Of the many projects commissioned by the Obama administration to showcase its commitment to renewable energy, few are as grandly futuristic as the multibillion-dollar solar power projects under construction across broad swaths of desert on the California-Arizona border.
But at least two developments, including the $1bn, 250-megawatt Genesis Solar near Blythe in the lower Colorado river valley and the Solar Millennium project, are beset with lengthy construction delays, while others are facing legal challenges lodged by environmental groups and Native American groups who fear damage to the desert ecology as well as to ancient rock art and other sacred heritage sites.
Out on the stony desert floor, Native Americans say, are sites of special spiritual significance, specifically involving the flat-tailed horned toad and the desert tortoise.
“This is where the horny toad lives,” explains Alfredo Figueroa, a small, energetic man and a solo figure of opposition who could have sprung from the pages of a Carlos Castaneda novel, pointing to several small burrows. Figueroa is standing several hundred metres into the site of Solar Millennium, a project backed by the Cologne-based Solar Millennium AG. The firm, which has solar projects stretching from Israel to the US, was last month placed in the hands of German administrators and its assets listed for disposal.
Figueroa is delighted with the news. “Of all the creatures, the horny toad is the most sacred to us because he’s at the centre of the Aztec sun calendar,” he says. “And the tortoise also, who represents Mother Earth. They can’t survive here if the developers level the land, because they need hills to burrow into.”
Figueroa, 78, a Chemehuevi Indian and historian with La Cuna de Aztlán Sacred Sites Protection Circle, has become one of the most vocal critics of the solar programme and expresses some unusually bold claims as to the significance of this valley: he claims it is the birthplace of the Aztec and Mayan systems of belief. He points out the depictions of a toad and a tortoise on a facsimile of the Codex Borgia, one of a handful of divinatory manuscripts written before the Spanish conquest.
On a survey of the 2,400-hectare site Figueroa points out a giant geoglyph, an earth carving he says represents Kokopelli, a fertility deity often depicted as a humpbacked flute player with antenna-like protrusions on his head. Kokopelli, he says, will surely be disturbed if the development here resumes.
The area is known for giant geoglyphs, believed by some to date back 10,000 years. Gesturing towards the mountains, he also describes Cihuacoatl – a pregnant serpent woman – he sees shaped in the rock formations. All of this, he says, amounts to why government-fast-tracked solar programmes in the valley, where temperatures can reach 54C, should be abandoned. It is a matter of their very survival.
“We are traditional people – the people of the cosmic tradition,” Figueroa explains. “The Europeans came and did a big number on us. They tried to destroy us. But they were not able to destroy our traditions, and it’s because of our traditions and our mythology that we’ve been able to survive. If we’d blended in with the Wasps – the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants – we’d have been lost long ago.”
At the Genesis Solar site, 20 miles west, Florida-based NextEra has begun to develop an 810-hectare site. The brackets that will hold the reflecting mirrors stand like sentinels. Backed by a $825m department of energy loan, Genesis Solar is planned as a centrepiece of the administration’s renewable energy programme, with enough generating capacity to power 187,500 homes.
But local Native American groups collectively known as the Colorado River Indian Tribes are demanding that 80 hectares of the development be abandoned after prehistoric grinding stones were found on a layer of ashes they say is evidence of a cremation site “too sacred to disturb”.
Tomkav, a Luiseno village and burial site in Northern San Diego County, is being happily desecrated by developers working for Pardee Homes (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser Corporation) and Palomar College in San Marcos, CA.
On the morning of February 23, 2012, a group of bulldozers arrived to begin work on the recently-approved Horse Ranch Creek Road, a four-lane road that would pave the way to a planned 844-home development and a brand new College satellite campus.
It wasn’t long before a group of Indigenous activists arrived on the scene; unfortunately, their efforts did little to stop the desecration that day.
To make matters worse, the operators weren’t merely trying to do their job, despite the best efforts of the activists. As the following cell-phone video reveals, the workers were enjoying it. You can see one of the operators grinning just before he turns away…
The incident speaks well to the reality of what Indigenous Peoples face in the United States, especially when it comes to preserving sacred site: As Elders watched on in horror and others ran out in front of bulldozers to try to save what they could, the workers were celebrating. They were “laughing about what was happening, high-fiving when they were finishing, and you know, making the pump motion with their hands to say whoo-hoo we did a great job,” said San Luis Rey attorney Merri Lopez-Keifer.
Meanwhile, Tom-Kav, a part of the Luiseno creation story and the site of an historic village and burial ground, is being viewed from afar as nothing more than empty land. It’s as if California state law and federal doesn’t even exist, never mind basic moral conscience.
“During the course of [work], many archeologically significant new discoveries have been made, and dozens of Luiseno burials have been unearthed, notes Save Tomkav Village. “California law requires that when new discoveries of human remains occur, construction projects must be put on hold until the materials can be analyzed, which could lead to project modifications. Pardee and Palomar College have disregarded legal protocol by carelessly proceeding with grading and construction activities, and in fact they sped up work as soon as San Luis Rey took legal action against them.”
A day after the disgusting display, the San Luis Rey Band of Mission Indians filed for an injunction to halt the road construction–which is being paid for by Palomar College.
Southern Californians are among those at highest risk of death due to air pollution, according to recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research published in the journal Risk Analysis.
The study, published last month, was conducted to “provide insight to the size and location of public health risks associated with recent levels of fine particles and ozone, allowing decision-makers to better target air quality policies,” the federal agency said in a statement responding to California Watch inquiries.
“While overall levels of fine particles and ozone have declined significantly in the past two decades, these two pollutants still pose a burden to public health,” the EPA statement said.
The study examined air pollution exposure based on 2005 air quality levels and projected there could be between 130,000 and 360,000 premature deaths among adults in coming years. The 2005 data was the best available for analyzing fine particulates and ozone, the EPA said. Among vulnerable populations like children, the EPA also estimates that fine particulate matter and ozone results in millions of cases of respiratory symptoms, asthma and school absences, as well as hundreds of thousands of cases of acute bronchitis and emergency room visits.
The analysis also found that Southern Californians and residents of the industrial Midwest experience the highest exposure to fine particulate matter, which has been found to exacerbate respiratory illnesses and increase heart attacks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among the most populated areas of the country, Los Angeles had the highest estimated rate of deaths attributable to air pollution, at nearly 10 percent; San Jose had the lowest at 3.5 percent.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District conducted a similar risk assessment last year and found that about 1,700 premature deaths can be attributed to fine particulate matter in the Bay Area each year, which is about 3.8 percent of all deaths.
Particulate matter is made up of extremely small particles and liquid droplets that are 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller – which means they have a width 30 times smaller than a human hair. Common sources of fine particulate matter, often referred to as PM 2.5, are forest fires and emissions from power plants, industrial sources and cars. Unhealthy forms of ozone are created when nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) react in the presence of sunlight; ozone is typically linked to byproducts from industrial facilities and electric utilities, car exhaust, gas vapors and chemical solvents.
Local air districts in Southern California and the Bay Area have attempted to limit fine particulate matter and ozone emissions through Spare the Air days by regulating wood burning and offering financial incentives to businesses to phase out the use of diesel engines.
Public health advocates say that the EPA study illustrates the importance of improving air quality and that these types of studies on the risks of air pollution have been used to determine federal regulations and inform local clean air plans.
“One of the hardest things to explain to the public is that while the air is cleaner, we continue to find that we have underestimated the health effects of breathing in air pollution,” said Joe Lyou, president and CEO of the Coalition for Clean Air and a governing board member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. “Yes, we have made significant accomplishments, but we still have a long way to go. The public needs to understand that this is a life-and-death situation.”
