Lawsuit alleges solar projects would harm sacred Native American sites

Native American group and its allies sue to stop six solar facilities from being built in the Southern California desert, arguing that they would affect treasured geoglyphs, burial sites and relics.

By Phil Willon and Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times

February 24, 2011

Reporting from Blythe, Calif.

Stepping gingerly across a small mesa of manganese-stained stones, Alfredo Acosta Figueroa explained how the giant image of the creator etched into the earth guides the souls of mothers and children west toward Old Woman Mountain.

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.

"This is just a boondoggle .... This isn't about solving an environmental problem or an economic problem. It's corporate welfare," Briggs said.

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.

Environmentalists fret over the projects' potential effects on native species such as the desert tortoise and the flat-tailed horned lizard. But allegations that the solar projects will result in lasting cultural damage are relatively new.

Another local tribe, the Quechan, had headed to federal court seeking a permanent injunction against a proposed Imperial County solar installation that the tribe says will destroy sacred sites.

Officials with the Bureau of Land Management declined to comment about the La Cuna lawsuit.

According to permit records for the renewable energy sites, however, the federal agency consulted with the California Native American Heritage Commission, which identifies and catalogs places of religious or cultural significance to Native Americans, and sent out letters to tribes throughout the affected areas seeking comment.

In the permits for the solar projects, officials with the energy commission confirm that archaeological research has shown that Native American religious and cultural sites, many undiscovered, can be found throughout California's vast deserts, which have been home to native tribes going back 10,000 years.

Officials with Solar Millennium, developer of the solar thermal project near Blythe, said the design of the project was altered several times "to reduce potential impacts to natural and cultural resources," according to a company statement.

"We continue to be sensitive and responsive to the cultural and environmental concerns of Native Americans, local communities and organizations across our areas of operation," the company stated.

However, Briggs said those "consultations" amounted to little more than sending out notices and holding public hearings, allowing tribal members to comment.

Figueroa, donning a straw fedora and bolo tie, swept his hand over the proposed site for the Solar Millennium project, which will be within a stone's throw of the geoglyphs he holds so dear.

The project was "gerrymandered" around the geoglyphs, "circumventing them but altering the spiritual character of the landscape," he said.

Bureau officials have raised doubts about the age of some of the geoglyphs. One large image, representing Kokopelli — a hunchbacked fertility deity with a flute — is being contested. Figueroa says it's more than 10,000 years old, while the bureau says it's only 20 years old.

"We're not making up stories," Figueroa said. "We've lived here for thousands of years. We know what's transpired."

In January, on a freeway overpass about 40 miles west of Blythe, Aztec dancers joined a protest against the solar companies descending on the desert. There were a few dozen people, some playing guitar from truck beds.

"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."

Huge solar flare jams radio, satellite signals: NASA

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A powerful solar eruption that has already disturbed radio communications in China could disrupt electrical power grids and satellites used on Earth in the next days, NASA said.

The massive sunspot, which astronomers say is the size of Jupiter, is the strongest solar flare in four years, NASA said Wednesday.

[Related: Solar flare to create light show on Earth?]

The Class X flash -- the largest such category -- erupted at 0156 GMT Tuesday, according to the US space agency.

"X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms," disturbing telecommunications and electric grids, NASA said.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory saw a large coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with the flash that is blasting toward Earth at about 560 miles per second (900 kilometers per second), it said.

[Related: Planet Tyche: New member of solar system?]

The charged plasma particles were expected to reach the planet's orbit at 0300 GMT Thursday.

The flare spread from Active Region 1158 in the sun's southern hemisphere, which had so far lagged behind the northern hemisphere in flash activity. It followed several smaller flares in recent days.

"The calm before the storm," read a statement on the US National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Service.

"Three CMEs are enroute, all a part of the Radio Blackout events on February 13, 14, and 15 (UTC). The last of the three seems to be the fastest and may catch both of the forerunners about mid to late ... February 17."

Geomagnetic storms usually last 24 to 48 hours, "but some may last for many days," read a separate NWS statement.

"Ground to air, ship to shore, shortwave broadcast and amateur radio are vulnerable to disruption during geomagnetic storms. Navigation systems like GPS can also be adversely affected."

The China Meteorological Administration reported that the solar flare had jammed shortwave radio communications in southern China.

It said the flare caused "sudden ionospheric disturbances" in the atmosphere above China, and warned there was a high probability that large solar flares would appear over the next three days, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In previous major disturbance of the Earth's electric grid from a solar incident, in 1973, a magnetic storm caused by a solar eruption plunged six million people into darkness in Canada's eastern-central Quebec province.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) said meanwhile that the solar storm would result in spectacular Northern Lights displays starting Thursday.

One coronal mass ejection (CME) arrived on February 14, "sparking Valentine's Day displays of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) further south than usual."

"Two CMEs are expected to arrive in the next 24-48 hours and further... displays are possible some time over the next two nights if skies are clear," it said.

The office published geomagnetic records dating back to the Victorian era which it hopes will help in planning for future storms.

"Life increasingly depends on technologies that didn't exist when the magnetic recordings began," said Alan Thomson, BGS head of geomagnetism.

"Studying the records will tell us what we have to plan and prepare for to make sure systems can resist solar storms," he said.

Ecuadorean Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion

February 14, 2011 | Simon Romero and Clifford Krauss | Source: The New York Times

Caracas, Venezuela – A judge in a tiny courtroom in the Ecuadorean Amazon ruled Monday that the oil giant Chevron was responsible for polluting remote tracts of Ecuadorean jungle and ordered the company to pay more than $9 billion in damages, one of the largest environmental awards ever.

The decision by Judge Nicolás Zambrano in Lago Agrio, a town founded as an oil camp in the 1960s, immediately opened a contentious new stage of appeals in a legal battle that has dragged on in courts in Ecuador and the United States for 17 years, pitting forest tribes and villagers against one of the largest American corporations.

The award against Chevron "is one of the largest judgments ever imposed for environmental contamination in any court," said David M. Uhlmann, an expert in environmental law at the University of Michigan. "It falls well short of the $20 billion that BP has agreed to pay to compensate victims of the gulf oil spill but is a landmark decision nonetheless. Whether any portion of the claims will be paid by Chevron is less clear."

Both sides said they would appeal the ruling, setting the stage for months and potentially years more of legal wrangling in the closely watched case, which has already been marked by claims of industrial espionage and fraud, and remarkably bitter disputes among the various lawyers involved. Legal experts said that the size of the award and the attention the case has focused on environmental degradation were likely to encourage similar suits.

The 188-page ruling found Chevron responsible for damages of about $8.6 billion, and perhaps double that amount if Chevron fails to publicly apologize for its actions within 15 days. The judge also ordered Chevron to pay $860 million, or 10 percent of the damages, to the Amazon Defense Coalition, the group formed to represent the plaintiffs.

Pablo Fajardo, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the ruling a "triumph of justice," but said it still fell short. "We're going to appeal because we think that the damages awarded are not enough," he said in a telephone interview. The plaintiffs were seeking as much as $113 billion, according to a report recently submitted to the court.
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A Chevron spokesman, Kent Robertson, called the decision "illegitimate and unenforceable." He said Chevron would appeal through the Ecuadorean legal system, and would not pay the damages.

"This is the product of fraud," he said. "It had always been the plan to inflate the damages claim and coordinate with corrupt judges for a smaller judgment."

He suggested that the timing of the ruling, a week after Chevron filed a lawsuit against the plaintiffs' lawyers, was not coincidental. He said it was coordinated between the plaintiffs and the court, which had previously accepted an expert environmental opinion that Chevron contended was partly ghost-written by representatives of the plaintiffs, who include villagers and Indian tribes in northeastern Ecuador.

The plaintiffs have denied any collaboration with the judge.

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, reported a net profit of $19 billion last year. In addition to its appeal in Ecuador, the company hopes to block enforcement of the judgment in American courts.

"It might as well be Monopoly money, given all the respect that Chevron will show it," said Ralph G. Steinhardt, professor of law and international affairs at George Washington University Law School. "There is a legal regime for enforcing foreign judgments but there is a lot of discretion for U.S. judges to suspend the enforcement of foreign judgments."

The decision was the latest installment in a legal soap opera in which Chevron and lawyers for Ecuadorean peasants have sued and countersued over oil pollution in Ecuador's rain forest.

The origins of the case go back to the 1970s, when Texaco, which was later acquired by Chevron, operated as a partner with the Ecuadorean state oil company. The villagers sued in 1993, claiming that Texaco had left an environmental mess that was causing illnesses. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001, before the case was resolved.

Chevron has been playing hardball for at least the last two years. It produced video recordings from watches and pens wired with bugging devices that suggested a bribery scheme surrounded the proceedings and involved a judge hearing the case. The judge was forced to resign, although it was later revealed that an American behind the secret recordings was a convicted drug trafficker.

Chevron appeared to gain the upper hand again when it won a legal bid to secure the outtakes from a documentary about the case, "Crude," in which Steven Donziger, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, is seen developing strategy and discussing the judicial system and how it operates. Mr. Donziger appeared boastful about meetings with judges and other Ecuadorean officials. Four federal judges ruled that there was evidence that fraud may have been committed.

Last week, Chevron filed a suit against dozens of people involved in the case, charging that they conspired to extort the company for $113 billion by making up evidence and trying to manipulate the Ecuadorean legal system. At the company's request, an American judge issued a temporary restraining order to block any judgment for at least four weeks. A day later, international arbiters ordered Ecuador to suspend the enforcement of any judgment.

Almost lost in the various disputes related to the lawsuit is the fact that Chevron and plaintiffs have agreed that oil exploration contaminated what had been largely undeveloped swaths of Ecuadorean rainforest. The plaintiffs claim that Chevron must be held responsible for damage where Texaco once operated. Chevron, however, argues that Texaco carried out a cleanup agreement with the Ecuadorean government and that much of the damage was done after Texaco left in the early 1990s, actions for which it should not be held responsible.

"The judge recognized the crime committed," said Guillermo Grefa, head of a Quichua Indian community who claims that Texaco's oil contamination created respiratory problems among his people. "For us, this is very little. For us, the crime committed by Texaco is incalculable."