I have a personal connection to the Ivanpah Valley, so that’s what you’ve been reading about here for the most part.
On Wednesday the California Energy Commission approved a solar project that would be twice the size of Ivanpah. The contractor is Solar Millennium. The project is called Blythe Solar. As Shaun says,
The site will disturb at least 7000 acres of habitat in the Colorado desert in Southern California, making it the largest site to be approved this year. The project will destroy sand dune habitat for the threatened Mojave fringe-toed lizard (at least 57 were spotted on the site), bighorn sheep foraging grounds, and nesting areas for the burrowing owl.
Kevin of Basin and Range Watch, in comments on the above-linked post, adds that
People from the Chemehuevi and Ft. Mojave Indian Tribe have stated that the CEC’s and BLM’s estimate of “200 cultural sites” is “way off”. They say over 1,000 sites are on the project site. That is why the CEC gave the over ride order on cultural resources for Blythe.
Those 1,000 sites include a number of geoglyphs, some of them ancient.
When Chemehuevi elder Phil Smith of the Colorado River Indian Tribes and Fort Mohave Indian Tribe representative Rev. Ron Van Fleet came out to Camp Ivanpah, they made a commitment to help stop the Ivanpah project. Some of their reasons were covered in this article in the Las Vegas Review Journal. Some of the possibilities are quite exciting, and I’ll be keeping you posted here.
But their priority is Blythe, which would destroy much of the local tribes’ history. In the last post I referred to Blythe as constituting cultural genocide. Sounds like hyperbole, I know, but I think it’s not inaccurate. Mr. Smith and Rev. Van Fleet made it clear that any help the tribes could get from folks outside would be warmly welcomed.
I took that to include me, so I’ll likely be spending some time in Blythe as well as working to promote the Native folks’ efforts there from my desk here, and you’ll be hearing more about the project on this site in days to come. Basin and Range Watch has a lot of great information to start you off.
Meanwhile, I’m heading to LAX tomorrow afternoon to fly to DC, to join a few of my Solar Done Right colleagues to lobby against giant concentrating solar projects and in favor of localized, small-scale renewables. I’ll have a netbook, so I may be able to post a thing or two. At the very least, I’ll post a thing or two a day on my Twitter feed. We’re meeting an insane number of people between Monday and Thursday. I’ll be back Friday.
IMPORTANT: The Desert Protective Council is covering my expenses for that trip. If you’d like to make a quick gesture of support for my work on all this you can drop some cash on them via Network For Good.
Desert Protective Council is FANTASTIC!
You could say the Blythe and Ivanpah projects constitute Environmental Justice issues, not just fossil fuel plants in inner cities, but massive industrial solar power plants scraping up cultural sites in rural areas where Tribal concerns are ignored.
So I climbed up on the roof of my studio and figured I was looking at 10,000 acres of flat empty roof tops just begging for PV. I just don’t get the need to destroy the desert, our native culture, and our future when technology is available and waiting. I suppose arrogance portends disaster.