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Tribes join protests of Ivanpah solar project
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JESSICA EBELHAR/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Phillip Smith, left, a Chemehuevi Indian of the Colorado River Indian Tribe, walks Tuesday along a sacred ridge in Ivanpah Valley, 40 miles south of Las Vegas, with the Rev. Ron Van Fleet of the Fort Mohave Indian Tribe. The ridge overlooks an area where BrightSource Energy plans to build a solar power project in California's San Bernardino County. » Buy this photo
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Updated: Sep. 15, 2010 | 7:24 a.m.
IVANPAH VALLEY, Calif.-- They trudged through soft sand and used walking sticks for balance as they ascended a ridge crowned with black boulders and triangular-shaped piles of rust-colored rocks.
Phillip Smith, a Chemehuevi who's an elder in the Colorado River Indian Tribe, and the Rev. Ron Van Fleet of the Fort Mohave Indian Tribe, call this a sacred place. Their ancestors have come to these "altars" for centuries to worship the divine and admire the Mojave Desert.
On Tuesday, they came to the sacred site to join about 20 protesters who want to protect a 5.6-square-mile stretch of desert below the ridge.
That's where BrightSource Energy expects to break ground next month on what will be the world's largest system of mirrors, or heliostats. The system will focus the sun's energy on three solar towers to create heat to drive turbines to generate electricity for Southern California.
Smith said the project threatens the tribes' heritage and the habitat shared by federally protected desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, hawks, snakes, and many sensitive and medicinal plants.
"They're getting squeezed out. We're their protectors," said Smith, 73, in a soft, deliberate voice.
Van Fleet added, "Ants, rats, turtles, nobody speaks for them."
Smith wore a black hat with a shiny, abalone shell resting on its brim. Another shell dangled from a string of beads worn around his neck.
The creature that lived in the abalone shell "lived in that for protection," he said. "And the turtle lives in his shell for protection."
He said what the company's project will do is destroy their homes to profit from the sun's cheap power.
"It's fast money. It's all fast money," said Smith, of Needles, Calif.
"There's hawks, there's snakes. They live here. We live here," he said. "You've got to remember there was no L.A. There was no Las Vegas. Where do you think we lived?"
BrightSource Energy spokesman Keely Wachs defended the project, saying the system with a capacity of nearly 400 megawatts will generate enough electricity to power more than 140,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 400,000 tons per year.
In a telephone interview, he noted that the project underwent three years of review by the California Energy Commission and the Bureau of Land Management.
"This is the first I'm hearing of any American Indian concerns," Wachs said. "We actually share their passion for the desert and we think the approach we're taking is the right approach from an environmental perspective."
Surveys of the project area turned up only 17 desert tortoises. They will be captured and relocated to protected areas west and north of the site.
Natural vegetation, Wachs said, will be trimmed to 18 inches and allowed to grow under the mirror field.
The system, he said, will be a "dry-cooled" operation, meaning it will use less than 100 acre-feet of water per year, about as much used by 300 homes annually.
The project has been fast-tracked and has been granted a loan guarantee from the Department of Energy for nearly $1.4 billion.
Across the Nevada border east of Primm and in view of the ridge, another company, NextLight Renewable Power, plans to build the Silver State Solar Energy Project. The BLM's Las Vegas Field Office released a final environmental impact statement for the Silver State project this month.
It will be the second utility-scale solar project in or near the valley known as Ivanpah, which Smith said means "clean water, good water, or pure water" in the Chemehuevi language.
At Camp Ivanpah, protest organizer Chris Clarke said the Mojave Desert is "going the same way as the ancient California redwood forest. This is the ancient desert and shouldn't be ruined for 30 to 40 years of solar power."
Southern Nevada environmentalist John Hiatt, who visited the BrightSource project area Tuesday, said there are better areas to build solar farms, such as places that are already disturbed or contain less sensitive habitat.
"Solar energy is really necessary in the future but it doesn't make any sense if we're trying to save the environment and we destroy the best parts of it," Hiatt said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
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I would like to remind everyone who is about to read the comments for this article that “You agree, through your use of article commenting, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful...” (Review Journal comment Policy) not that any of the people below seem to care. It is sad to know that people actually think these things and are so ignorant. It’s also sad for these people to think they know everything about Native Americans when they know nothing at all and never will because of their own ignorance. Not everyone bases their life on material possessions and how much they can acquire and waste all at the same time.
It sounds like from a legal point of view, it's too late for the Native Americans to mount a challenge to this project.
The lesson to be learned, whether one is Native American, Environmentalist, Democrat, Republican or Libertarian: You've got to participate in the permitting process, not ignore it, and then you've got to get to court with plenty of evidence before the deadline to file a lawsuit challenging anything.
We must be the only nation in the world who actually listens to the whinings of a group of savages that occupied the land before we took it. These people get almost everything free....education, casino profits, benifits, medical care, federally paid police that harass driver on the interstate and free places to stay. The VAST majority of them would not be able to skin a deer, if they were fortunate enough to catch it due to their vast girth.
You lost get over it and move on with life!
http://www.fastcompany.com/1689125/the-8-most-exciting-solar-projects-in-the-us
Tell them the great whi... oops! Tell them the government will give them some solar powered slot machines for their casino. That will win them over.
No collusion here is there? Remember the County commissioners had to ok these energy rulings and where to build in Nv. and Calif. Let's say Harry Reid and let's say Rory Reid.===
"10 Elections competitive races • POSTED - 08.31.10 BY Nancy Watzman
Reid fundraises at offices of solar energy company
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D., Nev., is scheduled to be in California fundraising this Thursday at the Oakland offices of BrightSource Energy — a solar energy firm that earlier this year secured $1.37 billion in conditional federal loan guarantees to build a massive solar energy complex in Ivanpah, near the California-Nevada border, a project applauded by the Senator." You Native Americans better start hauling money out of your pockets if you want Harry and Rory at your beckoning. And Harry will use his power to make sure the taxpayers take another hit.
OK, I have to chime in, seeing as how this involves kinfolk and all... Hows about these tribal folks set up their own solar plant? Seems the funding is fairly easy to come by, maybe even easier than getting a regular mortgage. Produce power, set it to the White Eye, use the money to improve life on The Res.
They were chanting
Give Us Money
Give Us Money
Give Us Money
So, the tortoises "will be captured and relocated to protected areas west and north of the site." Sound familiar?
I know that these Indians just love to cook their tortillas and fried bread with a wood fire on a stop sign supported by four rocks instead of a clean electric griddle. Maybe they'll be happy to camp under the solar panels....that way both sides benefit.