A Joshua tree stands in California's Mojave National Preserve, near where new national monuments have been proposed. (Rennett Stowe / flickr) http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/ / CC BY 2.0
One prominent U.S. Senator looks to establish two national monuments right in California’s Mojave Desert, but her move has raised the ire of renewable energy developers who target the area for solar panels.
Democrat Sen. Diane Feinstein introduced a bill last week to place more than 1 million acres of southern California desert into the protection of the National Park System.
From Feinstein’s press release, the two land tracts are:
- The Mojave Trails National Monument would protect approximately 941,000 acres of federal land, including approximately 266,000 acres of the former railroad lands along historic Route 66. The BLM would be given the authority to conserve the monument lands and also to maintain existing recreational uses, including hunting, vehicular travel on open roads and trails, camping, horseback riding and rockhounding. [SNIP]
- The Sand to Snow National Monument would encompass 134,000 acres of land from the desert floor in the Coachella Valley up to the top of Mount San Gorgonio, the highest peak in Southern California.
The area is near Joshua Tree National Park, an iconic desert park often recognized for its sandcastle-like mountains and, of course, those Joshua Trees.
Feinstein serves as chairwoman of the influential Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, which would have a prominent role in determining funding for new national parks and national monuments.
Before we put up “Welcome” signs, however, the area has been targeted for renewable energy development, according to the Wall Street Journal:
BrightSource Energy signed power-purchase agreements with Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International, and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a unit of PG&E Corp., for 2,600 megawatts of power it intends to furnish from numerous desert sites beginning in 2013.
John Woolard, chief executive of BrightSource, said Mrs. Feinstein “got quite upset” when she learned development was proposed on some pristine tracts under federal control. His company decided to forgo plans to build a solar project in the Broadwell Dry Lake area that would be within the proposed monument boundaries. However, he warned that putting parts of the Mojave off limits “would push solar farms out of state.”
Others have also complained that California’s aggressive renewable-energy target, combined with tough land-protection laws, could end up sparking a renewable-energy boom in neighboring Nevada or Arizona.
According to WSJ, California has mandated that one-third of its energy must come from renewable sources like solar or wind, but that kind of development needs land. And once land gets targeted, environmentalists and conservationists find themselves fighting each other.
As someone at the National Parks Conservation Association told me recently, nothing today gets proposed without raising a storm of controversy.
And in my opinion, both have shared goals and had better get together on these issues … before both lose.
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This is not a happy story. It raises interesting questions about the complexities of land management. Thanks for sharing.