Environmental Justice
^Spirit Run hosted by Colorado River Tribes, Fort Mohave Paiute and Chemehuevi opposing utility-scale solar projects on public lands near Blythe, CA.
August 13, 2022 - Recently Basin and Range Watch has been accused of ignoring Environmental Justice, so we want to set the record straight and highlight our concern for these significant issues. Basin and Range Watch has worked for over a decade to listen to Indigenous voices, protect cultural landscapes, and help low income desert communities to have a voice and participate in the environmental review process for large-scale energy development on public lands surrounding them.
Here are some links with a focus on protecting local and low income communities, communities with people of color, and Tribes, that Basin and Range Watch has participated in over the years, and helped organize and fund (such as renting porta-potties for Indigenous-led Spirit Runs on public lands).
Blythe, CA, protests and Indigenous Spirit Runs to protect the deserts and cultural resources.
Cultural values and sacred sites threaetned by the Palen Solar Project.
Palen Solar Project letter by La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle.
^We tried to save the Kokopilli Geoglyph, but now it is surrounded by a giant utility-scale solar project.
^Cuauhtemoc Dancers at protest opposing the Palen Solar Project energy sprawl project in Chuckwalla Valley, Riverside County, CA. Unfortunately local communities and Indigenous tribes were ignored and the project was built here. Many desert communities are actually agricultural communities and have large Latino populations.
^Basin and Range Watch helped support this Spirit Run to protect the land and cultural landscapes.
^Ancient trail leading between Clark Mountain and a small hill with a stone archaeological feature. We pointed this out to the agencies during the environmental review process for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, but to no avail. This scene has since been destroyed for solar mirror fields.
^Alfredo Figueroa of La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Circle points in the southeastern direction, and Chemehuevi elder Phil Smith examines the archaeological feature on the little hill in Ivanpah Valley, CA. Smith thought it was a shrine to place offerings before heading on the ancient trail to Clark Mountain to hunt deer. But this was ignored by agencies and the hill is now surrounded by industrial solar projects. Smith's father was born in a small Indigenous village in Ivanpah Valley, CA, but his comments were not taken into consideration during the federal enevironmental review process. Ivanpah means "white clay water" in Paiute.
^Young people during the Indigenous-lead Spirit Run in Ivanpah Valley, CA. The background is now developed with large utility-scale solar projects.
^Phil Smith, Chemehuevi, waves a Native America flag at a massive utility-scale solar project desert tortoise exclusion fence is constructed on public lands on Palo Verde Mesa near Blythe, CA.
Cultural Landscapes
In 2013 during the California Energy Commission evidentiary hearing for the proposed Hidden Hills solar power tower project east of Tecopa, California, we learned about the sacred song trails that still exist
Richard Arnold (Southern Paiute), the first Indigenous intervenor in a large-scale solar project reviewed by the CEC, spoke at length on the importance of the Salt Song Trail. This sacred landscape crosses extensive networks of desert and mountain across California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona.
The Salt Songs are the sacred songs of the Nuwuvi and are used at memorial and other ceremonies, for cultural revitalization and as a spiritual bond for the Southern Paiute people living in the Southwest. The songs describe a physical and spiritual landscape of the Colorado Plateau, painted deserts and river valleys, and the Salt Song Trail traces the journeys of ancestral peoples to historic, spiritual and sacred sites. Tribal members gather to sing hundreds of songs through the night at funerals. Formerly the songs lasted four days and four nights, and each song is specific to a certain place: Mt. Charleston -- the center of creation, Pahrump Valley, California Valley, Emigrant Pass, the Providence Mountains, etc.
The large-scale solar project threatened this trail. The project was later withdrawn, but new solar project applications continue to be proposed in the cultural landscape of the Salt Song Trail, such as the Golden Currant Solar Project in adjacent Nevada.
Other cultural landscapes and cultural trails have been identified for areas in the Colorado and Mojave Deserts by Indigenous experts, and we will further explore the work Basin & Range Watch has done to help protect these areas areas.
^Wash filled with microphyll woodland in the Colorado Desert near the Colorado River. This area was threatened with the Rio Mesa solar power tower project (since withdrawn), and later the Crimson Solar Project was approved and is now under construction near here. A sacred cultural trail used by Colorado River Tribes passes through here, and next to the Mule Mountains. We will detail how Basin & Range Watch commented on this over the years to support tribal cultural resources.
Biden Signs Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Into Law
^Satellite view of mines and coal power plants in Xinjiang province, China.
July 2, 2022 - Washington DC - In some kind of dystopian nightmare out of a science fiction story, on the other side of the planet away from our North American bubble, 1 million Uyghur ethnic group people are slaving away to mine sand and refine it into polysilicon wafers in high-energy-use factories for the global photovoltaic solar panel industry--half of all polysilicon comes from this Gobi Desert forced labor factory region in eastern China, powered by coal plants spewing out tons of CO2 emissions without regulation. Bloomberg reporters were denied access in 2021, see link below.
While environmental groups proclaim they are fighting for social justice, and the renewable enrgy industry claims solar is cheaper than ever, problems arise as other parts of the world are discovered to use totalitarian methods to reap profits while exploiting ethnic groups using forced labor and genocide. This is not "green" energy, and must be stopped.
This investigative journalism also reveals the high energy cost needed to manufacture high-grade polysilicon for solar panels--fossil fuel is burned without regulation to supply energy to these factories.
Basin and Range Watch supports rooftop solar and solar panels on parking lot canopies, on disturbed lands, and not on ecosystems. We absolutely do not support solar panel manufacture by forced labor and genocide of the Uyghur people. We hope other avenues of solar supply chains can pay workers a fair living wage.
Good news on stopping the US import of solar panels from China with polysilicon produced by Uyghur slave-labor, as Congress agrees and President Biden signs the bipartisan bill into law preventing the import of solar panels from certain Chinese companies that use polysilicon components from these forced labor factories in Xinjiang province:
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Goes into Effect | Center for Strategic and International Studies - June 27, 2022
https://www.csis.org/analysis/uyghur-forced-labor-prevention-act-goes-effect
If other countries don't also halt import of these solar supplies, then the US solar companies should be fine in their supply chains. But if other countries start cracking down on importing slave-made solar compments, then we beleive there could be a shortage of solar panels in the US.
In Broad Daylight Uyghur Forced Labour in the Solar Supply Chain | Sheffield Hallam University
Study the Bloomberg 2021 article with detailed background on this horrible slave labor problem, with quote from Dr. Dustin Mulvaney, a Basin and Range Watch advisor:
Bloomberg: China’s Xinjiang Solar Factories Haunted by Labor Abuse Claims
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-xinjiang-solar/
