Supervisor opposes massive solar project in San Bernardino County [Updated]

A solar energy project proposed for development on public land in the Mojave Desert would create jobs mostly for Las Vegas and electricity for San Francisco at the expense of the relatively pristine area of east San Bernardino County where it would be built, San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt said Friday.

In an interview, Mitzelfelt, whose district includes the Ivanpah Valley project site about 20 miles south of Las Vegas, said BrightSource’s proposed 440-megawatt, 4,000-acre Solar Electric Generating System, “should not go forward.” [Update: An earlier version of this post listed the project as having 100 megawatts.]

The system is among 130 renewable energy applications to build wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of public land under review by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission. Companies hope to begin construction on about a dozen of those projects by late next year.

State and federal regulators said the BrightSource project is furthest along in the process and could break ground late next year. Conservationists, however, are concerned about its impacts on several rare bat, bird, plant and reptile species including the threatened California desert tortoise.

The development of solar power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and address climate change.

“Obviously, there is a lot of political pressure to get this project expedited and under construction,” Mitzelfelt said. “But its impacts in San Bernardino County and sensitive and scenic Mojave Desert environment are not worth the benefits.”

“I would do everything I could to advance a project that would provide jobs, induce economic investment and increase the tax base in our county,” he said. “This is not that project.”

BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs disagreed.

"Considering the project has been going through a state and federal environmental review process for more than two years, and will generate 1,000 jobs, $250 million in wages and more than $400 million in local and state tax revenue, we're surprised to see the supervisor's press release," Wachs said in a statement.

"We look forward to meeting with Supervisor Mitzelfelt and his staff," Wachs added, "to clarify any misunderstandings they might have about the Ivanpah project."

-- Louis Sahagun

Flat-tailed horned lizard gets boost from Arizona judge [Updated]

In the latest chapter in a 16-year legal battle to keep the flat-tailed horned lizard safe from urban encroachment, a federal court judge in Arizona has reinstated a 1993 proposal to list the creature as a threatened species.

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake’s ruling 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 complained 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 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.

Religious group pushes to protect San Gabriel Mountains

An activist religious group has joined the effort to designate the San Gabriel Mountains as a national recreational area eligible for additional federal resources including law enforcement personnel, interpretive signs and hiking trails.

The group, Progressive Christians Uniting, is touting the proposal to congregants of dozens of San Gabriel Valley churches near the 650,000-acre range that constitutes about 70% of Los Angeles County's open space.

"We are helping to bring the moral compassion of people of faith to bear on an urgent public issue," said Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of the Los Angeles-based group. "This is an ambitious effort. It involves public health, an important natural resource and millions of people who live near it. We want to be on board."

The designation would be made by the National Park Service, which is conducting an ongoing "special resource study" of the San Gabriels and the San Gabriel Watershed. The study includes three draft alternatives for new collaborative approaches to managing the range currently run by the U.S. Forest Service for purposes other than recreation.

A final recommendation could come in 2011. In the meantime, a coalition led by conservation groups and community organizations plans to present its "San Gabriel Mountains Forever" campaign to as many churches as possible.

"Religion and stewardship connect gracefully," said Sierra Club spokesman John Monsen.

Pastor Arthur Cribbs of San Marino Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, said his congregation recently forwarded a letter of support for the proposal to U.S. Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), whose district includes a large portion of the San Gabriels.

"We are blessed to have such a natural resource," Cribbs said. "It is a place where we can step out of our everyday business in the metropolis of greater Los Angeles and find quietude and stillness, strength and magic."

-- Louis Sahagun

Renewable energy projects threaten some of California’s rarest plants

The proposed construction of massive wind and solar energy projects on public land in the California desert would hasten destruction and further fragment land that is home to 17% of state’s rarest plants, botanists said Saturday.

“Most of the solar and wind projects currently under review are in the wrong places,” said Greg Suba, conservation program director for the California Native Plant Society. He and other experts spoke at Cal State Fullerton for the Southern California Botanists’ 35th annual symposium.

“We believe that full surveys of all plants — not just of targeted species — should be required for all these project sites,” Suba said. “Plant species represent the underlying fabric of an ecosystem.”

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission are reviewing 130 applications to build wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of public land. Companies hope to begin construction on about a dozen of those projects by late next year.

The development of solar power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and address climate change.

But Suba and James Andre, director of the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center in the east Mojave community of Kelso, urged that the projects currently under review by state and federal regulatory agencies be built on more than 200,000 acres of land already identified as ecologically disturbed.

“It’s the end of much of the California desert,” said Andre. “Millions of acres could eventually be bulldozed and fenced off. It’s your land, but you won’t be able to go there.”

Read more here

--Louis Sahagun reporting from Fullerton

 

Judge restores protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears

Two years after federal officials announced their "amazing" recovery, grizzly bears near Yellowstone National Park have been given renewed federal protections by a federal judge who expressed concern that climate change, among other factors, could impair the bears' hopes for survival.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy in a 54-page order (Download Order) restored the Endangered Species Act listing for more than 500 bears in and around the park in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho after a coalition of environmental groups argued it was premature to declare the bears "recovered" in 2007.

The judge said the monitoring program designed to maintain the bear population at more than 500 bears has no enforcement mechanism in case numbers decline.

"Even if the monitoring were enforceable, the monitoring itself does nothing to protect the grizzly bear population," the judge wrote. "Instead, there is only a promise of future, unenforceable actions. Promises of future, speculative action are not existing regulatory mechanisms," he said.

The judge said federal officials also failed to consider the impacts of global warming and other factors on a primary food source for the grizzlies, whitepark pine nuts, an important food source for the bears.

Federal officials said they were studying the ruling and would decide later how to proceed. Read the full story later.

-- Kim Murphy

Photo: James Peaco / Associated Press

Nonprofit asks to run Will Rogers State Historic Park

A private, nonprofit organization today asked the California Department of Parks and Recreation to allow it to manage and operate Will Rogers State Historic Park.

In a letter to parks Director Ruth Coleman, the Will Rogers Ranch Foundation said that, given the state's shaky finances, the organization could do a better job of running the Pacific Palisades park, where cowboy-philosopher Rogers lived until his untimely death in a 1935 plane crash.

"We believe that a partnership between the foundation and California State Parks would clearly make sense and would be in the public interest, as well as in the best interests of this historic ranch," said Jennifer Rogers-Etcheverry, a great-granddaughter of Rogers and the foundation’s chairwoman.

The action reflects the frustration of Rogers family members and park supporters, who say the parks agency has done a poor job of running the park and faces graver challenges because of the state’s eroding finances.

Most recently, state budget cuts forced park personnel to reduce the number of days the ranch house is open to tours and to halt work on the visitors center, which has been undergoing a restoration. The foundation plans to operate a retail shop in the visitors center to muster more funds to care for the property.

The four-year-old foundation's proposal aligns with the suggestions of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Coleman over the years that private groups will have to step forward to help operate the state's cash-strapped public parks. Rogers-Etcheverry said the foundation hopes to emulate a private group's operation of the Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

Without offering financial details, the foundation said it has garnered support from the Will Rogers Memorial in Oklahoma, Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, Will Rogers Polo Club, Pacific Palisades Historical Society and Will Rogers Cooperative Assn., as well as the backing of many community leaders and opinion makers "who are willing to commit to long-term financial support."

Representatives for the parks agency could not immediately be reached for comment.

--Martha Groves

Photo: The former home of Will Rogers in Will Rogers State Historic Park, as seen in January 2008.

Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

A private, nonprofit organization today asked the California Department of Parks and Recreation to allow it to manage and operate Will Rogers State Historic Park.

In a letter to parks Director Ruth Coleman, the Will Rogers Ranch Foundation said that, given the state's shaky finances, the organization could do a better job of running the Pacific Palisades park, where cowboy-philosopher Rogers lived until his untimely death in a 1935 plane crash.

"We believe that a partnership between the foundation and California State Parks would clearly make sense and would be in the public interest, as well as in the best interests of this historic ranch," said Jennifer Rogers-Etcheverry, a great-granddaughter of Rogers and the foundation’s chairwoman.

The action reflects the frustration of Rogers family members and park supporters, who say the parks agency has done a poor job of running the park and faces graver challenges because of the state’s eroding finances.

Most recently, state budget cuts forced park personnel to reduce the number of days the ranch house is open to tours and to halt work on the visitors center, which has been undergoing a restoration. The foundation plans to operate a retail shop in the visitors center to muster more funds to care for the property.

The four-year-old foundation's proposal aligns with the suggestions of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Coleman over the years that private groups will have to step forward to help operate the state's cash-strapped public parks. Rogers-Etcheverry said the foundation hopes to emulate a private group's operation of the Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

Without offering financial details, the foundation said it has garnered support from the Will Rogers Memorial in Oklahoma, Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation, Will Rogers Polo Club, Pacific Palisades Historical Society and Will Rogers Cooperative Assn., as well as the backing of many community leaders and opinion makers "who are willing to commit to long-term financial support."

Representatives for the parks agency could not immediately be reached for comment.

--Martha Groves

Photo: The former home of Will Rogers in Will Rogers State Historic Park, as seen in January 2008.

Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

New direction for U.S. forests: Restore and conserve

Restoration and conservation: Those are the goals that will guide management of the U.S. forest system under the Obama administration, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in his first major policy address on the nation's forests.

"It is time for a change in the way we view and manage America's forestlands with an eye towards the future," he told a crowd gathered at Seattle's Seward Park.

"This will require a new approach that engages the American people and stakeholders in conserving and restoring both our national forests and our privately owned forests. It is essential that we reconnect Americans across the nation with the natural resources and landscapes that sustain us."

The address was short on policy specifics but remarkable in the generally positive reception it got both from conservation groups and the timber industry, who often find very little to agree on.

Vilsack did let drop two important points: One, that the Forest Service won't be appealing the recent federal court decision in Northern California striking down the national forest planning rules promulgated by the Bush administration -- rules designed in part to foreclose protracted litigation over management plans for the nation's 192 million acres of national forests.

The new rules, conservationists charged, relied too little on science and provided fewer guaranteed protections for wildlife. Vilsack also affirmed what the Justice Department had already quietly revealed a day earlier: that the government will uphold a 2001 ban on development in the nation's last remaining roadless wilderness areas by appealing a Wyoming federal court decision striking down the ban. (A federal appeals court has already reinstated the roadless rule.)

"The fact that they're not going to relive the past with respect to the fights ... and that they're going to go forward and do new [forest] planning rules, that's a big announcement," said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with Earthjustice in Seattle who has litigated some of the biggest forest cases in the Pacific Northwest.

"It's been a long time since we've heard anyone from the Forest Service talk about more than just timber."

Obama administration defends 2001 roadless rule

 

The Obama administration today formally entered the legal fray over the 2001 roadless rule that placed a large chunk of national forest land off limits to new road building and timber cutting.

In a one-paragraph court filing, the Department of Justice said it was appealing a 2008 U.S. District Court decision in Wyoming that struck down the road-building ban.

The 2001 rule, issued by the Clinton administration, has been the subject of a tangle of court rulings and administrative actions. Just last week, the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the roadless protections across the country.

The conflicting lower court order in Wyoming has already been appealed by environmentalists. Now, the federal government, a defendant in the case, is also challenging it, formally moving to uphold the Clinton road ban.

“This is a very positive, exciting development because a favorable ruling in the 10th Circuit would end the legal assault on 40 million acres of our roadless forests,” said Mike Anderson, a Seattle-based attorney and senior resource analyst for the Wilderness Society.

But if the 10th Circuit upholds the Wyoming order, the fight will go on.

--Bettina Boxall

Photo: A 1909 photo of the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana. Credit: Associated Press
 

 

L.A.-area state parks could be shut down under new budget

At least five state parks in the Los Angeles area, including Pio Pico State Historic Park in Whittier and Los Encinos State Historic Park in Encino, are under consideration for closure as part of an effort to offset budget reductions, officials say.

Located about 45 miles apart, Pio Pico and Los Encinos are regarded as “sister parks” because each features 19th century adobe structures surrounded by more than five acres of manicured lawns, vineyards and shady sycamore, oak and ash trees.

They also provide thousands of visitors each year — many of them schoolchildren — with an opportunity to learn about the history and culture of California during the times of such historic figures as Pio de Jesus Pico IV, the last governor of “Mexican” California.

“I don’t think the gravity of this situation has sunken in yet with a lot of people,” Sean Woods, superintendent of the Los Angeles sector of the state parks system, said Wednesday. “But the day of reckoning has arrived.”

Read the full story by Louis Sahagun here.

California state park fees to rise next week

It will cost more to visit many California parks starting Monday.

Day-use parking fees will increase by $2 to $5, depending on the park, and camping fees will rise by $10 to $21 a night, according to state parks Director Ruth Coleman. “In these dire economic times, we can no longer afford to keep our fees at their current levels,” Coleman said. “The people of California understand that by charging more, we will be able to keep more parks open and preserved."

Read the rest of the story here.

-- Patrick McGreevy in Sacramento