When Roy Richards saw workers cutting down and destroying Joshua trees for a massive solar energy project near his Mojave Desert home last week, he started taking pictures.
“Once the trees go through the shredder, they’re gone,” he said, showing a reporter an image of a small pile of gray dust left behind by workers.
The developer of the Aratina Solar Centre has received state approval to fell all of the thousands of trees on the site. The solar energy farm was granted a controversial exemption from rules protecting Joshua trees four years ago after closed-door meetings between industry officials and state wildlife officials.
On Saturday, residents from nearby Boron and Desert Lake, as well as other opponents of the project, demonstrated. Will hold a rally demanding to stop the project,
This patch of land in the Mojave Desert once had dozens of Joshua trees. They were recently cut down to make way for a large solar energy project.
(Roy Richards)
A 2020 survey counted 4,700 trees at the project site. However, the project has since been reduced in size.
Residents said hundreds of Joshua trees were destroyed last week, but trees are still standing in parts of the site. Neither the company nor government agencies have said how many trees have been cut down. Developer Avantus said fewer trees would be cut down than the government allows.
Work to level the land where trees were cut down in preparation for the solar panel installation has not yet begun with heavy equipment.
Residents fear the soil removal work will increase the risk of valley fever — a fungal respiratory infection that spreads through dust. A local group found The fungus that causes valley fever was found in topsoil samples from five areas around the cities where the solar panels would be built.
“I don’t want any other city to have to go through this,” Richards said.
Avantus officials say the company is following development rules set by the state and Kern County while building the 2,300-acre project, which plans to produce 530 megawatts of renewable energy. They said they will keep dust down by minimizing land grading.
“Aratina will produce clean, affordable and reliable energy for hundreds of thousands of Californians, contributing to California’s renewable energy goals,” the company said in a statement. “And as climate change forces Californians to endure more frequent and intense heat waves like the one we’re experiencing now, projects like Aratina will help stabilize the grid and keep the lights on.”
Boron, where the poverty rate is twice the state average, won’t get access to that green energy. It will instead be sent to wealthy communities on the Central Coast and Silicon Valley, hundreds of miles away, According to contracts It had already been signed by the company.
A Joshua Tree grows in the desert near Boron that is believed to be 150 to 200 years old.
(Myang J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The controversy over the Mojave Desert project is just one example of many compromises California is making to rapidly transition from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy. Solar and wind power sectors are expected to help mitigate climate change — one of many factors pushing Joshua trees toward extinction — but they are also destroying undeveloped land, harming threatened plants and wildlife and raising concerns in rural communities.
“We need sustainable energy solutions that don’t come at the expense of irreplaceable natural treasures,” states a petition attempting to stop the project. Petition More than 51,000 people have signed it.
Joshua trees provide habitat for other species, and Avantus has had to work to relocate the wildlife that lives there.
The company said biologists will be on site throughout construction to ensure rules set by state wildlife officials are followed. Workers have been trained to notify a supervisor whenever they see wildlife.
The site is home to desert tortoises and Mohave ground squirrels, which are listed as threatened species under the state’s Endangered Species Act.
Avantus said so far they have found one Mohave ground squirrel and no turtles.
A total of 44 animal species have been found at the project site. One of them is the desert kit fox, a cat-sized canine with long, delicate ears and fur on the soles of its feet to protect them from the hot Mojave sand.
In a survey conducted at the site in 2020, biologists found more than 150 dens used by desert kit foxes.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, kit fox dens are increasingly being destroyed by large-scale industrial energy development. “Even smart, climate-saving clean-energy developments such as solar projects are often built wrongly and end up destroying the kit fox’s critical habitat,” The centre says,
The kit fox is one of many species of wildlife that inhabit the area where a huge solar farm is being constructed near Boron.
(Roy Richards)
Kern County documents state that Aventus must “passively relocate” kit fox dens by sealing them with soil, logs and debris. Once the panels are erected, the dens are destroyed to prevent kit foxes from using them again, according to the documents.
Avantus explained in a statement to the Times that this strategy encouraged kit foxes to move away from the construction site only “temporarily.” The company said there is an opening at the bottom of the perimeter fence so that wildlife can return after construction.
“Solar panels can provide shade and protection from predators, and we’ve found that kit foxes and other wildlife sometimes move back into the area after construction is complete,” the company said.
A fence has recently been erected around the Aratina Solar Centre.
(Myang J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The Aratina project was one of 15 solar projects that Governor Gavin Newsom’s Fish and Game Commission voted to exempt from rules protecting Joshua trees using a controversial “emergency” regulation in September 2020. At the time, solar officials argued that the 15 projects had already undergone extensive environmental reviews and were so close to construction that they were “ready.”
Officials representing the 15 projects repeatedly told the state they were ready to build and that it would be unfair to force them to comply with the newly planned Joshua Tree restrictions.
In fact, officials working on Erratina had just begun the project’s review process at the Kern County Planning Board, according to the documents. Construction didn’t begin until this summer — nearly four years after the county Board of Supervisors voted to approve the project.
“They’re clearly not ready to shovel,” said Casey Kiernan, a photographer who lives in the town of Joshua Tree. Kiernan created a petition calling for a halt to construction.
A cluster of Joshua trees create a unique silhouette against the colors of the sunset at Joshua Tree National Park in April 2019.
(Mark Boster / For The Times)
Melanie Richardson, a nurse whose son attends schools in Boron, said it was “hard to even watch” when workers began cutting down trees.
She was part of the team that discovered the fungus that causes valley fever in soil samples taken from the site.
Richardson said she is working on signs for Saturday’s rally, including one that says, “Why solar energy is more important than health.”
“Nobody wants this to happen,” he said.
