo County, and the 750-megawatt Rio Mesa project in Riverside County.

"There's so many companies submitting plans and filing for permits that it's hard to keep track," said Laura Cunningham of Basin and Range Watch, a volunteer group fighting "energy sprawl."

"You basically have a few dozen activists trying to protect this huge desert," she said. "Each solar project is on a different type of ecosystem, and there hasn't been a lot of planning. It's been, 'There's sun, let's build a power plant.' "

Cunningham grew up in the Bay Area and moved to a rural mining town in southern Nevada 10 years ago. A biologist and reptile expert, she has grown to love the desert, and the sense of calm and wonder it inspires.

"You can go into the desert and feel like you are the only person in the world," she said. "And yet it's teeming with life: jack rabbits, burrowing owls, rattlesnakes. In the spring, we have the most spectacular wildflowers, and the whole desert erupts in blossoms."

Conservation plan

In an effort to resolve conflicts between solar companies and conservationists, California is developing a Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan to decide which parts of the desert will be open for renewable energy development and which parts will be protected.

"Initially, all of these big solar projects were being crammed down our throats," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity who is active in the conservation plan's process. "But now the state is realizing that you can't just bully projects into being -- you have to take a close look at where they are sited. Climate change is real, and we have to transition to renewable energy. But let's do it without driving species to extinction."

Haenszel became 'the source' on San Bernardino County's past

Nick Cataldo, Columnist
San Bernardino Sun

During my years researching San Bernardino County's colorful past, more than a few historians have helped me out immensely. But without question the scholar who made local history the most exciting for me, not only through her own amazing work, but also through the encouragement she gave me, was the late Arda M. Haenszel.

Born on Sept. 24, 1910, in Ebenezer, N.Y., the only child of Dr. Allen and Arda C. Haenszel became fascinated with history early on when she moved with her parents to the semi-abandoned Nevada desert mining town of Searchlight in 1919. Dr. Haenszel was the company physician for the Santa Fe Railway as well as the lone town doctor. In fact, he was the only doctor for miles around.

The region's mining boom was over by nearly a decade, so young Arda grew up around the ghostly reminders of abandoned buildings, mine shafts, and rock dumps. This unique environment may have sparked her interest in the past.

The Haenszel family left Searchlight in 1922 and moved to San Bernardino, which is where Arda called home for most of the rest of her life, until moving to Redlands' Plymouth Village, where she resided during her last years.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Arda launched a 33-year elementary school teaching career in San Bernardino. No doubt, her kids learned a thing of two about our region's "olden days" during her tenure.

After her retirement in 1966, she often was honored as the No. 1 consultant on our county's rich heritage. A longtime associate of the San Bernardino County Museum, she amassed a famous set of files - an unbelievably extensive historical collection on any and every topic regarding San Bernardino County as well as parts of Southern Nevada - that have provided material for countless other researchers (including yours truly) in their quest of exploring this region. She efficiently and willingly shared information on local Indian tribes, old trails, pioneers, historic sites, nearly forgotten towns, the Mojave Desert ... the list goes on and on.

Arda also had a strong interest in archaeology and, although not blessed with great health, was no "couch potato" writer. Up until about 10 years before her passing, she always was driving her Jeep out into the most remote areas of the desert, photographing abandoned sites, documenting her findings, and analyzing ancient petroglyphs.

Over the years Arda wrote numerous articles pertaining to archaeology, paleontology, anthropology and history for the San Bernardino County Museum Association. She also wrote many articles for the San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society's publications, "Heritage Tales" and "Odyssey," an amazing accomplishment considering her busy schedule volunteering with the County Museum and San Bernardino Public Library. Even more remarkable was that this was mostly done while she was practically deaf and her vision was failing.

Arda was well known for her book donations; she is responsible for the creation of the California Room at San Bernardino's Feldheym Library.

For decades Arda Haenszel had been the "the source" for local history and when she passed away on Jan. 9, 2002, the 91-year-old San Bernardino County resident became part of that story she loved to research and write about.

Her estate included a very generous donation of $749,000 to the City of San Bernardino Library Endowment Fund. On Dec. 13, 2007, the San Bernardino Library Board of Trustees unanimously approved the naming of the California Room as the Arda Haenszel California Room.

David Myrick passes away at 93

David F. Myrick in Ojai in 2007. (The Guzzler)

A Talented and Extraordinary Man Passes On

James Buckley
Montecito Journal

Over the past weekend, Montecito lost a writer of renown, a native-born historian of unparalleled accomplishment, and most of all, a friend, supporter, and defender of all that is valuable in Montecito. David Myrick, whose two books on our area – Montecito and Santa Barbara: From Farms to Estates, and The Days of the Great Estates – stand as the definitive tomes on the establishment, expansion, and development of Santa Barbara and, especially and distinctly, Montecito.

Dana Newquist, with whom I had planned to visit David at Casa Dorinda on Sunday morning, September 25, called with the sad news the day before we were planning to stop by. Dana had been visiting David almost daily for the past six months and had noted that over the previous three days 93-year-old David Myrick had “dramatically declined.” He passed away at 10 am, Saturday morning, September 24. David’s nephew, Scott Allen, prepared the following obituary:

Santa Barbara News-Press
Obituary

David F. Myrick was born in Santa Barbara's Cottage Hospital on June 17, 1918. His parents were Donald and Charlotte Porter Myrick. He was educated in local schools, the last being Crane Country Day School, until he transferred to Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He then attended Santa Barbara State College for 2 years before going to Boston to attend Babson College where he earned his degree in business administration.

In 1940 he worked for Convair in San Diego in various clerical positions. Then in August of 1944 he began his long career working in the president's office of Southern Pacific Company at their headquarters in San Francisco. He put his business acumen to work composing letters to stockholders; representing the company in financial matters before various commissions; and researching potential mergers and acquisitions.

During his life he also found time to pen 17 books and approximately 140 published articles and book reviews. His special focus was writing about different locales, including Telegraph Hill (where he lived for 29 years during his career with Southern Pacific) and Montecito, CA (where he purchased his retirement home before moving there in 1981).

He also wrote extensively on the history of American railroads and mining camps in Eastern California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, including the most populated mining camp in the Western hemisphere located in Potosi, Bolivia.

Mr. Myrick was also on the board of directors for many associations--a few of them were the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, the Nevada Historical Society, Telegraph Hill Dwellers (two times) and the Montecito Association.

He eventually moved into Casa Dorinda Retirement Community in November of 2003 while retaining ownership of his Montecito home.

His was a member of the Bohemian Club and Birnham Wood Country Club.

Mr. Myrick is survived by his brother Richard Myrick; his sister Julia Allen; and her three sons Peter, Scott, and Edward Allen.

No one knew Western Railroad History better. He was a pleasant and generous correspondent. For the inhabitants and fans of the East Mojave Desert, from Tonopah to Parker, Oro Grande to Las Vegas, David Myrick's 1963 Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California: Volume II, The Southern Roads is the singular history on the region's railroads, referenced by all local historians after him. In this wonderful book can be found the detailed histories of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific, Santa Fe (now BNSF), The Salt Lake Route, Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad, Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, Nevada Southern Railway, Ludlow and Southern Railway, Bullfrog Goldfield Railroad, and the Guzzler's favorite, the Searles Lake monorail of the Epsom Salts Railroad. The heritage of the Desert West has been greatly enriched by the life and work of David Myrick. - The Guzzler

San Bernardino County: Board considers new boundaries

Proposed San Bernardino County redistrict map. (San Bernardino County)

by Imran Ghori
Press-Enterprise

San Bernardino County -- Supervisors will take up a redistricting ordinance today but remain split on the plan, which has drawn criticism from some mountain and Latino residents.

The board approved a draft proposal on a 3-2 vote last month at its fourth meeting since May on how to draw the county's supervisorial district boundaries.

The new map shifts parts of the San Bernardino Mountains -- from Lake Arrowhead to Running Springs -- from the 3rd District to the 2nd District.

The proposed map would also move Barstow, Lucerne Valley and Twentynine Palms from the 1st District to the 3rd District and half of Upland from the 2nd District to the 4th District.

The county's consultant, National Demographics Corp., recommended the option out of five maps considered as the best able to meet different county criteria.

Changing demographics from the 2010 census required the county to decrease the size of the High Desert 1st District, which saw the largest population increase, while adding to the 4th District, which needed to grow the most to ensure the districts are equally balanced, according to county spokesman David Wert.

Supervisor Neil Derry, who represents the 3rd District, voted against the plan along with 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt. Both remain opposed.

Derry had proposed two alternatives that would move all of the San Bernardino Mountains into his district -- an option supported by a large group of mountain residents who spoke at the public hearings of wanting to unify the area under one district.

"The public has come out and spoken and been routinely ignored," Derry said of the plan favored by the board majority.

Board Chairwoman Josie Gonzales, who represents the 5th District, said she is satisfied that the plan is as fair as it can be given the different regulations governing redistricting.

"We go into the redistricting process knowing we're not going to make everybody happy; that includes ourselves, the supervisors," she said.

Gonzales said she believes the mountain area is better served by two representatives on the board instead of just one.

The plan also came under fire earlier this month from Rep. Joe Baca, D-Rialto, who joined a Latino advocacy group in accusing the county of refusing to create a second Latino majority district.

County numbers, however, show that Hispanics would have a majority in two districts in the proposed plan -- 57 percent in the 4th District and 69 percent in the 5th District.

The group, the League of United Latin American Citizens Inland Empire chapter, held a news conference to criticize the county plan but did not contact county officials, Wert and Gonzales said.

"I'm at a loss as to why they've not contacted me or the CEO," Gonzales said. "We'd be happy to listen to them."

Gonzales sent a letter last week to Joe Olague, president of the group's Inland Empire chapter, inviting him to submit the group's proposed maps. In his response, Olague reiterated the group's criticisms but did not offer its maps.

Wert said the figures cited by the group in criticizing the Latino population represented in the districts are false.

The board meets at noon at the County Government Center at 385 N. Arrowhead Ave. in San Bernardino.

BLM rapped for silencing citizens

by David Danelski
Press-Enterprise

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has decided to allow members of the public to speak during meetings held to gather public comments.

A brouhaha developed after an Aug. 31 meeting in Primm, Nev. The point of the meeting was to gather public input on environmental concerns related to a planned solar development. But people, some of whom drove hundreds of miles to express their views, were not allowed to speak and instead were told to write their thoughts on pieces of paper and submit them.

On Tuesday, after public criticism and media calls, BLM leadership decided to return to a process that lets people "listen to what each other has to say," said David Briery, a spokesman for the agency's California Desert District, headquartered in Moreno Valley.

"We thought we had a process that worked, but it didn't," he said by telephone.

At the Aug. 31 meeting, the BLM sought public input -- as required by federal law -- to identify topics to cover in environmental reviews of a planned 2,000-acre solar project on public land in northeast San Bernardino County.

But after representatives of Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar gave a presentation about their plans, no one in the audience of about 50 people was allowed a turn at the microphone.

Instead, BLM officials told people they could fill out a form that gave them space for about 75 words of handwritten comments, said Chris Clarke, a Palm Springs resident and member of a group called Solar Done Right. He was among those who attended the meeting, at Primm Valley Golf Club.

Some audience members were flabbergasted and shouted at BLM officials. Dozens of people left frustrated, witnesses said.

"I had some people come from as far as Long Beach, and that's two tanks of gas," said David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. "They gave the impression that a decision (on approving the project) was predetermined."

The meeting spurred official letters of complaint and critical Internet postings on media websites. First Solar responded to the flap by scheduling a meeting for Monday in Barstow to give people "an opportunity to provide input and ask questions about the project in an open forum discussion," according to a company email. The meeting is at 6 p.m. at the Hampton Inn, 2710 Lenwood Road.

The meeting format that last month irritated members of the public is not new.

In recent years, BLM officials considering solar and wind energy developments and military officials wanting to expand the Marine Corps training center at Twentynine Palms also have avoided giving the public a forum. People could walk from table to table to meet individually with various officials and were allowed to submit written comments. The meetings did not give people a chance to pick up a microphone and address an audience.

Briery, the BLM spokesman, said the Desert District officials adopted that meeting format because they had to get through numerous public meetings, a result of the dozens of wind and solar energy projects proposed on public land.

"We were looking for the most efficient way to get substantive comments from the public, and that's why we had gone to written comments only," Briery said.

Rob Mrowka, a former U.S. Forest Service manager who is now a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said some federal officials have been concerned that allowing people to speak at meetings might lead to grandstanding by those who could then encourage a crowd to become unruly.

But Mrowka, who attended the Aug. 31 meeting, faulted the BLM for not even letting people ask questions about the project.

"A large number of participants traveled great distances to the middle of nowhere for the meeting and deserved the right to have questions answered," he said in an email to BLM officials.

Clarke and other meeting participants said the BLM's meeting format suppressed public discourse, because no one could hear what other citizens had to say. The situation made it difficult for like-minded people to find each other and for those who may disagree about the project to find common ground, he said.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said citizens should be given a choice of speaking or submitting written comments.

"Sometimes freedom speech can be a little bit messy, but it benefits us in ways that outweigh the cost," he said.

Take a 'monumental' tour of Cajon Pass

Santa Fe and Salt Lake Trail Monument (parks.ca.gov)

Mark Landis, Correspondent
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

For centuries, the Cajon Pass has been a primary corridor into Southern California, and a series of little-known monuments commemorate the pioneers who blazed the trails over the rugged mountain barrier.

There are nine unique monuments set in historic locations throughout the Cajon Pass. Each one tells a story of the hardships and triumphs faced by the pioneers who made the difficult journey.

The routes through the Cajon Pass began as simple footpaths used by Indians traveling from the inland deserts to the coastal regions of Southern California.

The first white explorer to travel through the Cajon Pass was most likely Spanish military Captain Pedro Fages in 1771, who was leading a band of soldiers hunting for deserters.

Other famous explorers including Padre Francisco Garces and mountain man Jedediah Strong Smith followed various routes through the Cajon Pass.

The most prominent group of settlers that traveled through the pass was a party of 500 Mormons who came by wagon train from Utah in June 1851. The task of hauling their heavy wagons down the steep slopes of the Cajon Pass was the final test of their grueling 400-mile journey.

The monuments are spread throughout the Cajon Pass, and all but three are easily accessible by car. Those that are accessible can be seen in an enjoyable afternoon road trip.

Stoddard-Waite Monument: The first monument set in the Cajon Pass was dedicated May 18, 1913 to commemorate the early pioneers who came by horseback and wagon train through the passage. Sheldon Stoddard and Sidney P. Waite, two of the most well-known pioneers who traveled through the pass in 1849 were honored attendees.

This spire-shaped monument, listed as California Historic Marker No. 578, was placed along the former Santa Fe/Salt Lake Trail. It is located in a thick grove of Cottonwood trees near the CHP truck scales on the southbound I-15, about three-quarters of a mile south of Highway 138. The monument is on private property owned by the San Bernardino County Museum, and is only accessible by special permission.

Santa Fe and Salt Lake Trail Monument: A second monument of similar size and shape was erected in 1917 just a few hundred yards northeast of the Stoddard-Waite Monument. A festive ceremony was held to dedicate the monument, once again attended by pioneers who had traveled the early wagon roads.

The concrete spire, listed as California State Historic Landmark No. 576, is located at the end of Wagon Wheel Road (south of McDonalds), just east of the northbound I-15 CHP truck scales.

Sycamore Grove Monument: This large spire-shaped monument was built in 1927 to mark the site of the 1851 Mormon camp at Sycamore Grove, known today as Glen Helen. The 500 Mormon settlers camped here while the leaders of their party negotiated the purchase of Rancho San Bernardino.

This monument, listed as California Historic Marker No. 573, is located just inside the grounds of Glen Helen Park, on Glen Helen Parkway, .8 mile south of Cajon Boulevard.

Mohave Trail Monument: The Mohave Trail Monument was set on Sept. 19, 1931, on a remote mountaintop northeast of Devore, fittingly named Monument Peak. This small stone and mortar monument was placed by the San Bernardino County Historical Society to commemorate the explorers and frontiersmen who traveled this ancient footpath.

A 4-wheel drive vehicle is required to reach the 5,290-feet elevation Monument Peak site. Take Palm Avenue north from the I-215 until the paved road ends and becomes Bailey Canyon Road. The 5.9-mile trip up the dirt road can be readily found on Google Maps. The monument is located at GPS coordinates: 34 14'43.95"N, 117 21'12.33"W.

Mormon Trail Monument: A modest stone and mortar monument topped by a wagon wheel was built in the West Cajon Valley by the Sons of Mormon Pioneers, and dedicated on May 15, 1937. A small, weathered plaque commemorates the Mormon settlers who passed through this area in 1851. The monument, listed as California Historic Marker No. 577, is located on Highway 138, 4.2 miles west of I-15.

Pioneer Women Monument: On April 16, 1977, this simple concrete and marble monument was placed near the former Mormon campsite of Sycamore Grove to commemorate pioneer women. The plaque is a memorial to the hardships the pioneer women faced as they traveled across the untamed country by ox team and covered wagon.

The monument is located on Glen Helen Parkway at the onramp to the northbound 1-15 freeway.

Mormon Pioneer Trail: This small stone and mortar monument was placed in July 1985 to commemorate the wagon train of 500 Mormon settlers who passed by the site in 1851.

The monument is located on the Old Salt Lake Trail near the 1912 Stoddard-Waite Monument and is accessible only by permission.

Blue Cut: This large concrete monument was erected alongside old Route 66 in a narrow gap of the Cajon Pass known as Blue Cut. The monument, dedicated July 23, 1994, was placed by the Billy Holcomb Chapter of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E. Clampus Vitus. The inlaid brass plaque describes the explorers and immigrants who blazed the trails and roads through the pass, as well as some of the historic events that occurred in the area.

To reach this monument, exit I-15 at Kenwood Avenue and go south to Cajon Boulevard (old Route 66). Turn right onto Cajon Boulevard and go 3.7 miles north. Look for the monument on the left in a wide turnout area, set back among the shade trees.

Summit Train Station Monument: This carved marble monument was placed near the site of the Summit Train Station in 1996 by the Hesperia Recreation and Park District. The weathered text carved into the marble commemorates the site of the Summit Train Station on the Santa Fe Railway, and the nearby site of the Elliot Ranch settled in 1927.

The monument also is near the entrance to Horse Thief Canyon where thousands of stolen horses were driven through this section of the Cajon Pass in the 1800s.

The monument is located in Summit Valley on Highway 138, 4 miles east of I-15 on the north side of the road. It is part of a series of monuments placed by the Hesperia Recreation and Park District to commemorate historic sites in the area.

Burning Man fest leaves the desert

BURNING MAN 2011: The Temple at Sunset by Jeff Sullivan


Zelie Pollon
Reuters

Organizers of the iconic "Burning Man" celebration began this week to clear the desert of any evidence that 50,000 people had just spent the past week here in a transient, art-filled, makeshift city.

As the anti-establishment arts festival and survival project disappears piece by piece from the white sands of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, participants and organizers say Burning Man -- which just had its largest week in its 25-year history -- is going through some growing pains as plans to expand its size and scope moving forward over the next year.

"When you have to be accountable and not anonymous, you change the way you act. As it's gotten bigger we've lost some of that," said Katrina Van Merter, 32, of Dallas, attending her sixth Burning Man.

The event is characterized by massive art projects and the namesake burning figure at its close, with participants heading into the desert for a week each year to build a working city from the ground up -- including an airport, a post office, and a security team -- that tries to be devoid of consumerism.

Burning Man started with an 8-foot structure burning on a beach in California at summer solstice and has morphed into a sophisticated community with year-round projects including solar energy development and a crisis response network.

Black Rock City LLC announced plans to turn its profit-making enterprise into a nonprofit this year.

Participation was capped at 50,000 people a day per a Bureau of Land Management use permit, said organizers.

Next year they're hoping to up that number, gradually adding 20,000 more people by 2016, said Burning Man communication manager Andie Grace.

TAKING THE STRAIN

But as the crowds grow, some of the long-time participants wonder if the desert gathering's principles -- including what self-styled "burners" call radical self-reliance, community, civic responsibility and an economy based on giving freely -- can take the strain of a growing population.

Others say that its growth has helped Burning Man change from a tiny party into an organization capable of innovation that can have benefits outside the "playa," the Spanish word for "beach" that burners use to refer to the site.

The Hexayurt, for example, is an easily deployable paneled shelter, created by Vinay Gupta in 2007 in honor of that year's Burning Man theme "The Green Man."

Gupta has since begun conversations with USAID about using the inexpensive structure in post-disaster areas, Grace said.

The town's crescent design, developed by Rod Garrett and founding member Harley Dubois, covers five square miles and includes 60 miles of streets, hundreds of intersections, and between two and four thousand signs created annually by a Burning Man sign shop, said Will Roger, a founder.

Roger has been asked to present to numerous audiences, including a retired Army group, about the building of what is known as Black Rock City.

Firefighters, city planners and reportedly members of Homeland Security have come to study the organizational and support structure of the complex erected to support tens of thousands of participants for a week, that then disappears as if it never existed.

ASTOUNDING GROWTH

But the astounding growth of Burning Man has its drawbacks, as some participants struggle to accept the changing demographics and influx of strangers into Black Rock City.

Participants point to bike thefts across the dusty playa, people coming to indulge but not to share, and a kind of close knit community feeling that is simply slipping away.

On Monday, thousands of talc-covered vehicles streamed out of the Black Rock Desert as the festival drew to a close.

Cars, trucks and RVs -- topped with dusty bikes, bright furry clothes and the makings for elaborate shelters -- snaked down the small single lane road toward civilization.

"We used to sit on the corner and wave goodbye to people as they left the playa, and tell them we'd see them again next year," said Dave Roetter, who came to the event with his 6-year-old son, Memphis. "People just don't do that anymore."

There are about 600 rangers who patrol the playa, along with several state agencies and the BLM. And despite the growing size, there is still a kind of citizen monitoring that encourages good behavior.

Accidents occur, as do arrests and numerous cases of dehydration, but nothing more than one would see in any city of this size, organizers say.

As for the missing bikes, Rogers says they're probably misplacing them. Thousands are left strewn around the basin by the event's end.

"It's still one of the safest cities in America," he said.

The demographic of Black Rock City is increasingly wealthy and older participants. A 2010 survey listed 40 percent of participants to be between the ages of 40 and 70 years old, and incomes ranging anywhere from less than $10,000 a year to over one million dollars a year. Several have groused about ticket prices that can top $360.

But there are also a greater number of families, and even very small children, many of which live together in one of Burning Man's largest camps called Kidsville.

The more, the merrier, said Sandy Lyle, 43, of San Diego.

"This year definitely feels bigger than usual, but what we do here is create community, so more people just gives us more opportunity," she said. "That's what Burning Man is all about."

Burning Man from Earth's orbit

A European Space satellite took photos of the 2011 Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert from 373 miles above.

By Mike Wall
Christian Science Monitor

The annual Burning Man festival is in full swing in the Nevada desert, and a tiny European satellite has snapped an overhead shot of the eccentric action.

The European Space Agency's Proba-1 microsatellite took a photo of Burning Man on Thursday (Sept. 1) from an altitude of about 373 miles (600 kilometers). The picture shows campers and tents massed for the annual gathering, which attracts 50,000 people to the Black Rock Desert 120 miles (193 km) north of Reno.

The image was stitched together from four black-and-white photos, each of which has a resolution of about 16 feet (5 meters), European Space Agency (ESA) officials said. [See the satellite photo of Burning Man]

IN PICTURES: Burning Man 2011

Burning Man is a weeklong art and self-expression festival that meets every year around Labor Day. This year, it runs from Aug. 29 to Sept. 5. Attendance was capped at 50,000, and the event sold out in July.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the festival, which takes its name from the ceremonial torching of a giant wooden effigy. The event began modestly in 1986, when a handful of friends torched an 8-foot (2.4-m) wooden man on a San Francisco beach.

Burning Man first moved to the Black Rock Desert in 1990, and it has grown greatly over the past two decades. The height of the torched man has grown as well; in 2009, he measured 50 feet (15.2 m) tall, according to the festival's website.

"Proba" stands for "Project for Onboard Autonomy," and Proba-1's two cameras are indeed largely autonomous. The microsatellite, which is less than 3.3 feet on a side (less than 1 cubic meter), launched in October 2001 as an experimental mission.

Proba-2, which focuses on solar monitoring, was launched in November 2009. Two other Probas are in preparation, ESA officials said. Proba-3 will test formation flying, and Proba-V will monitor global vegetation.

A touch of paint brings a desert town to life

A traveling muralist brightens buildings — and maybe prospects — in Needles.

Dan Louden paints a mural on an office wall in Needles. A relative newcomer in the town, he is popular among residents. (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times)

By Phil Willon
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Needles, Calif — Along old U.S. Route 66, the once-kitschy Overland Motel is crumbling, vacant lots pock downtown and, as if this remote desert outpost weren't suffering enough, the last car dealership folded up and left behind a blanket of empty asphalt.

Not a pretty picture for travelers who might pull off the highway for a burger or to spend the night.

Then, about five months ago, a man with a sun-stained face and paint-crusted fingernails drifted in, and the tiny old railroad town of Needles started looking a little brighter.

The first mural popped up on a bare cinder-block wall at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant: A giant Santa Fe locomotive chugging by a roadside sign for the "Route 66 Original Diner."

Another appeared at the Valero gas station, with two space aliens that look like ET driving down Route 66 in a 1950s Buick. Elvis and Marilyn took over the side wall of the Econo Smog with their two-tone Ford Fairlane convertible parked at the Colorado River. Marilyn sported aviators and the King, white leathers.

All pay homage to U.S. Route 66, the Mother Road, which ran from Chicago to Los Angeles and right through the heart of Needles before it was retired from the federal highway system in 1985. Other larger-than-life odes appeared seemingly overnight at the Needles Point Pharmacy and Liquor Store, Deco Food Service, the local Chevron station, the Miranda Car Wash and the local Best Western — more than a dozen murals in just a few months, and more are in the works.

The man behind the brush, Dan Louden, spent 30 years bouncing around truck stops in the West, hand-painting any long-hauler's piece de resistance on the cabs or trailers. He painted Harleys for the Hells Angels in San Bernardino — until that got a little too dicey for him — and hand-lettered signs for fish markets, high schools and auto parts stores all the way up to Seattle. He's pinstriped more hot rods than he can remember.

"I do it because there's a lot of fringe benefits that come with this. You travel, you do what you want," said Louden, 52, who grew up in Diamond Bar. "I just love the desert. I don't like living in big cities. I don't like the traffic. Out here you can sleep with the door unlocked."

Susan Alexis, owner of the Wagon Wheel, said that a couple years back, Louden did odd jobs for her and others around town, but they didn't know he was a master with a few cans of paint.

When he mentioned it to her while breezing through town earlier this year, she hired him on the spot. Alexis had wanted to paint the restaurant's side wall ever since noticing how ugly the bank of cinder blocks looked on Google Maps' street view.

"I just wanted to bring some nostalgia to the building. We have so much history here, but our town doesn't reflect it," Alexis said. "Now, everyone around town is talking about the guy."

Louden said he's been drawing and painting ever since he was a kid but never pursued it. Then one day, when he was about 20, he delivered paint to an "old school" sign shop in Yucaipa and his life changed forever.

Louden has a house outside of Kingman, Ariz., that he shares with his girlfriend, Vicky Bowden, a former nurse from Lone Pine.

With work pouring in, they have camped out at the Needles Inn for weeks at a time, working almost every day. It help that he's affordable — $500 for a mural covering the side of a small building — and fast. Most jobs are wrapped up in a day. When they overheat in the scorching Mojave sun, they take a dip in the Colorado.

"It's certainly brightened up downtown, and hopefully it'll help bring more tourists in," said Needles Mayor Edward Paget. "It's not like this was planned. People are doing it on their own — and they're being greatly encouraged by both myself and the City Council to improve downtown."

Most of the businesses hiring Louden have stuck to a Route 66 theme, honoring the highway that lighted up Needles during its last heyday. In November, the town also is celebrating the 85th anniversary of the road. Needles earned a certain fame when it was named in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."

"It was outrageously reasonable, and I think he captured the feel of the small town," said Needles accountant Michael Burger, who hired Louden to liven up his office building earlier this month. "It's a nice thing he's doing for the town."

Burger had a snapshot of his restored '57 Chevy truck and handed it to Louden, telling him to use that and then "do whatever you want." Twelve hours later, his building was covered with the gang from the Peanuts comic, including Snoopy's brother Spike from Needles — one of the town's biggest celebrities. Charlie Brown is at the wheel of the truck.

Louden also was hired to paint a memorial inside the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Station in Needles honoring Deputy Russell Dean Roberts, who was killed in 1995 while investigating an accident in the town.

Capt. Marty Brown of the county Fire Department also wants to hire Louden to paint the station in Needles.

"We just need to give the front a facelift — maybe to look like an old-school fire station," Brown said. "The firefighters will probably have to pay for it out of pocket, since it's pretty unlikely we're going to pay for that with public funds."

Louden says times are tough for everyone these days, which is why he keeps his prices low. He can afford to, he said, because there's more work than he can handle.

"The first sign painter I ever ran into told me that if you learn how to do this, you'll never go hungry. And he's absolutely right," Louden said. "You'll always find someone who needs something done."

Ivanpah plant closer to completion

Construction workers build the 493 foot solar receiver tower for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, five miles out of Primm, Nevada on Monday. (Al Cuizon/Staff Photographer)

Andrew Edwards, Staff Writer
Contra Costa Times

IVANPAH - A white crane towers over the Mojave Desert floor where hundreds of workers gather below and inside a hulking gray structure that is part of a multi-million dollar bet that solar energy will prove a reliable technology for powering California homes and businesses.

Sitting on 3,600 acres of public land near the Nevada state line, the solar project - its formal name is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station - has been under construction for nearly a year. Its backers say that upon completion in 2013, the solar plant will be capable of providing electricity to some 140,000 homes.

"This is one of the crown jewels that we have in our growing solar energy program," John O'Brien, a senior vice president for NRG Energy, said during a media tour of the Ivanpah site Monday.

BrightSource Energy, based in Oakland, is the Ivanpah project's designer and developer. The company has hired San Francisco-based Bechtel to build the power plant.

NRG, based in Princeton, N.J., has signed up to invest up to $300 million in the solar plant. BrightSource has also received a $168 million commitment from Google.

The U.S. Department of Energy is also providing support to the project in the form of a $1.6 billion loan guarantee.

That money is paying for the construction of the massive gray edifice where construction workers - about 480 people work directly for the project - assemble in the dusty, scorching Mojave environment.

As of Monday, construction crews have raised the edifice to 120 feet of a planned 469 feet. The project's design calls for two additional towers and the 175,000 mirrors that have yet to be installed around the towers to capture the sun's energy.

The mirrors, the precise term is heliostats, do not convert sunlight into electrical energy as photovoltaic solar panels do. Instead, the mirrors are designed to track and reflect the sun's rays to boilers installed at the summits of each tower. Water inside the boilers vaporizes and the resulting steam flows through pipes to power turbines where electricity is generated.

"We basically take a boiler that's similar to what you have in a high-efficiency (fossil) fuel plant," BrightSource president John M. Wollard said.

Upon completion, the Ivanpah complex's gross output is expected to reach 392 megawatts. A recent fuel burning plant, Southern California Edison's Mountainview Power Plant in Redlands, began commercial operation in 2005 and can produce 1,045 megawatts.

Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric have already signed on to buy power from the Ivanpah plant. California law requires utilities to obtain one-third of their electrical power from alternative sources such as solar by 2020.

BrightSource is not the only solar project planned in the Mojave Desert. The California Energy Commission's list of planned projects includes the Calico Solar Project near Barstow, the Abengoa Solar Project between Barstow and Kramer Junction, and the city of Victorville's hybrid gas-solar project as being in the pre-construction stage.

Although solar energy is typically considered to be environmentally friendly when compared to power plants that burn coal or natural gas, large-scale solar projects in the Mojave Desert often receive scrutiny from environmentalists who are concerned about impacts to desert lands, particularly as construction may reduce habitats for the endangered California desert tortoise.

Accordingly, the environmental review process for another proposed solar plant, the Stateline Solar Farm, is at its earliest stages. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is collecting public comments on Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar's plan to build a photovoltaic solar plant near BrightSource's project.

Those comments will be used to prepare an environmental report required to include an assessment of how construction would affect tortoise habitats and other environmental considerations.

New Fire Tax Could Affect Thousands of San Bernardino Residents

Irony: Fee is assessed on structures--protection Cal Fire does not provide.

Dan Wilson
Best Syndication

SAN BERNARDINO Calif. – Today the County Board of Supervisors made their position known on the fire tax by passing a unanimous resolution in opposition to it.

According to George Watson, Chief of Staff for Supervisor Neil Derry, the resolution calls for resending [sic] of the tax. “I am committed to waging an ongoing and sustained battle against this illegal tax,” Supervisor Derry said.

Initially the tax was to be $150 per household living in the wildland areas serviced by Cal Fire. First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt tells Best Syndication that the money goes to the state’s fire protection agency. “The irony is that Cal Fire does not provide structure protection, although the fee is assessed on structures”, Mitzelfelt said.

The tax / fee could be assessed against tens of thousands of residents of San Bernardino County. The good news is that the fee was lowered from $150 to $90 per year and there are discounts available for residents who provide defensible space between their home and brush and trees.

Those with the lowest incomes could be weighed-down the most. “The High Desert has the highest unemployment in the region and our residents cannot be burdened with additional taxes when so many are struggling to make ends meet”, Supervisor Mitzelfelt said.

“This is an example of the majority in the Legislature’s irresponsible, unfair, and possibly illegal effort to balance its out-of-control budget on the backs of local residents, who already pay taxes and fees for this service.”

Watson tells Best Syndication that the assessment is on habitable structures only, not garages or sheds. According to David Zook, spokesperson for Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, the fee will be assessed on “inhabitable” structures.

“When the legislature passed the bill it was meant to cover a shortfall in the Cal Fire budget, but because the way it was written the money could go to local fire agencies”, Watson told Best Syndication.

California Governor Jerry Brown may change that. According to Chief of Staff Watson the governor wants to make sure the money goes to the state and not the local agencies.

Pioneertown Locals Fight Potential Wind Farm

KPSP-TV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Murder victim found in desert in 1971 identified

Beddie Walraven

Los Angeles Times

San Bernardino County - The remains of a woman who was murdered and dumped in the Mojave Desert in 1946 have been identified through a DNA match, officials said Friday.

The discovery that scattered, unidentified bones found in 1971 are the remains of 25-year-old Beddie Walraven came after years of painstaking work by San Bernardino County coroner investigators and scientists at the state attorney general’s DNA laboratory in Richmond.

“It’s one of the older cases we had that’s been solved with DNA,” said Sandy Fatland, a coroner spokeswoman. “It’s amazing what they can do now … Every day, everything is becoming more refined."

Walraven was reported missing in May 1946. In 1975, a man arrested for an unrelated crime told Santa Ana police he had killed Walraven 29 years before and dumped her body in the Mojave Desert near Baker -– then, as now, a remote expanse that hides secrets well.

It was only recently that authorities had the technology to match the man’s story to the bones. In late 2005, highly degraded biological samples were sent to the state lab where it took five years for scientists to develop a usable DNA profile. Meanwhile, San Bernardino County coroner investigators located two relatives of Walraven in Texas who provided DNA samples that were used for comparison.

“Something from the 1940s -– I’ve never heard or seen anything like that,” said Cpl. Anthony Bertagna, a Santa Ana police spokesman.

Bertagna said homicide investigators were looking Friday for old files that would provide details of the case and whether the man –- now dead -- who confessed to Walraven’s murder was ever charged or convicted.

'Smoketree painter' Carl Bray dies at 94

Artist Carl Bray with author and friend Ann Japenga

Written by Coburn Palmer and Mariecar Mendoza
The Desert Sun

Carl Bray, a famous desert artist and “smoketree painter” who lived in Indian Wells and built the Carl Bray house and gallery along Highway 111, died Saturday morning from natural causes in Banning. He was 94.

J. Patrick Bray called his father “absolutely complex,” and said while he remembers his father painting, he also said Carl Bray easily could have been an engineer.

“He built a crazy steam car out of an old golf cart he bought that we thought was going to blow up on him one day, but no, it never did, and he just drove it around the house,” he said, laughing.

Bray was born in 1917 in Prague, Okla. He studied art during the Great Depression at Miami College in the Dust Bowl state, while working on farms to pay his tuition.

He moved west to find work in 1936 and landed a job with the railroad in Southern California, where he worked for more than 40 years.

He married his wife, Luella, in 1939 and moved 20 miles east of Niland.

The railroad job took Bray and his wife to the Los Angeles area during WWII, where they bought property in rural El Monte, built a house and started their family of four.

In the early 1950s, Bray bought a Highway 111 frontage lot in Indian Wells for $1,000. Working weekends and vacations, he built a house and gallery, and the family moved to the desert in 1953.

At the time there was little development in Indian Wells. The Brays' neighbors included a few cabins, a dance hall, two small groceries, two gas stations, a dance hall and a café.

Bray continued working for the railroad while his wife ran the gallery. In the early 1960s, the Brays started to spend summers in Taos, where he had a gallery on the plaza for several years.

Bray retired from the railroad and continued to paint. His paintings are owned by celebrities and held by the city of Indian Wells in its permanent collection.

The couple sold their Indian Wells property at the turn of the century and moved to Banning.

His wife Luella died in 2008, and the 50-year-old property in Indian Wells, with its signature paint palette sign, was demolished in 2010. The Indian Wells City Council is still discussing plans to replace it with a memorial park.

“Carl was a person that you kind of felt that you'd always known very well,” said Adele Ruxton, president of the Indian Wells Historic Preservation Foundation

The funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Fellowship in the Pass Church, 650 Oak Valley parkway in Beaumont.

He is survived by his children Mary Weinhold (Bill), Sylvia Bray (Bernardo Larque), J. Patrick Bray (Linda), Michael Bray (Patt); nine grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren.

County Route Marker Program gets its kickoff on Route 66

Highland Community News

San Bernardino County, CA -- No highway in the world has captured the hearts and minds of travelers as much as Route 66, which is why the County of San Bernardino plans to designate a portion of this roadway "County Route 66" as it establishes the County Route Marker Program.

Board of Supervisors Vice-Chairman Brad Mitzelfelt initiated the program after noticing route markers in other California counties. A portion of historic Route 66 in his First District was the natural choice to launch the program, with other routes to be added in the future.

"Marking specially designated roadways will help motorists navigate the largest county in America by creating route numbers that won't change as drivers enter and exit city and county areas," Vice-Chairman Mitzelfelt said. "Signage along the route will highlight and celebrate sites of cultural and historical interest, generate tourism, and promote the county's image."

Vice-Chairman Mitzelfelt is using $45,000 of his office's discretionary funding to pay for the signage on the route. No federal dollars or other funding sources will be tapped for this effort.
More than 250 miles of this iconic highway run the length of San Bernardino County from Upland through Needles, making a portion of Route 66 by far the most appropriate place to launch the County Route Marker Program, the first to be added in the state since 1983. Signs placed at various intervals along the route will serve as "bread crumbs" for travelers to follow as they explore significant landmarks.

County Route 66 will begin on National Trails Highway in the unincorporated community of Oro Grande at the border of the City of Victorville, continue north onto Main Street in the City of Barstow, continue east on Interstate 40, travel north on Nebo Street near Barstow, head east on National Trails Highway, and then north on Goffs Road to its junction with US-95.

Cultural and historical sites along this alignment include the City of Barstow and the communities of Daggett, Newberry Springs, Ludlow, Amboy, Cadiz, Chambless, Essex, and Goffs, as well as the Mojave National Preserve. This alignment can be expanded to include additional portions of or all of Route 66 at a later date.

The California County Route Marker Program was established in 1958 to mark county routes of major importance and public interest that are constructed and marked to sufficient safety standards. San Bernardino County will become the 43rd of California's 58 counties to participate in the program.

The program requires the county and the cities through which the routes pass to adopt resolutions formally establishing a specific county route. The City of Barstow next month plans to consider a resolution to establish County Route 66, which would authorize the posting of signs within city. Once Barstow acts, the Board of Supervisors will consider adoption.

"I appreciate Barstow's partnership in this initial effort establishing a County Route Marker Program in San Bernardino County," Vice-Chairman Mitzelfelt said. "I have no doubt other cities will want to establish similar partnerships for roadways through their communities."

The county has received letters of endorsement from the California Historic Route 66 Association and the California Route 66 Museum.

Commission will reduce fee used to protect habitats

Irony: Halt to Eagle Mountain impacted enviro plans to buy critical habitat



Coachella Valley Multiple Species
Habitat Conservation Plan area

Written by Keith Matheny
mydesert.com

Coachella Valley -- A developer fee that supports a valleywide species habitat protection plan will be reduced.

The Coachella Valley Conservation Commission, which consists of representatives from the nine valley cities, Riverside County and local water agencies, plans to reduce the mitigation fee supporting the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan.

The plan protects 240,000 acres of open space and 27 plant and animal species in and around the Coachella Valley, including the threatened desert tortoise, peninsular bighorn sheep and desert pupfish.

The planned fee reduction is $130 per acre for commercial or industrial development, to $5,600 from $5,730.

The fee will drop $30 per acre for developments of up to eight units in affected areas, to $1,254 from $1,284.

Tom Kirk, Coachella Valley Association of Governments executive director, said the fee reductions are prompted by a new “nexus study” required of governments to occasionally evaluate the appropriateness of fees charged for new development.

Declining property values due to the struggling economy did not have a large impact on the fee, Kirk said, because the properties often purchased for habitat protection are remote and less desirable for building, which tends to keep land values more flat.

The habitat protection program hit a potential snag in March, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling overturning a land exchange that in effect halted the Eagle Mountain Landfill near Joshua Tree National Park.

The multiple species plan was counting on $250 million in long-term funding from the landfill, Kirk said, and developers potentially faced a huge fee increase without it.

But CVAG officials worked with federal and state agencies, environmentalists, and the local building industry, eventually striking a deal to continue with plans to buy critical habitat lands most susceptible to development over the next 20 to 30 years, but to shift lesser priority land purchases out up to 40 years, Kirk said.

“It drove down the fee a little bit, which was a heck of a lot better than raising it a whole lot,” he said.

Riverside County Planning Department Deputy Director Greg Neal said county supervisors are having staff return with an amended plan for a county board vote.

Other member governments will similarly have to amend their ordinances, he said.

Though the multi-species plan was adopted in 2007, to date it has raised only about $2 million in development impact fees — far below projections — due to the down economy, Kirk said.

“One of the many ironies of the plan is, when we have wildlife interests knocking at our door saying, ‘Why don't you acquire more land?' we need more development to do it,” he said.

The program has relied on about $5 million in federal grant funds and $13 million in CVAG transportation mitigation fees to pay for acquisitions, property management and biological monitoring, Kirk said.

“At CVAG, we look at it much like a developer does,” he said. “We'd rather pay a fee to help build interchanges on the I-10 than deal with the uncertainty and high cost of dealing with endangered species on a case-by-case basis.”

Solar Developers Face New Desert Tortoise Species

Attention solar developers: You now have not one but two desert tortoises to worry about

Todd Woody
Forbes

Scientists on Tuesday published a paper revealing that DNA analysis shows that California’s imperiled desert tortoise actually is a separate species from its cousins elsewhere in the Southwest.

Normally that would be of academic interest. But given disputes over the impact of massive solar power plants on the Mojave Desert population of the desert tortoise, which is listed as a threatened species under state and federal law, the finding could subject those projects to greater scrutiny.

That’s because those animals found in California, Nevada and Utah that have been designated as a separate species – called Agassiz’s desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) after a 19th century biologist – now occupy a much smaller range.

The Agassiz’s desert tortoise’s Mojave Desert home, north and west of the Colorado River, constitutes only 30% percent of the desert tortoise’s previous habitat. The remainder of that range is now home to a new species christened Morafka’s desert tortoise – as a tribute to a California biologist named David J. Morafka – that roams the Sonoran Desert south and east of the Colorado River from Arizona through Mexico.

“This reduction has important implications for the conservation and protection of Gopherus agassizii, which may deserve a higher level of protection,” wrote the biologists who authored the paper, published in the journal ZooKeys. “Whereas species with broad distributions may survive population declines, those that have small distributions are far more likely to become extinct.”

“Given drastic population declines of G. agassizii during the past few decades, it might be endangered,” they added.

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service already manages the Mojave and Sonoran populations separately and a spokeswoman said the new species designations will not change the way the agency analyzes the impact of solar power plants on the Agassiz’s desert tortoise.

“We independently evaluated the Mojave population of desert tortoise and there is no evidence to suggest the species is expected to go extinct, which is the threshold for uplisting to endangered status,” Jeannie Stafford, a public affairs officer in the agency’s Nevada office, said in an email. “We do not anticipate any changes in the way development projects will be evaluated for the Agassiz’s desert tortoise in the future.”

But some environmental groups most likely will press for closer scrutiny of the dozen big solar farms planned for the Mojave.

“We’re seeing some very large solar projects on public lands that are having a very big impact on tortoise populations,” says Lisa Belenky, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which litigates aggressively on behalf of wildlife and which has been involved in the licensing of solar power plants in California. “The threats have been increasing and the populations decreasing, and based on those factors alone, we have already been considering whether there needs to be an uplifting to endangered species status for the desert tortoise.”

“The new desert tortoise species certainly helps frame those issues even more clearly,” she adds.

Kristin Berry is one of the paper’s authors and a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Southern California who is a leading authority on the desert tortoise. She says the identification of Agassiz’s desert tortoise as a separate species should spur efforts to protect its habitat.

“In terms of conservation biology, when a species’ range is reduced by 70% one looks at what to do so habitat is adequately protected,” says Berry. “It’s a very important issue.”

Morafka’s desert tortoise, meanwhile, currently is not listed as a protected species. The government put the critter on an endangered species candidates list after it determined protection was warranted but precluded by a lack of resources and other animals facing even greater threats.

However, a legal settlement that environmental group WildEarth Guardians struck with the Fish and Wildlife Service in May requires the agency to move the tortoise off the candidates list by 2015.

Desert pipeline would send water to Inland Valley

Environmental documents for certifying the project expected to be ready within weeks

By Andrew Edwards
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Water providers serving the Inland Valley and other Southern California areas may be able to draw from a new source of water sufficient to supply 100,000 households if plans for a Mojave Desert pipeline pass environmental muster.

The Cadiz Co., headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, wants to build a 42-mile pipeline to carry water from a remote desert aquifer in the Cadiz Valley to the Colorado River Aqueduct to be delivered to the Los Angeles basin.

The Claremont-based Three Valleys Municipal Water District and the San Dimas-based Golden State Water Co. are poised to be among the agencies receiving water from the pipeline, if it is actually built.

"We're always looking for water in other places in case the big earthquake hits," Three Valleys board President Bob Kuhn said.

Three Valleys wholesales water to providers serving customers in east Los Angeles County communities, including Pomona and Claremont.

Kuhn said Three Valleys has an option agreement to buy the water if the project is approved.

Environmental documents for the Cadiz pipeline have yet to be released, although a spokeswoman for the water agency charged with certifying the project said this week they are expected to be ready for review within the next few weeks.

"We're still looking at releasing the draft environmental impact report sometime," said Michelle Miller, spokeswoman for the Santa Margarita Water District.

The Santa Margarita Water District serves south Orange County and has been designated as the lead agency for the project. Its board will be responsible for reviewing and deciding whether to approve Cadiz Co.'s environmental report.

The project could create the equivalent of 745 full-time jobs, according to a consultant.

The Cadiz Co. owns 35,000 acres in the Cadiz Valley, roughly 11 miles southeast of Amboy, once a stopping point for Route 66 travelers.

Cadiz and Bristol dry lakes - and the aquifer that lies below the desert surface - can be found in Cadiz Valley. The landowners currently use the water for lemon groves, vineyards and other crops grown on their Mojave Desert property.

But if Cadiz Co.'s proposal becomes a reality, the company would build a 42-mile pipeline along an existing railroad right-of-way to a place called Rice, near Highway 62, east of Twentynine Palms.

"Why do it? It's sort of like asking, `Why conserve?" said Cadiz Co. President and General Counsel Scott Slater.

The projected construction cost approaches $278 million over a two-year period.

The work could create the equivalent of 593 full-time jobs for those directly working on the pipeline and an additional 152 jobs at businesses supporting Cadiz Co., according to a forecast from Redlands-based economist John Husing, who focuses on the Inland Empire.

"I would guess they (the new hires) would be living in the Victor Valley or Barstow, given where the facility is," Husing said.

The project's $258.5 million second phase would require the construction of a parallel pipeline to recharge, or store excess Colorado River water in the Cadiz Valley aquifer.

Cadiz Co. hired Husing at a $10,000 commission to prepare an economic impact report for the project.

The firm's executives have yet to release the proposal's draft environmental impact report. It is set to be released this summer.

Water From A Stone?

Cadiz Valley. Southern California's newest source of water? (Photo by Chris Clarke)

Commentary by Chris Clarke
KCET

As Southern California's population grows and water is in ever shorter supply, one Orange County water district is looking to an odd source for more water: the middle of the Mojave Desert.

The Santa Margarita Water District, which provides water services to 150,000 residents and businesses in Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and adjacent unincorporated areas, is putting together a proposal to import up to 50,000 acre-feet of water into Coastal Southern California each year from the Cadiz Valley, a wind-swept desert valley between Twenty-Nine Palms and Needles. The district plans to release a draft Environmental Impact Review on the project for public comment in late July.

That EIR will almost certainly be scrutinized line-by-line by desert protection activists, some of whom are calling this "the project that would not die."

Santa Margarita's partners in the venture are Cadiz Inc, which owns about 34,000 acres in the Cadiz and Fenner valleys in San Bernardino County, and four other Southern California water companies: Three Valleys Municipal Water District, Golden State Water Company, Jurupa Community Services District and Suburban Water Systems.

Cadiz Inc.'s land lies atop a large aquifer -- an underground reservoir which Cadiz's consultants say may hold between 17 and 34 million acre-feet of water, most of it laid down during the Ice Age. In the project's first stage Cadiz would build 44 miles of pipeline from wells on its property along a railroad right of way to the Colorado River Aqueduct west of the town of Rice. From there the water would head to the Greater Los Angeles Area, and the appropriate amounts apportioned to participating water districts.

Cadiz's selling point for the project is that the water it pumps from the aquifer would otherwise be lost to evaporation. In the words of the company's website,

The Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project is designed to capture and conserve billions of gallons of renewable native groundwater flowing beneath our property in the Cadiz Valley that is currently lost to evaporation at nearby dry lakes. Through the active management of the aquifer system, the Project will create a new, sustainable water supply for Project participants without adversely impacting the aquifer system or the desert environment.

The second stage of the project will involve building a second pipeline to pump "surplus" Colorado River water to the Cadiz Valley, where it would be emptied into "recharge basins" and allowed to percolate into the aquifer, to be pumped out again in dry years. Cadiz states that this phase could provide evaporation-proofed storage of up to a million acre-feet of water, a tempting proposal for Southern California water managers.

If this all gives you a sense of déjà vu, there's a reason for that: this project is a near-copy of one pushed a decade ago by Cadiz in tandem with the Metropolitan Water District. That proposal basically contained the same elements: pumping of aquifer water and storage of the occasional Colorado surplus, and an assertion that the developers could sustainably remove 50,000 acre-feet of water from the aquifer.

Environmentalists shredded that old proposal. Independent hydrologists countered Cadiz's claims about the amount of water the aquifer could spare each year, with one saying:

the estimate of annual recharge used in the Draft EIR/EIS is an order of magnitude too high--it is probably only 5,000-6,000 ac-ft/yr... once development has proceeded for a period of several decades simply stopping the pumping of native groundwater, as implied in the Supplemental EIR/EIR, will not halt the adverse environmental impacts--in other words, the groundwater system once perturbed has sufficient persistence that adverse impacts will persist well beyond 100 years, even though the project is stopped after 50 year or earlier.
Other geologists alleged Cadiz had inflated the sustainable yield of water by a factor of 15.

Drawing down the aquifer would degrade habitat in a number of surrounding protected areas, others pointed out, including the aquifer's headwaters in the Mojave National Preserve, with significant impacts to bighorn sheep, desert tortoise, and animals dependent on the area's small springs. What's more, the older version of the project would have run its pipeline to the aqueduct not along the railroad, but directly through the Iron Mountains, a relatively pristine bit of desert habitat.

Water pollution was also a concern. Not only would pumping saltier water from the Colorado into the aquifer permanently alter the valley's groundwater quality, but the aquifer was found to contain significant amounts of hexavalent Chromium, the same toxic chemical responsible for the public health issues in Hinckley that launched Erin Brockovich's rise to prominence.

For a time in 2001, it looked to desert environmentalists as though the fix was in. Cadiz's controversial founder Keith Brackpool was cozy with California politicos ranging from Gray Davis and Schwarzenegger to Antonio Villaraigosa, a close friend of Brackpool's. Nonetheless, MWD backed out on the deal in 2002, perhaps due to that year's being the dryest year on record for the Colorado River. Why invest millions in a partnership to store surplus water if there is no surplus?

Aside from the alignment of the "conveyance pipeline," the only real difference between the old plan and Cadiz 2.0 would seem to be the claim that any water pumped from the aquifer would have been lost to surface evaporation. This, along with Cadiz's other environmental claims, will likely be scrutinized closely once the draft EIR is available later this summer.

The stakes are rather high. Aquifers can collapse if overdrawn, causing the land to subside and permanently reducing the aquifer's future capacity. A few years of excessive pumping could permanently damage thousands of square miles of the wild Mojave.