Sage and Sand: The Heartbreak On Their Faces
The Showdown in Gerlach isn't about Burning Man, it's about the future of a little desert town and our public lands.
The Heartbreak On Their Faces
A lawsuit over an erstwhile clean energy project with negative impacts to the environment and human communities made news in recent weeks… and the sun also rises. This time, the action is at the edge of the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the tiny desert town of Gerlach. A group of plaintiffs beloved of the Black Rock Desert sued BLM over their approval of a geothermal exploration project by, you guessed it, Ormat. Now, as we’ve seen with the little central Nevada toad we’re so fond of, lawsuits against erstwhile clean energy projects make news. But this one really raised eyebrows because of the plaintiff group, headed up by Burning Man Project. Burning Man is a cultural touchstone and also a lightning rod – seems like everyone has an opinion. So their participation in the suit has brought a tremendous amount of scrutiny, and some amount of heckling, from all quarters. Their co-plaintiffs are Friends of Nevada Wilderness, Friends of the Black Rock, a local Gerlach resident, and the owner of Great Boiling Spring, a nearby hot spring.
Readers of this newsletter are aware of the impacts of geothermal energy on adjacent surface thermal water sources. They tend to dry up. Hence the Dixie Valley toad litigation and etc. I recommend reading this excellent Jessica McKenzie piece in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists if you want great background on the issues about geothermal energy and how it can impact aquatic ecosystems in the Great Basin.
So just on its face, if there are any thermal water features around the geothermal project in Gerlach, there’s good cause for concern. And indeed there are. Gerlach is sited in a dense region of thermal water features, including the aforementioned Great Boiling Spring – like it says on the tin. There are numerous other thermal spring vents in the area though, including some on land owned by Burning Man Project. These springs create hundreds of acres of ephemeral and perennial wetlands, providing habitat for resident and migratory wading and shorebirds and any number of desert critters who frequent such aquatic places.
But also… Gerlach is a quirky, tiny, rustic little desert town. Not all that dissimilar from the quirky, tiny, rustic little desert town where I live. It’s the gateway to a recreation destination – the Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon-Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area – of international repute. It’s a former mining town which now lives and dies by ecotourism. And goddamnit, there’s a bunch of humble desert folks there, a lot like my neighbors, who just want to live in the desert and by and large be left alone.
What Ormat is proposing for Gerlach is really unprecedented in the U.S. geothermal industry. Normally these geothermal projects are sited far away from communities – generally in the middle of nowhere. The most prominent geothermal project sited near a community is in South Reno with the Steamboat power plants – and in that case, the community moved in next to the geothermal project, not the other way around. No, in Gerlach, Ormat is proposing to build a huge industrial energy production facility within half a mile of people’s homes. Basically right in the town of Gerlach.
A geothermal project in Gerlach would forever and irreparably change the character of the town, the lives of the people who live there, and the experience of visiting the Black Rock Desert. The area is literally a National Conservation Area, intended to be protected in perpetuity from large-scale disturbances. And yes, it is the site of an internationally infamous annual desert gathering, the Burning Man festival.
Now, the mere mention of Burning Man is sure to provoke a reaction. It’s perhaps one of the most polarizing public lands issues of our time. I’ve even had some choice things to say about it in the past. But that’s the past. This summer I had reason to get to know Burning Man a little better, in part because of this very geothermal proposal. And while high-profile and well-heeled attendees of the event get much of the attention, the reality is most Burners are not rich people. They’re mostly weirdos and hipsters and artists and free spirits from across the West, generally people who also love public lands. And in my work, I primarily interact with the people who make Burning Man Project run, a passionate and dedicated group of folks who are decidedly not rich tech bros and are very oriented toward the protection and preservation of a place. In many ways, they’re not so different from me. Hedonistic bacchanals in the desert aren’t my thing, but passionate, compassionate, driven people who truly care about a place are definitely my thing, and I’ve found a lot in common with the people at the Burning Man Project.
But it’s not just Burners who love Gerlach and the Black Rock Desert. Friends of Nevada Wilderness has been fighting to protect the Black Rock for many decades, including being instrumental in the designation of the National Conservation Area to begin with. And Friends of the Black Rock, a local friends group dedicated to the Black Rock Desert, has the conservation and stewardship of the Black Rock Desert in their very mission. So while it’s unsurprising that both of these groups have taken up the fight to defend Gerlach, what is eyebrow raising is the fact that they’re litigating. To my knowledge, neither of these groups has ever litigated anything. It's not in their DNA. Their signing on to a lawsuit makes a pretty bold statement about the importance of preserving this area.
And finally, there are the good people of Gerlach itself, one of whom is also a plaintiff to this lawsuit. I had occasion to visit this quiet little hamlet a week or two ago, to present briefly on the impacts of geothermal energy to wildlife in Nevada. Half the town turned out to the public meeting, and people were rightfully very concerned and pissed off about a potential huge industrial development ending up in their tiny little town. Property values were a common concern, but also the town’s water supply, the hot springs that residents enjoy and the wildlife those springs support, and perhaps most of all, the peace and quiet and dark skies that drew these people out to the desert to begin with.
Spending time with these folks was actually a very emotional experience for me. The Center’s Nevada staff attorney Scott Lake and I have sort of been on the bleeding edge of this sort of stuff, as the first group to litigate a geothermal project in the Great Basin. It’s a little lonely out there. Additionally, our clients are toads – they can’t speak. I can’t hear the fear in their voices of their homes being destroyed. I can’t see the heartbreak on their faces. It was very compelling. I wish everyone could go to that little community meeting in Gerlach.
Many news outlets and newsletter writers seemed to have fun at Burning Man’s expense last week. Interestingly, they seemed to go for the jugular on the “lefties fighting renewable energy” narrative way quicker than they do with, for instance, the Center for Biological Diversity. Are we more likeable than the Silicon Valley billionaires incorrectly perceived to be Burning Man’s primary clientele?
This isn’t about Burning Man. It’s not about a feud with Ormat and BLM. It’s about a tiny desert town, home to wildlife and desert folks, and the project that would fundamentally alter life for all of them, humans and critters.
Please note: The Center is not a participant in this lawsuit.
Read more: Nevada Current, Associated Press, Reno Gazette Journal, Burning Man blog.
Do You Know How Many Hungry Squirrels You Can Buy For $700 Million?
If you’ve been reading the funny pages, you’ve probably seen that Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine developer Ioneer was conditionally awarded a loan of $700 million from the Department of Energy, in order to shore up domestic battery supply chains. I’m not going to go into too much detail about all of this here, in an effort to have a newsletter for once that isn’t focused on everyone’s favorite little wildflower, and because it’s been thoroughly covered in the news media.
I will say this: Ioneer needs to redesign their mine. Their current proposal has the buckwheats “avoided” by the mine on a tiny strip of land in the middle of an open-pit and waste rock dump. The pit would come within 12 feet of the buckwheats. 12 feet! This, after the US Fish and Wildlife Service protected 910 acres of critical habitat for the buckwheats, giving them a 500 meter buffer of protected habitat surrounding the plants. 500 meters is a lot further than 12 feet. There is no doubt that Ioneer will have to substantially overhaul the design of their mine.
Since we are in the middle of scoping for Rhyolite Ridge, it raises some interesting NEPA questions about process. The mine plan BLM issued for the scoping period is one that, we already know, will have to be substantially revised before the Draft EIS is issued. If BLM were to conduct this scoping period in good faith, they would put a halt to it while Ioneer goes back to the drawing boards and comes up with a mine plan that will more closely resemble that which they ultimately will put forward for evaluation in an EIS. But that’s not what’s happening.
So DOE hands Ioneer a conditional check for $700 million, the conditions being full environmental approvals. But the mine plan DOE based that decision on runs afoul of the Endangered Species Act. But DOE says, no worries, just get that signed Record of Decision and we’re golden! The whole thing seems pretty cart-before-the-horse. …
Read more: Associated Press, Nevada Current, Reuters.
The Best Documented Collapse Ever
Reuters has published a couple of richly illustrated pieces on the global extinction crisis, focusing on insects and plants. “The Collapse of Insects,” published in December, is haunting, and has some pretty remarkable charts showing just how little we still know about the diversity of insect life on earth. The most sobering quote: “[Insects are] the fabric tethering together every freshwater and terrestrial ecosystem across the planet.” And they’re disappearing rapidly. The plant article, “Why Plants Matter,” doesn’t quite get as high of an endorsement from me because it is really focused on the human uses of plants and why they are important to our economy and well-being. Which is all well and good but I’m sort of an old school environmentalist inasmuch as I think we should be protecting plants because of their intrinsic value and because we have a moral charge as the planet’s dominant mammals of not causing u ndue damage to the biotic world. But yeah, plants are important for food and medicine too.
Read more: The Collapse of Insects & Why Plants Matter.
Go East, Young Bear
Nevada has a handful of bears that primarily live in the Lake Tahoe area. Sort of “spillover bears” from California, if you will, though they have inhabited the Carson Range and the mountains and rivers east of Lake Tahoe since time immemorial. It’s not their fault we decided to put a bunch of sprawl and rich folks’ homes up there. And conflict happens, primarily because tourists and some residents do not dispose of their trash properly in bear proof containers. Which results in bears becoming habituated, and then getting trapped, relocated, or killed by the Nevada Department of Wildlife. The relationship between the community of Nevada bear lovers around Lake Tahoe and NDOW has been fraught, to say the least. It’s highly unusual for state biologists to sue members of the general public, but it happened here in 2017. Much to the detriment of the bear biologist, eventually. There was also a restraining order issued to a different party. It’s pretty much a worst case scenario for interactions between a state agency and the public it serves.
Amy Alonzo has an interesting and compelling article about the bear biologists who actually do the killing, when necessary. The tough reality is that many people with biology degrees have to kill animals as a part of their jobs. You can make a whole career shooting invasive rabbits on islands around the world. Not to denigrate our rabbit friends, but bears are different than rabbits. I’m sure some will critique Ms. Alonzo for humanizing people who are doing something that is immoral.
Inasmuch as the killing is unnecessary, it’s immoral. Nevada is killing these poor bears only because of limitations in our imagination of how to deal with animals society has determined to be a problem. Indeed, it’s a problem when wild carnivores are getting into scraps with humans. Humans need to deal with their trash! And for the few bears who truly become habituated, who truly present a risk to public safety, can’t we just put them somewhere else? Nevada’s small corner of the Sierra Nevada is not big enough to move around problem bears, but by god there’s a whole state out there.
It’s unclear how much bears have or would utilize the mountain ranges of the Great Basin. Black bears are of their nature a montane and forest dwelling species. But heck, the Great Basin has mountains and forests! There was fascinating research put out in 2017 showing bears expanding from the Sierra Nevada eastward, populating Mt. Grant near Walker Lake and the Virginia Mountains above Pyramid Lake. This article from Ben Spillman in the RGJ quotes the authors as saying that they’ve been tracked wandering “as far as Tonopah and Austin,” which says the Toiyabes to me. A place rich with mountains and forests.
So that should be the plan. It’s a relatively small number of problem bears. Just stick those naughty ol’ bruins in the Toiyabes; in the Monitor Range; in the Schell Creeks; or for damn sure out in the Jarbidge. Plenty of space for misbehaving ursids out in the wild yonder of the least populated places in Nevada. Oh sure, a rancher or two will bellyache about a few of their invasive bovines getting eaten. But we’ve artificially inflated the population of elk in many of these places already as it is, and black bears eat lots of berries and roots anyway. Surely ol’ brother Ephraim and his puckish ways, too crude for the high society confines of eastern Lake Tahoe, won’t pose too great a burden on the wildlife and people of central and eastern Nevada.
Anyway, read the Amy Alonzo article. It’s moving, no matter how you feel about bears.
This Is Great! But…
In late December, President Biden signed the Saline Lakes Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act, a bill to fund a monitoring program at USGS for saline lakes in the Great Basin. Saline lakes are a defining characteristic of the Great Basin desert – from Malheur Lake and Alvord Lake in southeast Oregon to Pyramid Lake and Walker Lake in western Nevada to Ruby Lake in eastern Nevada and Sevier Lake and the big grandaddy of the saline lakes the Great Salt Lake in Utah. And many more. The saline lakes, nearly all the terminae of great rivers, provide rich habitat for migratory and resident birds. They provide food in the form of invertebrates for those birds and, pre-colonization, for humans. They also in effect suppress dust by keeping playas inundated, an important function for air quality and human health.
And they are dying – drying out because of water diversions and climate change, from one end of the Great Basin to the other. It’s great that Congress has funded a program to monitor the severe decline and degradation of these lakes, but monitoring is not mitigation. Monitoring won’t put water back in these lakes, as Carolyn Tracey quotes some activists saying in this High Country News article. Only money will. The Desert Terminal Lakes Act of 2002 and subsequent allocations put serious money on the table to protect terminal lakes in Nevada, mostly Walker Lake. The restoration of Walker Lake is still a work in progress, but significant amounts of water have already been acquired and left in the lake. It’s an example of what we need. A monitoring program will be great, but we also need another huge allocation of funds to protect terminal lakes. Short of that, we may simply have well-documented ecosystem collapses at these irreplaceable, defining features of the Great Basin.
Read more in High Country News.
Our Loss, Their Gain
David Smith, the well-liked Superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, is leaving our desert for mistier confines in the Bay Area. David oversaw the most popular park in the Mojave Desert during a period of rapid growth and expansion in outdoor tourism, and his efforts to manage what was basically an unmanageable level of visitation were admirable. He also was once publicly shot down by the Zinke administration for tweeting about climate change from the JTNP Twitter account, making him a folk hero to the resistance. Golden Gate National Recreation Area will be lucky to have him, and we’ll miss his perpetual good cheer here in the desert.
Read more in Bay Area Reporter.
Stay Off The Beetles
You hear a lot from me about endemic plants, endemic amphibians, endemic butterflies, even endemic snails! But I’ve never really worked on the Great Basin’s plethora of endemic beetles. There are several right up the river from where I live at Big Dune in Amargosa Valley. In 2010, WildEarth Guardians petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service [PDF] to protect Giuliani’s dune scarab beetle (Pseudocotalpa giulianii) and the large aegialian scarab beetle (Aegialia magnifica) under the Endangered Species Act, citing primarily impacts from off-highway vehicles (OHVs). Big Dune is an OHV open area, where people can ride wherever they like. These two beetles co-occur at a place called Lava Dune, a tiny sand dune formation north of Big Dune by a few miles, which is hemmed in by a mining operation and is really a very small habitat. The petition was denied in 2012, with the Service basically saying BLM had committed to doing various actions to conserve the beetles in its RMP and so they were sufficiently protected. Since the petitions were done without substantial field work accompanying them, I’m not sure anyone has ever critically examined BLM’s actions to see if they’re actually following through on what they said they’d do. If I had unlimited time, perhaps I’d so such a thing. It’s on my list…
In the meantime, BLM is doing more than nothing for these beetles, or at least for the Giuliani’s dune scarab beetle. They issued a press release recently telling the public they had put up some fence and will put up more fence to protect the areas most densely populated with beetles, and urging OHV’ers to stay off these areas. Based on the map linked in the press release, it looks like they’re only protecting a very tiny piece of habitat. If that’s where most of the beetles are, I’d say this beetle is in big trouble.
Quickly…
Bruce Babbitt wrote an op-ed in The Nevada Independent arguing that cuts to agricultural water deliveries from the Colorado River need to be on the table in any reasonable response to the drought. He calls on Interior to “break the deadlock” between state water regulators and intransigent irrigators, practically begging Secretary Haaland to stand up and make the hard choices he implies he might have made were he still Secretary. Tough words, but… is he wrong?
This is a heart warming obituary in the Review-Journal for Dirt, a beloved cat at the Northern Nevada Railway in Ely. The Northern Nevada Railway is really a treasure of rural Nevada. Only used for tourist purposes these days, it’s a tangible connection to the Great Basin’s recent past.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Society for the Conservation of Bighorn Sheep, and others are concerned about the fate of California’s desert bighorn sheep, who cling to the most precarious of existences in a land of little water. So they’re pushing to build dozens of new water developments called guzzlers, to provide some relief for bighorn and other wildlife. Because NEPA is just a big pain in the keister, they’re doing it on state land, which the State Lands Commission recently approved. Godspeed, bighorn sheep lovers. I don’t love guzzlers in wilderness, but I sure do love bighorn sheep.
Activist, author, and biologist George Wuerthner has a cutting new piece evaluating Secretary Haaland’s tenure at Interior, and he finds it lacking in environmental credentials. From Izembek to wolves to oil leasing, Wuerthner takes umbrage with the past two years of federal lands policy under Haaland. Can’t say I agree with every word he says, but can’t say the facts he reports are wrong either.
Those pesky rapscallions at Lake Restoration Solutions, with their ludicrous plan to turn the beautiful Utah Lake into the shores of Dubai, are back at it again, suing the state of Utah for refusing to fork over its sovereign terrain to a private entity. These guys have some chutzpah. Dredging a beautiful mountain creek-fed lake to create McMansions built on piles of dredged sludge? It’s absurd. Incidentally, there’s a listed fish in Utah Lake which would be adversely affected by the project…
If the doctors saw cancer cells doing this inside of you, they’d put you on a chemo drip and blast you with a million curies of radiation. Instead, here, politicians go to ribbon cutting ceremonies while developers’ bank accounts balloon. Read more in the Las Vegas Review Journal: Warehouse developers flock to open desert outside Las Vegas; Water authority OKs long-awaited Apex water pipeline.
Take heart, friends, spring will return to these desert lands soon. Keep on down the long and dusty trail,
-Patrick