Solar Project Heritage-Impact Concerns

No matter how empty a place may seem, it has a history, with people connected to it:

The image of Cicimiti, more detectable from the sky than on foot, is just one of many geoglyphs, Native American burial sites and ancient relics that Figueroa says are threatened by solar projects being fast-tracked near Blythe and other remote expanses in the Southern California desert.

"There's no way these people can circumvent all the sacred sites out here, and no way to fix it when the damage is done," said Figueroa, 77. "How can you mitigate Mother Earth?"

The Native American group La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle, which Figueroa founded, has joined with environmentalists in a federal lawsuit to block six mammoth solar projects approved by the Department of the Interior.

The projects targeted include BrightSource Energy's 3,600-acre solar facility in San Bernardino County's Ivanpah Valley, where work began in October, and Solar Millennium's proposed 5,900-acre solar thermal project eight miles west of Blythe, abutting the geoglyph-covered mesa.

The lawsuit, filed in December, accuses the Bureau of Land Management of fast-tracking the solar projects without the required environmental review and without consulting with Native American tribes that oversee the preservation of sites with religious and cultural significance. The federal agency disregarded its formal agreement to consult with La Cuna to protect sacred sites that may be affected by projects on bureau-controlled lands, Figueroa said.

Cory Briggs, lead attorney for the groups that filed the lawsuit, said the Obama administration raced to approve solar projects in California before the Dec. 31 deadline for economic-stimulus funding. The stimulus package offered generous subsidies for renewable energy projects approved before the deadline.

Officials with the California Energy Commission acknowledged the difficulty of preventing effects on sacred sites in its final decision approving the Blythe project, saying that "given the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act deadlines, Commission and BLM staff have not had time to provide a detailed evaluation of each resource" that could be eligible for protection.

...Along with Figueroa's organization, the lawsuit was filed by the environmental group Californians for Renewable Energy and seven Native American individuals. The other bureau-approved projects being challenged are: the Imperial Valley Solar facility, the Calico Solar Project; the Chevron Energy Solutions solar facility in the Lucerne Valley, and the Genesis Solar Energy Project west of Blythe.

..."I was out in the desert near Ivanpah as a kid. It already looks different, with cable and gas lines and roads crisscrossing the land," said protester Phil Smith, 73, who grew up in the desert near the Ivanpah project.

"There are things out there still, our way of believing and our way of life, and they're getting destroyed."