Judge reinstates attempt to protect flat-tailed horned lizard

The ruling follows the 9th Circuit's rejection of a Bush administration policy against listing the reptiles as threatened. The Department of Interior is expected to make a decision by next November.

A flat-tailed Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma mcalli) tries to hide in the dry mustard plants in the Coachella Valley Preserve. (Cameron Barrows)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Chalk one up for the flat-tailed horned lizard.

In the latest round in a 16-year legal battle to keep the squat lizard with dragon-like head spines safe from urban encroachment in its Southern California and Arizona haunts, a federal judge has reinstated a 1993 proposal to list the creature as a threatened species.

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake's ruling earlier this week in Arizona follows a recent U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsider its earlier decision to deny the lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act.

That decision rejected a Bush administration policy that environmentalists said favored development at the expense of the lizard and many plants and animals across the nation.

Since 1993, the agency has withdrawn three proposals to list the lizard on the grounds that it was hard to find and, therefore, difficult to classify as threatened. Each withdrawal was successfully challenged in court by conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Horned Lizard Conservation Society.

In the meantime, the lizard's population has continued to decline in Arizona, California and Baja California largely because its habitats of gravel pans and dunes have been taken over by farming, housing, off-road vehicles, geothermal leases, gravel pits, golf courses, military exercises and border fences between the United States and Mexico.

The Department of the Interior is expected to make a final decision about the status of the flat-tailed horned lizard by November 2010.

"The lizard is certainly as deserving of federal protection today as it was 16 years ago," said attorney Bill Snape, who represented the Center for Biological Diversity in the matter. "Hopefully this is the final chapter in the lizard's long and tortured legal history."

The lizard -- 3 1/2 inches long and a voracious consumer of harvester ants -- once inhabited wide swaths of the Colorado and Sonoran deserts.

Listing the lizard as threatened could potentially affect the ongoing rush to build huge solar energy facilities across the desert flatlands of Southern California, said Allan Muth, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, south of Palm Desert.

"Amid all the applications being submitted to develop solar energy plants, it doesn't look like things will get any better for the flat-tailed horned lizard," Muth said. "If listing the lizard as a threatened species means people will take a little more time to think these things through, that's a good thing."

Anticipating a protection declaration, Stirling Energy Systems plans to mitigate the environmental impact of its proposed Solar II facility on 6,500 acres of flat-tailed horned lizard habitat near the Imperial County city of El Centro by purchasing prime lizard habitat elsewhere and donating it for conservation.

The proposed facility was recently renamed Tessera Solar's Imperial Valley Solar Two by Stirling to reflect the name of its sister company.

Federal dollars used to bankroll environmental lawsuits

EDITORIAL

Cynthia Lummis and Rob Bishop
Billings Gazette

It is a hallmark of our constitutional democracy that we go out of our way to ensure that everyday citizens are not trampled by a huge, faceless government. Sometimes we fail in that endeavor, but often we succeed. Americans have been afforded, by law, the ability to address legitimate grievances with the federal government. In fact, we go so far as to reimburse citizens for their legal expenses should they sue the federal government and prevail. Congress recognized that citizens should not have to risk their financial future to seek judicial redress from unreasonable government actions. This is why Congress enacted the Equal Access to Justice Act.

The EAJA was established by Congress to ensure that individuals, small businesses or public-interest groups with limited financial resources could seek judicial redress from unreasonable government actions. Through a permanent appropriation, and without congressional oversight, EAJA allows prevailing plaintiffs to recover attorney fees and other costs from the federal government itself. The term "prevailing" includes even matters settled out of court. Federal agencies sometimes settle lawsuits out of court to avoid the time and additional expense of going forward. Since the taxpayers are footing the bill for both sides, who cares?

Virtual litigation industry

According to research by a Wyoming-based law firm, over the last 15 years a small number of environmental organizations have filed at least 1,596 lawsuits against the federal government. Based on the information we've seen, it appears that many environmental groups have created a virtual litigation industry using this government-funded program to bankroll their lawsuits against the federal government.

Under the guise of "public interest," some environmental organizations are abusing the congressional intent of EAJA. Over the years, these groups have been able to force the federal government to pay out billions of dollars for attorney fees and costs. Lawsuits filed by these groups target the livelihood of hardworking Americans who are forced to pay for both sides of the ensuing legal dispute. Costly as it is, a rancher must intervene on the side of federal agencies to defend his or her way of life against the attack of the initial suit. That same rancher (and every other unsuspecting taxpayer) is then forced to support the environmentalist agenda and the litigation industry with tax dollars.

Co-opted by environmentalists

It appears increasingly likely that this act, intended to give all Americans the ability to seek redress from their government, has been co-opted as a vehicle for some environmental organizations and their teams of lawyers to target natural-resource agencies, public lands and public-land users. Most importantly, the families and small businesses who represent the heritage and traditions of the true pioneer spirit are clearly in the cross hairs.

Without improved oversight, the blank checkbook will continue to provide billions of hard-earned tax dollars to support environmental lawyers, and advance the narrow, public lands agenda of no use. The abuse of this system is cause for great concern. A bicameral group of members of Congress has called on Attorney General Eric H. Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct a thorough review of this matter and provide suggestions to address any concerns that are identified.

The hijacking of the equal-justice statute by some groups and the environmental litigation industry that supports their "stop everything" agenda is a clear abuse of the program. We aim to improve this program and take necessary steps to change a clearly broken system.

U.S. Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., are chairman and vice chairwoman of the Congressional Western Caucus.

Icon in Jeopardy

Local scientists say buffelgrass may be on an unstoppable march—and the saguaro is in its way

by Leo W. Banks
Tucson Weekly



The continuing spread of buffelgrass could lead to the disappearance of our great saguaro. (Courtesy of Saguaro National Park)



Buffelgrass is forcing us to think the unthinkable: A Sonoran Desert in which the saguaro cactus is no longer the master of the landscape.

Is this really possible? Could Arizona's cherished icon vanish from a substantial portion of its range?

Actually, yes. The problem is fire.

The Nature Conservancy biologist Dale Turner says the density and distribution of buffelgrass is increasing dramatically, and in those places where it becomes the dominant plant, the number of fires will increase.

"That means every other plant that's both slow-growing and fire-sensitive will disappear," says Turner. "That's certainly the saguaro. I don't think it will go extinct, but we'll see saguaro populations either lost or seriously degraded."

Prior to buffelgrass, fire was never a major player in the Sonoran Desert. Old-fashioned fires—if we can use that term—didn't burn too hot or too long, because native grasses don't have the biomass to create big blazes.

Buffelgrass does, and it won't pause to catch its breath after a fire. It regenerates quickly and thicker than before, making subsequent blazes more intense, with plenty of fuel to run across entire valleys and up grassy slopes.

The result is greater destruction for small cacti, especially in lower desert areas, says scientist Bill Peachey, who manages saguaro study plots at Colossal Cave Mountain Park. "A buffelgrass fire kills baby saguaros and all the small cacti, and you're fooled, because you might still see large saguaros on rocky hillsides," says Peachey. "But the fire has chopped out a whole segment of the reproductive cycle."

After a blaze, saguaros might take 50 to 70 years to start reproducing again. If all the saguaros present at one time die, the area will almost certainly burn again before new plants can grow to replace the old ones.

Imagine looking at the desert floor west of Gates Pass, in the Tucson Mountains, and seeing the once-grand saguaro forest looking anemic and uninspiring. Imagine the tourism industry trying to sell Arizona as a destination without as many photos of the mighty saguaros standing tall against a blazing sunset.

But let's not move too fast. Over the decades, there have been several periods in which scientists have falsely predicted the saguaro's doom, and it hasn't happened. So not only has history taught us humility; it has proven the saguaro to be a master of survival in a harsh environment.

Still, Turner and Peachey aren't alone in sounding the alarm. The Weekly interviewed five scientists, and they all agree on one thing: The desert of the future will have much more buffelgrass and fewer saguaros.

The spread of this African perennial grass, which was introduced to the region in the 1930s and 1940s as forage for cattle, is happening with alarming speed.

At Saguaro National Park, the acreage containing buffelgrass is expanding 35 percent per year, says Meg Weesner, the park's director of science. It existed on 175 acres in 2002. Today, it grows on 2,000 acres, and one prediction has it infesting 10,000 acres in a decade. That's a significant portion of the park land on which saguaros grow.

If uncontrolled, buffelgrass could completely alter the park's habitat and eliminate saguaros from certain areas. "Our future might be a grassland of African grass instead of what we now know of as the plants and animals of the Sonora Desert," says Weesner.

Buffelgrass has gained such a foothold in Southern Arizona that stopping its spread is now impossible. Ranchers across the border in Sonora, Mexico, actually have been planting the grass for about three decades, and that has made it inevitable that buffelgrass seeds would cross the line, too—on the clothes of illegal aliens, on the tires of smuggler vehicles that cross our protected deserts, and even on the feathers of birds and on the wind.

Tucson botanist Matt Johnson, who has been studying desert environments for 30 years, says eradication efforts, such as the county's new aerial-spraying program in Tucson Mountain Park, offer some encouragement. And he's heartened by volunteers who go into the desert to remove buffelgrass stands.

"But it'd require half the population of Tucson turning out on a semi-regular basis to get rid of it all," says Johnson.

The most realistic hopes rest on keeping buffelgrass out of certain areas. This requires workers going into these areas multiple times to pull the plants, then returning after heavy rains to treat buffelgrass seedlings that continue to sprout.

Weesner says these efforts have worked in parts of Saguaro National Park, but it requires a lot of work, done quickly, to stay ahead of the spread.

But the spread is inevitable. And it might mean the saguaro is entering a period of significant decline that can't be altered. The hardest-hit areas will likely be in the wettest portions of the saguaro's range, in the northern and eastern Sonoran Desert. In Arizona, that means around Tucson, San Manuel and Florence, and up to Wickenburg in the north.

All of this leaves Johnson, a reluctant pessimist, thinking out loud about some yet unknown feat of bioengineering that could put buffelgrass in its place. By that, he means the creation of some pathogen or insect that could attack buffelgrass and eliminate it.

But he says that's more in the realm of science fiction, and he worries that such a creation could become uncontrollable and go after native range grasses, or perhaps migrate to the Midwest and destroy corn and wheat crops.

"Remember Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park and his line, 'Nature will find a way'?" says Johnson. "We've never had much success with that kind of bioengineering, and my concern is we're not yet able to engineer something to keep a disaster like that from happening."

Trying to rebuild after 40 frozen years

A 1966 ban on development in a disputed tribal area left many Navajo living in third-world conditions -- or forced them out entirely. When the freeze ended, many residents didn't know where to begin.

Dispute over the 1.6 million acre tract of tribal land in northern Arizona became known as the "Bennett freeze." (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

By Kate Linthicum
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Cameron, Ariz. - This is the land where Larry Gordy was destined to live, until it was made unlivable.

The Navajo believe that a person will always be tied to the place where his or her umbilical cord is buried. When Gordy was born in 1968, his father put his in this rust-colored dirt. It was here on the family's ranch on the edge of the Painted Desert that his father dreamed of one day building homes for his children, and of tilling a field where watermelon and corn could grow.

But the Gordys were forced to put their dreams on hold. In 1966, the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Robert Bennett, halted development on 1.6 million acres of tribal land in northeastern Arizona that was claimed by both the Navajo nation and the Hopi tribe. Bennett imposed the ban to stop either tribe from taking advantage of the other while they negotiated ownership.

The ban became known as the Bennett Freeze. It meant the Gordys and the 8,000 or so other Navajos living on the land couldn't erect homes, open businesses or even repair their roofs. No roads or schools were built, no electric, gas or water lines were permitted.

The land dispute dragged on for 40 years, paralyzing residents in a state of poverty rarely seen in America. Because few Hopis lived on the disputed territory, the ban affected mostly Navajos like the Gordys, who deserted their ranch after it fell into disrepair.

The tribes settled their differences in 2006 -- most of the land went to the Navajo -- and in May, President Obama cleared the way for federal funding to help rehabilitate the area, but no money has been earmarked yet.

Navajo officials hope some money may come their way. But as politicians grapple with how to spend any funds, the people face a question of their own: Is it possible to make up for 40 years of nothing?

Gordy is now 41, with a wife and four children. They live in a drafty trailer in the town of Cameron, a 30-minute drive from the old ranch. Cameron was also under the Freeze, but in town, at least, the family could string an extension cord from a neighbor's house to get electricity, and draw water from a working well a few miles down the highway. Though it is now free to do so, the family has not made improvements to the trailer. The cash Gordy makes selling firewood, and the money his wife earns selling jewelry to tourists at the Grand Canyon, an hour away, isn't enough.

As often as he can, Gordy brings his children to the ranch, which is scattered with rotting buildings, dirt-caked appliances and rusty car parts, to teach them about their heritage and about the land they were forced to leave.

But he isn't sure where to begin.

"If it wasn't for the Bennett Freeze, we would have a place to live," said Gordy, a large man with a patchy black beard and an amiable manner. "But now we just have a junk pile out here. Now that the freeze is lifted, we're expected to come out here and build something out of all this junk. Well, with what? It'd be like if a rancher penned up a bunch of sheep for 40 years and then all of a sudden one day he opened the fence and let them loose. They wouldn't know what to do. And neither do we."

The Navajo nation, whose territory sprawls 27,000 square miles across three states, is America's largest tribe, and one of its poorest and most isolated. The tribe only recently opened its first casino, and unemployment hovers about 50%. Many people still live without electricity and plumbing. But even by Navajo standards, the conditions in the former Bennett Freeze region are astonishing.

A study commissioned by the Navajo found that only 24% of the houses in the area are habitable. Most homes lack plumbing, and while a third of the residents haul in potable water, others resort to drinking from the same wells as their livestock -- water that in some cases is contaminated with bacteria or uranium.

Nearly 60% of houses lack electricity, even as steel power lines strung across the land buzz with the energy they carry from the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., south to Phoenix and west to Los Angeles.

But on a recent afternoon, on a high, dust-blown plain known as Black Falls, the sounds of promise rang out from a rooftop. Two men, sweating in the sun, had spent all day on top of Mary and John Knight's 47-year-old cinder-block home, hammering down a tarp to protect the roof from the elements. It was a simple act that had been illegal for nearly half a century.

When the freeze was lifted, a local community organizing group informed the Knights that they were now eligible for money from federal programs. They secured roofing materials from a weatherization program and called over some friends to help install it. As a gesture of thanks to the workers, they planned to slaughter a sheep to make mutton stew.

The Knights had tried to fix the roof twice before. Rangers from the Hopi tribe came by each time and told them to stop.

The tribes have been rivals since the 1500s, when the nomadic Navajo arrived on the Hopi-occupied Colorado Plateau, a stretch of high-altitude desert where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico now meet. The conflict over land rights began in 1934, when Congress set aside a large tract in Arizona for "the Navajo and such other Indians as may already be located thereon." The land was populated mostly by Navajos, but the Hopis laid claim to the area because a Hopi village, Moenkopi, was located in its midst.

In 1966, while the tribes negotiated ownership, Bennett imposed the development ban. Moenkopi and the Navajo town of Tuba City were exempt. But residents of Bennett Freeze lands lived under continuous monitoring.

"Our parents felt like they had to hide and sneak around," Gordy said. "If you tried to do an addition, the Hopi would pay you a visit and say, 'Hey, there's no agreement yet.' "

Some people found ways to evade the freeze by building horse corals slowly, post by post, to avoid attracting attention from Hopi rangers who circled overhead in helicopters. Others camouflaged improvements by remodeling only the inside of their homes. Gordy's family stored the hay for their horses in a junked bus and built their corral on the side of a sandstone rock, where it was somewhat hidden. But they couldn't hook up to water or electricity. Eventually the hardship drove them out.

Many, including Katherine Peshlakai and her daughter, Eleanor, stayed.

The Peshlakais live about an hour's drive from Gordy's ranch in a neatly kept house atop a wind-swept hill beneath the vast Arizona sky. From their home they can see hundreds of miles in all directions, from the burnt-orange mesas in the east to the San Francisco Peaks -- one of the Navajo's four sacred mountain ranges -- in the west.

Both tie their silver hair back in buns and walk with the help of canes.

"Our children and our grandchildren is why we stay," said Katherine Peshlakai, who is in her 80s.

Since the freeze was lifted, the Peshlakais' home has been outfitted with a solar panel and a small wind-power generator, which they rent for $25 a month from their tribal chapter.

They say they are also in line to receive a water sanitation system that would include bathroom fixtures from the Indian Health Service. But they complain that the aid extended so far from the Navajo nation and the federal government has only come from the top down. "They don't want to hear our suggestions," Peshlakai said. "They don't want to work with us."

Many people who lived through the Bennett Freeze say they have little faith in the federal government and complain that the tribal government should have done more to get the freeze lifted.

"What really makes me sad is when the tribe gives up on its own people," said Vera Redell Bennett, 52, who was told that she could not move onto a plot of land near her mother's home on the outskirts of Tuba City because it was on the freeze.

Paralyzed from the waist down since age 18, when she was shot by her ex-boyfriend, Bennett has lived inside her van for the last six years. She parks it in an empty lot in Tuba City.

It's cold in the winter, she said, and she often doesn't have enough gas to keep the heater running. But at least she has a bed, piles of blankets and her little dog, Missy. Every day a caretaker provided by the state brings her food and empties the jugs that she relieves herself in.

Bennett has resigned herself to her disability, but not her third-world living conditions.

"People who don't live on the reservation don't live like this," she said. "I shouldn't be living like this."

The development freeze was hardest on the sick, said Nina Tohannie, 50, who works for the Indian Health Service. She said substandard living conditions had led to a number of health problems, including an epidemic of upper respiratory problems linked to badly ventilated stoves. And life without electricity meant that sick people were unable to refrigerate their medicines. That was one of the reasons Gordy's father, who, like many Navajo, suffered from diabetes, left his ranch. He died in 1995 from complications of the disease.

Roman Bitsuie, a Navajo official who is working with Arizona Sen. John McCain's office to craft legislation to infuse money into the Bennett Freeze area, said it might be impossible to repay people for damage done to their physical and psychological health.

"How do you compensate for someone's spiritual scars?" he asked. "I don't think there's a price on that."

Bitsuie said he did not know how much money might be included in the bill, which could be introduced later this year, or how it would be distributed.

Don Yellowman, the president of Forgotten People, a Navajo community organizing group that is one of the only groups doing work in the former Bennett Freeze region, said that redevelopment money should not go through the Navajo government but through federal agencies such as the Department of Transportation or the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The people don't trust the tribal government to handle rehabilitation, he said, because of a history of corruption -- the Navajo president was recently put on leave while he and other top officials are investigated for fraud -- and because they feel let down.

"There was no real public education about what people were enduring," he said.

Some people, like Denise Almeida, who lives not far from central Tuba City, don't even know whether they were living under the freeze.

All Almeida knows is that she was unable to get aid when her trailer burned down last year. She and six of her children now live in a sagging travel trailer without water or electricity.

People carry on; if there was one thing Larry Gordy learned while living through the Bennett Freeze, it was that.

Even though he no longer lives on the ranch, he still keeps a few horses there. When his children were born, he buried their umbilical cords in the corral.

Now that the freeze is lifted, Gordy hopes to rebuild and move his family back onto the land.

Next March, he said, he will start by tilling a field. The kids want to grow pumpkins. And he'd like to try his hand at watermelon and corn.

Congress moves to control all U.S. water

Jim Kouri
Law Enforcement Examiner

Civil libertarians are warning Americans about the ambitions of federal lawmakers to control all waters within the United States including those on private property, in the latest power grab by politicians in Washington, DC.

According to the American Land Rights Association, the Obama Administration and Congress are attempting to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2009 (S787) that would amend the 1972 Clean Water Act and replace the words "navigable waters" with "waters of the United States."

"The US Constitution's Tenth Amendment automatically reserves power for controlling waters to the states, not to the Oval Office and US Congress," said political strategist Mike Baker.

"This is just one more power grab by out-of-control politicians who only adhere to constitutional law when it suits them," he added.

Section 3, Paragraph 8 stipulates that "this Act will treat, as ‘waters of the United States’, those features that were treated as such pursuant to the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers in existence before the dates of the decisions referred to in paragraph (10), including--

(A) all waters which are subject to the ebb and flow of the tide;

(B) all interstate waters, including interstate wetlands;

(C) all other waters, such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds;

(D) all impoundments of waters of the United States;

(E) tributaries of the aforementioned waters;

(F) the territorial seas;

(G) wetlands adjacent to the aforementioned waters."

After being overuled by the U. S. Supreme Court in two recent decisions that the words "navigable waters" in the Clean Water Act limited federal agencies to regulation of navigable waters only, Democrats and liberal Republicans in Congress are striking back.

They are attempting to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2009 (S 787) that would amend the 1972 Clean Water Act and replace the words "navigable waters" with "waters of the United States."

"The bill also defines "waters of the United States" with such breathtaking scope that federal agencies would be required to regulate use of every square inch of the U.S., both public and private," according to the American Land Rights Association.

"Obviously, those behind this legislation have only contempt for the Constitution, limited government and private property rights. To understand what the framers of the Constitution intended, one need only look to their writings and the writings of those from whom they took wisdom and direction," said officials at ALRA.

"This is a terrible bill that would give the Federal government jurisdiction over anything that is wet including seasonal mud flats. This means that the Feds could enter your property and dictate what you can do with bodies of water on your land," said political strategist Mike Baker.

"It also means that the Great Lake States and Provinces could not protect the Great Lakes from being pumped dry to feed the growth of California and the Southwest. In that area, Democrat Senator Russ Feingold has sold out his own state: Wisconsin."

"Senate Bill 787 will change federal jurisdiction over “navigable” water, to give the federal government control over all water everwhere, in municiple reservoirs, and on private lands, and in private wells. This bill ignores state water law authority and the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," stated Barbara H. Peterson, a farm lands protection activist.

"If the Feds own the water, then they can do anything they want to with it, and I have to ask permission to get a drink or water my animals," she stated.

Ariz. governor opposes halt on new mining claims

Associated Press



PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer objects to a ban on filing new mining claims on nearly 1 million acres of federal land in northern Arizona for two years while a permanent prohibition is under study.

Most of the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest land covered by a July order is in the Arizona Strip located north of Grand Canyon National Park. The rest is located south of the canyon.

There's been a flurry of new mining claims, including for uranium.

Brewer sent Salazar a letter Friday saying adequate environmental protections are in place and that modern-day mining exploration creates "minimal impact to the land."

She also says economic impacts, energy independence and national security considerations support continued exploration.

Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources

Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's no health risk.

By Frank Clifford
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M. - More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico.

Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest.

So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission.

Laboratory officials insist that the waste doesn't jeopardize people's health because even when storm water rushing down a canyon stirs up highly contaminated sediment, it is soon diluted or trapped in canyon bottoms, where it can be excavated and hauled away.

"We are seeing no human or ecological risk," said Danny Katzman, director of the lab's water stewardship program. "We won't be surprised on occasion to see a higher than normal reading. But those higher values last for 40 minutes during a flood, and maybe two hours out of a year."

Much surface contamination, however, becomes embedded in sediment or moves down into groundwater. That subterranean migration poses the greatest long-term danger to drinking-water wells and ultimately the Rio Grande.

"When you see a child's footprints and Tonka toys in canyons where there is plutonium, there is reason to believe that a lot more work needs to be done to make the environment safe," said Ron Curry, secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department.

In 2002, the department issued an extensive cleanup order stating that waste at Los Alamos may pose "an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment." Laboratory officials accused the department of exaggerating the threat and resisted the order for several years before agreeing to a revised plan to scrub about 2,000 dirty sites by 2015.

As part of that effort, about 300 monitoring wells and gauges have been installed. Contaminated soil is being removed from canyon bottoms. Wetlands are being planted and small dams built to arrest the flow of polluted storm water. In the summer, the lab began loading some of its hottest radioactive waste into sealed containers by remote control and trucking it to a federal underground storage facility in Carlsbad, N.M.

Ambitious as it is, the plan deals with surface sites, not tainted aquifers. About 18 million cubic feet of waste is sequestered at Los Alamos. No one knows how it is slipping through scrambled layers of rock described by Katzman as "unbelievably complex geology."

Moreover, scientists at Los Alamos say they haven't determined where all of the waste was buried across the laboratory's 40-square-mile property. And they acknowledge that some of the monitoring wells used to measure contamination in deep groundwater may have failed to detect certain radioactive isotopes.

Adding to the uncertainty, a draft report released last summer by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the lab may have substantially underreported the extent of plutonium and tritium released into the environment since the 1940s.

More recently, the state Environment Department reported finding DEHP, an organic compound used in plastics and explosives, at 12 times the safe exposure level in an aquifer that supplies drinking water to Los Alamos and the nearby community of White Rock. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies DEHP as a probable human carcinogen also capable of harming reproductive systems.

In another surprise, water from a broken main flushed out buried waste near an old plutonium processing plant last year and pushed it beyond the largest dam built to stop the spread of contamination. Analysis of sediment by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oversight Bureau revealed "the highest concentrations [of plutonium] the bureau has ever recorded for this medium."

One of the canyons where radioactive waste has been found joins the Rio Grande just three miles above a diversion project the city of Santa Fe is building to capture nearly 3 billion gallons of water annually from the river. The $200-million project, scheduled to start operating in two years, is being designed to screen out and treat contaminated water. But not all radioactive isotopes are easily treatable. Tritium, which has been detected near the Rio Grande, bonds with water.

The directors of the diversion project -- while publicly expressing their confidence in the treatment system -- have been quietly urging the laboratory to do more to stop waste from moving toward the river.

George Rael, assistant manager of environmental operations at the lab, said it would cost as much as $13 billion to remove all accessible contamination. Even if there were enough money available, exhuming the waste could put more people at risk than leaving it alone -- at least in the short run.

"Some of the waste offers quite a challenge," said David McInroy, director of the lab's corrective action program. Digging it up, he said, could expose workers and others to a toxic cloud of debris. If left in place, it might turn up years later in groundwater.

With a population of more than 12,000, Los Alamos today is a far different place than it was in 1943 when the secret weapons complex was known as "Site Y."

The lab conducts climate-change research, screens AIDS vaccines, evaluates new tests for breast cancer and analyzes biological pathogens. Yet most of its budget still goes toward national defense. Los Alamos is the nation's sole manufacturer of plutonium pits, the triggers for nuclear weapons, and it continues to produce toxic waste.

Many residents of Los Alamos have become inured to the hazards of their environment. They hike and picnic in canyons dotted with toxic hot spots.

Just north of Los Alamos, the Santa Clara Pueblo recently installed air monitors that confirmed fears that the wind carries radioactive dust.

Joseph Chavarria, head of Santa Clara's environmental affairs department, said dust settles on the ground after it rains and contaminants are absorbed by edible plants. He said even potters are at risk: "When we make pottery, we test the texture of the clay by putting it in our mouths."

Pueblo officials would not reveal the levels of contamination detected by the air monitors. "I can say they were high enough to raise concerns about the future," said Santa Clara Gov. Walter Dasheno. "It made me think it might not always be safe to live here."

945,000 acres protected from mining for 20 years

Federal agency withdraws critical environment in Southern Nevada

Petroglyphs are shown in the Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area. The area is part of 945,000 acres in Southern Nevada that the Bureau of Land Management is protecting from new mining activity in Southern Nevada for 20 years. (Mona Shield Payne/Special to the Sun / File photo)

By Mary Manning
Las Vegas Sun

The Bureau of Land Management signed an order today that withdraws almost 945,000 acres of sensitive public lands from new mining activity in Southern Nevada for 20 years.

The bureau said it had taken the action to protect 24 areas of critical environmental concern in Clark and Nye counties. Existing mining and geothermal claims will not be affected, the order said.

The sensitive areas include cultural sites, such as petroglyphs and archaeological sites, and wildlife habitat that is crucial for survival of the Mojave Desert tortoise, the southwestern willow flycatcher bird, woundfin and Virgin River chub fish and other species in the Ash Springs area.

These critical areas had been threatened from growth in the Las Vegas Valley, the bureau said. In order for threatened and endangered species to recover, their habitats need to be protected, the order said.

The lands affected in the critical areas have been temporarily set aside since the Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resource Act of 2002 was passed. BLM extended that order in 2007.

The withdrawal order will be published in the Federal Register on Monday.

Last December, the Center for Biological Diversity submitted comments supporting the withdrawal while the public hearing process was under way.

"The BLM's actions demonstrate a commitment by that agency to protect Southern Nevada's natural and cultural heritage," said Rob Mrowka, conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity. "It is significant action, but the threats from sprawl development, groundwater exploitation, illicit off-road vehicle use and poorly located energy projects remain and will continue to be a challenge for federal land managing agencies."

Some of the areas listed in the land withdrawal order include Amargosa mesquite trees, Ash Meadows, Arden historic sites, Arrow Canyon, Gold Butte and town site, Hidden Valley, Keyhole Canyon, Mormon Mesa tortoise habitat, Rainbow Gardens, Red Rock Spring, River Mountains, Sloan rock art and Virgin River critical areas.

Interior Blocks New Mining to Protect Tortoise in Southern Nevada

By PATRICK REIS
New York Times

The Interior Department issued an order today banning new mining on nearly 1 million acres in southern Nevada to protect the desert tortoise and other protected species.

The order blocks new claims for the next 20 years but does not affect existing mine operations. Interior originally proposed the ban in late 2007.

The Bureau of Land Management had already designated the tracts in question as "areas of critical environmental concern," as much of the land forms river corridors that provide habitat for desert tortoises and endangered birds and fish.

The area is also a historic hot spot for gold mining, and U.S. Geological Survey evaluations suggest more mineral deposits remain in the region.

Lisa Belenky, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has filed several lawsuits against potential desert development to protect the tortoise, said the order adds desperately needed protection.

"This is a very important step to make sure there won't be mining companies coming in to override the protections," Belenky said, adding that the large quantities of mining wastes were incompatible with protecting natural resources.

But Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said putting almost 1 million acres off-limits to new mining ignores larger threats to the tortoise -- oil and gas development, agriculture and natural predators.

"Mining operations have a great deal of successful experience in protecting the desert tortoise," Raulston said. "As such, it seems incongruous to single out mining."

Tug-of-war over future of public land in Mojave Desert far from over, despite sweeping protections

Access to land such as Joshua Tree National Park is a key issue to many. (2003 / The Press-Enterprise)

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise

Fifteen years have passed since the historic California Desert Protection Act set aside millions of unspoiled acres as wilderness, elevated Joshua Tree and Death Valley to national park status and created the Mojave National Preserve.

The legislation was the largest land conservation bill in the continental United States, hailed for its safekeeping of a long-ignored 6.37 million acres of landscape that counts "singing" sand dunes, volcanic cinder cones and world-class climbing boulders among its attractions.

"It was a hell of a battle. We didn't know how hard it would be," said Elden Hughes, of Joshua Tree, former chairman of the Sierra Club's desert committee. "I don't care where in the United States you were, you could hear me shouting when it passed."

Now, proposals are pending for desert landfills, airports, housing developments, renewable energy projects and water harvesting, pushing a new generation to find ways to balance such pressures with the need for open space.

The process has to be a consensus, said Ralph Hollenbacher, a manager at Chevron, which is planning several solar projects.

"You don't have to please all of the people, but you have to please most of the people," he said. "What may be developable for one individual may be a national monument for another."

Among Chevron's projects is a 4,000-acre development near the southeast border of Joshua Tree National Park. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management vetoed the company's two previous site choices because they were in sensitive areas, Hollenbacher said.

With new urgency, environmentalists are filing lawsuits not just to protect endangered species from urban sprawl, but also from climate change. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is crafting legislation that would set aside millions more acres in the Mojave.

"If you look at the California desert, it's wedged in between two of the most rapidly expanding areas of the country, greater Los Angeles and greater Las Vegas. With that comes some intense development pressure," said Mike Cipra, California desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

Proponents of the Desert Protection Act laud it as a guardian of great expanses that provide solitude, inspiration and a refuge for wildlife. Almost 3.5 million acres were declared wilderness, which puts it off-limits to vehicles, mining and energy development. Hiking, hunting, camping and livestock grazing are allowed.

Critics say the protections are too extreme and make the land inaccessible to all but a small percentage of the population.

Some people contend that development in the desert is a necessary, and inevitable, way of keeping the state economically viable and meeting sustainable-energy goals. But others say it would prompt plant and wildlife extinctions and bring indelible changes to one of the state's last uninhabited spaces.

Competing viewpoints

Donna Charpied, an organic jojoba farmer, has lived in Desert Center for 29 years. For almost the entire time, she has been fighting the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill, which would dump Los Angeles County trash into an old iron ore pit within two miles of Joshua Tree National Park wilderness, where threatened desert tortoises roam. The case is pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Desert Protection Act missed a "big piece of the puzzle" by not including Eagle Mountain, Charpied said. She also is fighting energy development plans that would bring new roads and other changes.

"There are going to be places we've gone all our lives that we won't be able to, and it's not because it's protected, but because it's fenced," said Charpied, who also worries about air quality and industrialization from the projects.

Arkansas resident and retired Riverside firefighter Hallett Newman has a similar complaint about access, but it has to do with wilderness protections.

"They're closing down way too much desert," he said. "Few people have the opportunity to visit the interiors of wilderness areas because of their physical ability, when you have to hike and carry everything with you."

John Stewart, resource consultant for the California Association of 4WD Clubs, said some of his favorite spots are no longer accessible by road.

"I love getting out in the desert, driving the washes and the old roads to see where they go. You find beautiful vistas, places to have a campfire at night under the stars, places of solitude. These are places you can't really hike to."

Future protections

Environmentalists are hanging their hopes on new legislation by Feinstein, who also carried the 1994 bill.

Feinstein's latest piece, expected to be introduced within days, purportedly would create a national monument and protect public land in eastern San Bernardino County, south of the Mojave preserve.

The monument would encompass thousands of unspoiled acres of former railroad land stretching from Barstow to the Colorado River. The Wildlands Conservancy bought the land and turned it over to the BLM in 2004 for preservation. But the BLM has accepted applications for energy developments on much of that acreage.

David Myers, the Oak Glen-based conservancy's executive director, said Feinstein's bill would alleviate many impacts of renewable energy, which can consume massive amounts of water, scrape the land bare and disrupt wildlife corridors.

"If you look at the desert as a body, this will save a lot of the vital organs. It saves the heart of the desert," Myers said. "It's really important to think big and protect big landscapes."

His group supports wind and solar projects on private land already disturbed by farming or other activity.

So does Jim Dodson, one of the original Desert Protection Act proponents.

"There's enough land out there so we can have parks and monuments and wilderness and still have enough land left over for renewable energy generation," he said. "It just requires some reasoned analysis and forethought."

PIPELINE PLANS: Judge kills water ruling

Permission for agency to tap three rural valleys rejected

By HENRY BREAN

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

For the moment at least, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has lost the water it hoped to pump to Las Vegas in the first phase of its proposed pipeline across eastern Nevada.

In a strongly worded order issued last week, a district judge overturned a 2008 state ruling that granted the authority permission to tap groundwater from three valleys in central Lincoln County.

Judge Norman Robison ruled that State Engineer Tracy Taylor "abused his discretion" and "acted arbitrarily, capriciously and oppressively" when he cleared the authority to pump more than 6 billion gallons of groundwater a year from Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys.

The senior judge from Gardnerville wrote that the state's chief water regulator traditionally requires "specific empirical data" before allowing groundwater to be transferred out of a basin. This time, though, the state engineer is "simply hoping for the best while committing to undo his decision if the worst occurs," Robison wrote.

Authority officials are expected to challenge the judge's ruling, which spokesman Scott Huntley described as biased and "flat-out wrong."

"We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal," Huntley said. "There was some evidence the judge may have come into the case with a prejudged opinion."

Las Vegas water officials filed applications in the three valleys in 1989 as part of a grab for unappropriated groundwater across the southern half of the state.

In July 2008, Taylor granted the authority less than half of the water it was seeking in Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys. He ordered the wholesale water agency to develop a monitoring and mitigation program and to collect data for at least two years before exporting any water from the area.

A month later, a group of ranchers, environmentalists and others opposed to the pipeline challenged Taylor's decision.

New Mexico-based attorney Simeon Herskovits represents many of those pipeline opponents. In a statement Tuesday, he applauded Robison for reversing "an obviously unsound decision by the state engineer."

"There can be no doubt that the long-term interest of all Nevadans will be best served by the judge's decision to use common sense and reason in applying Nevada's water law," Herskovits said.

The Nevada Supreme Court would hear any appeal brought by the state engineer's office, the water authority or both.

For now, there appears to be some confusion about how state officials should proceed.

Robison ordered Taylor's decision on the three valleys to be "vacated and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this decision," but officials do not know exactly what that means.

"My understanding is there will either be an appeal or we're right back before the state engineer doing it all again," Huntley said.

"I think we're just digesting it right now to be honest with you," said Susan Joseph-Taylor, the chief hearing officer for the Nevada Division of Water Resources.

A message left for Robison was not returned Tuesday.

By as early as 2013, the authority could start pumping groundwater south through a pipeline that could stretch into White Pine County, more than 250 miles away, and cost between $2 billion and $3.5 billion.

Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys compose the first phase of the project. The water the authority plans to tap there could supply more than 37,000 Las Vegas homes.

The controversial pipeline was first proposed to feed growth in the Las Vegas Valley, but now it is seen by its backers as an insurance policy for a community that gets 90 percent of its water from a single source: the drought-stricken Colorado River.

Opponents argue that the arid valleys of eastern Nevada cannot sustain large-scale groundwater pumping, which they contend would threaten to destroy wildlife and livelihoods of ranchers and farmers.

In August, water authority board members voted unanimously to forge ahead with the permit process and other preparations for the pipeline.

Authority officials have said they will call for a final vote on whether to the build the project should the surface of Lake Mead slip below 1,075 feet, a low-water mark not seen since 1937 when the reservoir was being filled for the first time.

On Tuesday, the reservoir was holding at about 1,094 feet above sea level.

Navajos to reclaim bones misidentified as poet's

By PAUL FOY
Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY — A few months ago, the family of Everett Ruess, an idealistic young artist who vanished on a wilderness journey in 1934, was ready to accept his grim fate — that he had been killed by Indians.

They prepared to cremate remains that were found in wild Utah redrock country, which would have forever sealed the legend of Ruess with ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

But nagging doubts led four nieces and nephews to another DNA lab, which reported the bones were from another, unknown person. It was a stunning reversal for a legend-busting story in National Geographic Adventure last spring.

For Ruess flame keepers, it was proof the man never wanted to be found. For the family, it was only more grief.

"It's very difficult for us," Brian Ruess, a 44-year-old software salesman in Portland, Ore., said Thursday. "Our interest was more for closure than romanticism. It's tough."

Ruess said the family was "very close" to cremating remains of somebody who wasn't their uncle. Now the family is shipping the bones and a few artifacts to the Navajo Nation reservation where they were discovered last year. Scientists say the remains are most likely those of a young Navajo Indian.

So how did the original DNA researchers get it so wrong, and where does family go from here?

Brian Ruess said the family doesn't know where to turn to solve the mystery of their uncle.

"The story is about Everett. We just found the wrong grave," said David Roberts, a contributing editor of the magazine, who weaved a Navajo legend describing Ruess' murder by other Indians to a site where an elder said he hastily buried the body.

"It's possible he's there, nearby," Roberts said Thursday. He plans no further search.

Others believe the rest of the story holds up. It relies largely on an account of a Navajo elder who waited decades to reveal that he had witnessed the murder of a white man resembling Everett Ruess.

The story was originally revealed to Daisy Johnson, who lived on the Navajo reservation, by a medicine man who blamed her grandfather's cancer on having handled Ruess' remains decades earlier. Johnson died of ovarian cancer Aug. 25. Her brother, Denny Bellson, followed the accounts to a burial site. He might have gotten the location wrong.

A measure of the power of the Everett Ruess myth was the backlash and threats that followed Robert's story. Brian Ruess said the family disavows zealots who didn't want to hear that he "lasted for a month and was killed by Indians" on his final wilderness journey.

"People want their heroes to succeed," Brian Ruess said. "Everybody likes a happy ending."

Before Everett Ruess vanished, setting off from Escalante, Utah, he wrote a final letter to his family in California that "as to when I revisit civilization, it will not be soon" and "it is enough that I am surrounded with beauty." He was 20, a gifted poet who had explored the Southwest over much of four years.

Initial DNA tests were termed "irrefutable" months ago by University of Colorado researchers. On Wednesday, they said they had been unable to duplicate the results on a second try, but don't know how they erred. Other experts suggest they mixed DNA from Ruess' survivors with that of the discovered bones, contaminating the results.

Scientists at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Md. — considered one of the world's pre-eminent authorities on DNA research — say they have better technology for evaluating badly degraded DNA and made the right call.

"It was definitely not a match," said Mike Coble, research section chief for the Maryland lab. "Our results were very convincing."

Coble said his lab took on the Ruess mystery as a challenge, refusing the family's offer of payment for its services. They had one femur, a leg bone, to work with for DNA testing.

The structure of the bone suggested a man in his early 20s — the right age for a Ruess match — but military scientists say the DNA was distinctly Navajo, while anthropologists say other parts of the skeleton — a jaw bone and a tooth — suggested a Native American.

The DNA testing wasn't easy.

"The fact this bone was lying in desert soil so long, it was actually reddish-pink, the color of the soil. That can create problems when you do genetic testing," Coble said.

The Armed Forces lab is dedicated to identifying remains of U.S. soldiers and is working cases as old as from World War II.

Earlier this year, it disproved a legend of the Russian revolution, confirming that two missing children of Russian Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, did not survive the slaughter that left the rest of the family in a mass grave in 1918. Remains of the czar's only son and a daughter were recovered from another location.

Coble said nothing about DNA science is easy or simple and that the technology was still evolving. The testing by a colleague of his, Dr. Odile Loreille, use techniques employed at only one other U.S. lab, in New York, for criminal cases.

University of Colorado biologist Kenneth Krauter, who handled the initial DNA tests of Ruess' supposed remains, used equipment considered reliable only for good DNA samples, Coble said. Krauter readily conceded his error and said he was using "inappropriate" technology.

Heat, heavy coverage hurt bird hunting

Jim Matthews, Outdoor Writer
Inland Empire Daily Bulletin

APPLE VALLEY - Upland bird hunters reported seeing good numbers of quail and chukar throughout most of Southern California's deserts and foothill regions, but rain just before the opener, then heat and heavy hunting pressure over the weekend, made for difficult conditions and low hunter success.

"At Goat Springs, there was approximately the same number of vehicles you'd find at a large car dealership," said Rick Bean of Hesperia about a popular chukar hunting spot in the West Mojave off Highway 247 between Barstow and Lucerne Valley on opening day. While Bean and his hunting partners, Matt and Debbie Gangola of Glendora, didn't bag a bird - in spite of seeing a covey with 60 or more birds - two young hunters they met near a guzzler north of Goat Springs managed to get seven chukar between them.

Chris Coston of Orange was hunting near Ord Mountain, another popular chukar spot in the West Mojave, and said there were hunters everywhere, but that most guys he spoke with had "one or two birds each."

"There were a lot of birds, a lot of birds," said Coston, who managed to bag two chukar on opening Saturday and then another pair in the same area on Sunday.

Farther north, chukar hunters in the Southern Sierra Nevada, White and Inyo mountains, along with the popular Red Mountain region, all had similar reports: lots of birds but tough hunting conditions. Several hunters complained of chukar flushing well out of range in the Rand Mountains, but the hunting pressure was very high in that area, like the West Mojave, and it was warm.

The Mojave National Preserve had an excellent hatch of quail and chukar this year, but rain apparently scattered the birds and then warm weather made hunting difficult. Most hunters reported seeing birds, but success seemed to be about only a quail per hunter, with the chukar even tougher, flushing out of range.

Ed Tolman, along with his son Andreas and father DeLoy, and Dave Hancock and Ted Werner, all of the Chino Hills area, were out in the preserve Friday and saw good numbers of quail scouting for the opener. But opening day they managed to bag only five quail between them. Werner and Andreas Tolman wore themselves out chasing chukar over some nasty terrain, seeing 120 or so birds but unable to bag a single one.

Jack Ingram of Chino managed to get six Gambel's quail in two days of hunting in the Mid Hills region of the preserve.

"The birds were hard to locate, but I did get into a couple small coveys," said Ingram on Monday.

"I had my shots and I could have taken a limit for the weekend if I were on my game. As it was, I will be grilling six up tomorrow for dinner."

In the Imperial Valley and near the Salton Sea, quail numbers were reported to be well up from the past couple seasons, but the heat made the birds difficult to hunt, especially after the coveys were scattered opening morning.

Along the lower Colorado River, there were generally pretty good reports of quail numbers from Yuma to Needles. Robert Pierce, who managed Walter's Camp south of Palo Verde, said there were a lot of birds in the desert washes this year, and he and his brother-in-law managed to get 11 birds between them on Sunday of opening weekend, after being skunked the day before.

"There were a lot of birds out there, but there are too many guys with quads who chase them on those things and then jump off and shoot them," he said.

"I'm from Texas, where you get out and walk and hunting quail behind dogs, and it's just a shame that quail season was so badly abused.

"On Sunday the quads were gone, the jeeps were gone, and we got 11 birds in four hours of hunting. All the coveys were big, massive, with 20 to 30 birds."

A number of hunters complained about unethical hunters sitting on desert water sources (you can't stay on a water source for more than 30 minutes, so wildlife can come to water) and people on quads who didn't use normal hunter etiquette.

With another warm weekend forecast, it doesn't look like the next weekend of the season will be any better than the first.

HWY 62 Art Tours start Saturday

By Kurt Schauppner
The Desert Trail

MORONGO BASIN — Art and artists will once again be the focus of attention in the Morongo Basin in late October and early November as the open studio art tours, redubbed the HWY 62 Art Tours, return, thanks in part to the Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council.

“We are trying to make this more recognizable,” Twentynine Palms artist Mita Barter said of the tour’s name change. “A lot of people from out of the area don’t know where the Morongo Basin is.”

A lot of them, however, do know where Highway 62, also known as Twentynine Palms Highway, can be found.

“It is the artery of the Morongo Basin. We like to think of it as the ARTery of the Morongo Basin. It is the road that connects us all,” Barter said, comparing Twentyine Palms Highway to Route 66. “This is our mother road.”

The tours, giving residents and visitors a chance to visit local artists in their studios, will visit the west side of the Morongo Basin, including Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley, Pioneertown, Flamingo Heights, Landers and Joshua Tree, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25.

Venues during the first weekend will include the Purple Agave Art Gallery, Water Canyon Coffee Company, the Wishbone Gallery and the Integratron

Tours will take place in the east side of the Morongo Basin, including Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms and Wonder Valley, the next weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

Venues during the second weekend will include the Morongo Basin Life Drawing League, 29 Palms Creative Center and Gallery, 29 Palms Art Gallery and the Wonder Valley Labyrinth.

Some venues, including the Hi-Desert Nature Museum, the Red Arrow Gallery, Crossroads Cafe, Studio Godot and True World Gallery, will take part in the tour on both weekends.

Something new for this year’s tours will be a music component, with musicians playing at many of the studios on the tour with help from local musician and sound engineer Ted Quinn.

Maps to each of the tour venues will be available at the Yucca Valley Chamber of Commerce, 56711 Twentynine Palms Highway, the Joshua Tree Chamber of Commerce, 61325 Twentynine Palms Highway, and the Twentynine Palms Chamber of Commerce, 73660 Civic Center Drive, and in the Hi-Desert Star and Desert Trail.

Tour participants will also have the opportunity to purchase full-color programs for $10 online at www.hwy62arttours.com.

The two-weekend event will also see a celebration of Joshua Tree National Park’s 15th anniversary as a national park from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25 at the Starlite Courtyard in downtown Joshua Tree.

The entrance is between Instant Karma Yoga and the True World Gallery.

Admission is free.

Live music will be played all day and beer and wine will be served after 5 p.m.

Food and beverage vendors will be on hand, or participants are invited to bring takeout from one of the local restaurants.

If you go;

What: HWY 62 Art Tours

When: Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24, 25 and 31 and Nov. 1

Where: Artists studios around the Morongo Basin

Information: http://www.hwy62arttours.com/

Did Utah blink in Snake Valley talks?

Water » New documents show Beehive State's position changed after Nevada's threats.

By Patty Henetz
The Salt Lake Tribune

About halfway through secret four-year negotiations on how a reluctant Utah could share the Snake Valley aquifer with Nevada, a Silver State official and a Las Vegas water utility threatened they could take the matter to court or to Congress, memos and e-mails show.

The correspondence, released under an open-records request from the Great Basin Water Network, illuminates Nevada's no-surrender insistence that Snake Valley water be split 50-50, even though Utah officials believed that impossible.

The documents also appear to undermine recent assurances from Mike Styler, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, that the proposed water-sharing agreement is as good for Utah as it is for Nevada.

It's not, critics have said repeatedly at public meetings and in comments submitted to the Utah Division of Water Rights since the August announcement of a draft deal with Nevada to plumb the west desert.

"It might be an exaggeration to say we got rolled, but we surely backtracked," said Steve Erickson of the Great Basin Water Network. "I was surprised the state backed down on all those positions and that they're advocating this agreement so adamantly when once they were opposed to them."

Many critics have denounced the agreement as a giveaway to Las Vegas at the expense of an aquifer that can maintain equilibrium only with its current water drawdown.

On Monday, Styler acknowledged that the correspondence with Allen Biaggi, director of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, showed he and other Utah negotiators believed their neighboring state's demands spelled trouble for Utah.

Styler also said he agreed with many of the nearly 200 or so critical comments his department has heard since announcing a tentative agreement with Nevada to divide evenly an estimated 132,000 acre-feet of Snake Valley water a year.

"It makes me smile to see those comments," he said, because those are the very points we've been hammering at all this time."

Nevada negotiators "were dead set they had to come up with a 50-50 [split]," Styler said. "We were saying there was no way, when we're already using more than half that."

A key problem was a U.S. Geological Survey study that estimated Snake Valley's aquifer could yield up to 132,000 acre-feet of water a year. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons, enough to irrigate an acre of ground with a foot of water or supply water to one or two households.

But Styler said a sustainable drawdown would be only 105,000 to 111,000 acre-feet per year. The proposed agreement would divvy 108,000 acre-feet, with Utah getting 60 percent. The remaining 26,000 acre-feet of "reserve" water, Styler said, couldn't be tapped unless both states agree, "if it's even there."

Even if it is, said Snake Valley resident Kathy Hill, "I think 108,000 acre-feet may be on the upper end of realistic."

In a Sept. 30, 2006, memo to Biaggi, Styler said the Southern Nevada Water Authority, frustrated with the pace of the negotiations, had threatened to take the matter to its congressional members, who could try to change a 2004 law requiring both states to agree on a water split.

And letters from two years ago make it clear Utah didn't want to base a 50-50 agreement on the USGS estimate, which the federal agency said was only 67 percent reliable and included water used by the plants that now keep Snake Valley soil from blowing straight to the Wasatch Front.

"The harder Utah looks at that criteria, the less reasonable it looks to Utah," Styler wrote to Biaggi on July 31, 2007. "We are unaware of any reasoning that would lead us to conclude a 50/50 split is equitable or based on any scientific or legal grounds."

Hill and her husband, Ken, have a farm in Partoun in Juab County and work in Tintic School District. Kathy Hill said she has studied the documents and finds them both reassuring and frustrating.

"The Utah negotiators," she said, "were saying exactly what we're saying now."

She disliked the tone of Biaggi's 15-page correspondence of Oct. 9, 2007, which said Utah's refusal to negotiate in good faith causes Nevada "injury" -- a key component of any lawsuit -- and that after Utah added a new negotiator the previous spring, the discussion "regressed from its earlier movement toward common ground."

That negotiator is Dean Baker, a Nevada rancher who has spent millions of dollars fighting Nevada's plan for the Las Vegas pipeline.

"I was so outraged when I read that," Hill said.

Biaggi said Monday he wouldn't apologize for the letter's tone.

"At the time, the negotiations were not going well," he said. The letter "lays out the state of Nevada's position and what was at stake for both states ... if the two states could not get an agreement."

The proposed deal

The Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to build a 300-mile pipeline that would siphon 50,000 to 60,000 acre-feet of water from the Snake Valley to support current and anticipated growth in Las Vegas.

An acre-foot supplies up to two households for a year.

A draft water-sharing accord, advanced as a hedge against court battles, would divide a presumed 132,000 acre-feet a year between Utah and Nevada.

But the agreement doesn't authorize pumping. Nevada's state engineer would make that decision in 2019 if the deal becomes final or in 2011 if it does not.

Opponents include Salt Lake, Utah, Millard and Juab counties, west desert ranchers, Utah and Nevada conservationists, the Utah Medical Association and the National Park Service.

The Utah Department of Natural Resources backs the proposed accord as do the Washington County Water Conservation District, Ivins City and the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

The many meanings of a cross

Opinion

The dispute over a cross in the Mojave points to how entangled religion and culture are.

By Gregory Rodriguez
Los Angeles Times

I'm all for the separation of church and state. I believe that government endorsement of any particular religious sect or tradition has a corrosive effect on both the state and the faith in question. But I also think the attempt to separate religion from government is veering toward a foolish, parochial and ultimately impossible quest to separate religion from culture.

Last week, the ACLU of Southern California's Peter Eliasberg argued the case of Salazar vs. Buono before the U.S. Supreme Court. The case, which involves a cross that has stood, in various forms, for 75 years as a memorial to World War I veterans in the Mojave Desert, elicited a heated exchange between Eliasberg and Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a debate over whether the cross, which is on property surrounded by the Mojave National Preserve, violates the 1st Amendment ban on the establishment of religion, Eliasberg argued that a cross "is the predominant symbol of Christianity" that "signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind from our sins." Therefore, it shouldn't be allowed to "stand alone" as a war memorial in a national park. Scalia offered a different definition. "The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead," he said. The Times reported that Scalia "sharply disagreed" with Eliasberg.

Eliasberg responded: "I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew," he said.

Scalia wasn't persuaded: "I don't think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that's an outrageous conclusion."

I see Eliasberg's point, but Scalia's notion that the cross has become a generalized symbol of memorial strikes me as true too. Sure, you might suspect that Scalia, a practicing Roman Catholic and a well-known conservative, is simply seeking an argument that would allow the cross in this case to pass constitutional muster, but he's also accurately pointing to how entangled religion and culture are.

Eliasberg's reading that the cross has a specialized religious significance symbolizing the son of God who died for mankind's sins seems way too narrow an interpretation. Does it mean that? Yes. Does it have other significance? Absolutely.

Consider another common symbol, the Star of David. It is a symbol of Judaism, but it is also an ethnic, national and political symbol. It'd be hard, then, to say that its significance is entirely spiritual or theological.

Sometimes, religious symbols have historical significance that in some contexts can transcend their theological meaning. Five years ago, under threat of a lawsuit by the ACLU, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to remove a cross from the county seal. In the iconography of the seal, which had a number of symbolic images on it, the cross stood for the Catholic missions whose founding in the late 18th century signaled the dawn of modern Los Angeles history. But the ACLU claimed it represented "an impermissible endorsement of Christianity by the county government." The supervisors didn't fight it, but they should have.

In his 1996 book, "The Truth of Broken Symbols," philosopher and theologian Robert C. Neville observed that in predominantly secular societies, religious symbols often lose their theological specificity and become broadly generalized. In fact, he points to the American military cemetery in Cambridge, England, where a "sign explains that a Star of David on a tombstone signifies the grave of a Jewish soldier whereas a cross signifies 'all others.' " Likewise, he notes that "clergy blessing governmental ceremonies are performatively invoking divine aid by their very presence but are likely to pray in terms so general as not to be specific to their own religion's symbol system."

Culture is moving toward greater syncretism, something you can see in the increase in interracial marriage and the election of a black president. As for religion, a recent survey found that Americans who don't identify with any religion -- now 15% overall and 22% of all adults ages 18 to 29 -- make up the fastest-growing religious "tradition" in the country.

The problem with the ACLU's approach to religious symbols is that it's zero sum and old school -- it is, dare I say it, puritanical. Its narrow vision could rob the public sphere of symbols we need to understand who we are, what we're about and where we came from.

The truth is that even as we become a more secular country, religion will continue to be an integral part of our society, history and culture. Indeed, our very notions of politics and good government are the legacy of zealously religious people. Even our ideals of religious freedom and church/state division have roots in the theological convictions of Colonial and Revolutionary-era Baptists and Presbyterians as much as in the Enlightenment. Even if we don't as a nation profess one faith or another, religion is at the core of American identity. To seek to root it out of civic life and culture altogether is not only impossible, it's silly.

15th Anniversary Celebration of the California Desert Protection Act

by Michael Gordon

Please join the National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association to celebrate this historic anniversary at Mojave National Preserve’s Kelso Depot Visitor Center in Kelso, California. Entertainment, education, food, and an incredible line-up of speakers will add to your enjoyment of our celebration, located at the Historic Kelso Depot in the heart of Mojave National Preserve. Only a few miles from the 700-foot tall Kelso Sand Dunes.

Signed into law on October 31, 1994, the California Desert Protection Act designated 7.8 million acres of land as wilderness, changed areas previously designated as national monuments into Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks, and established Mojave National Preserve. This bill was the single largest land protection bill in the history of the lower 48!

The California Desert Protection Act is important because it established Mojave National Preserve and expanded Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks," said Mojave Superintendent Dennis Schramm. "Before its passage in 1994, Death Valley and Joshua Tree were designated as National Monuments."

Activities during the event include guided hikes and tours, distinguished speakers, children's activities and more.

The Fort Mojave Tribal Band and Needles Select Choir will perform, and Cowboy Poet Rob Blair will recite poems inspired by his life in the Mojave.

Lunch can be purchased at The Beanery lunch counter inside the Kelso Depot. Kelso Depot was built in 1924 and served as a Union Pacific station until 1986. The building was renovated and re-opened in 2005 as Mojave National Preserve's visitor center. The spectacular mission-revival style building now houses a museum, information center, bookstore, lunch counter, and art gallery.

The bookstore operated by Western National Parks Association will be open, and many regional authors whose books are on sale will be available for book signings.

Western Artist Susan Altstatt has a solo show in the Desert Light Gallery of the Kelso Depot Visitor's Center beginning October 10th and running through January 3rd, 2010. Twenty-two pieces of Susan's work focused on the East Mojave will be displayed, and selected prints will be available. Susan has been painting off and on for the past 50 years. Her media is primarily acrylic on canvas.

• Visitor Center open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Activities begin at 10 a.m.
• Susan Altstatt, Western artist
  solo show in the lower gallery
• Kelso is 34 miles south of I-15 at Baker on Kelbaker Road
• Celebration event at 1 p.m.
• Lunch concessions available

The Turtle Mountains by Susan Altstatt

This event is free and open to the public!

For more information call 760-252-6100 or visit us online at www.nps.gov/moja

You can download a flyer for this event here.