By Sidney Silliman
The California desert is a uniquely American landscape. The Joshua
trees, giant boulder piles, mountain ranges, and night skies brought the
adventurous here for decades, and the depiction of our iconic desert
landscapes in movies and on television shaped the nation’s view of the
West.
Our desert is an important place for recreation. Visitation
increases every year as more and more people come to appreciate the
spectacular resources and recreation opportunities. More than 3 million
people visit our desert national parks alone each year. Many smaller
desert communities are building their livelihood around the growth in
tourism.
Despite broad public support for maintaining the unique qualities
of the desert, the Obama administration continues to make harmful
decisions that undermine our public lands, our tourism economy, and our
faith in its ability to lead us to a green-energy future without
destroying what we value most. The administration just approved an
unwanted project, Soda Mountain Solar, above the opposition of local
communities, the administration’s scientists, the National Park Service
and tens of thousands of Americans. The opposition to the decision is
intense. Desert folks are disgusted with an administration that
continues to put projects in bad places even as it assures us it will do
better. Despite two national planning processes for renewable energy
taking years and costing untold millions of dollars, the administration
is permitting another bad project to roll forward.
Soda Mountain Solar is the most controversial renewable energy
project in the country. The power plant is proposed to be sited directly
adjacent to the Mojave National Preserve, a remarkable national park.
The project will harm desert bighorn sheep, kit fox, burrowing owl and
desert tortoise even though the project technology can easily site it
elsewhere. Soda Mountain Solar does not have a buyer for its energy. Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power rejected the enormous economic
cost and environmental harm of Soda Mountain. Other power agencies
repeatedly refuse to buy the power.
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