When Roy Richards saw workers felling and grinding Joshua trees for a massive solar energy project near his home in the Mojave Desert last week, he started taking pictures.
“Once the trees go through the crushers, they are gone,” he said, showing a reporter a picture of a small pile of brown dust left by the equipment.
The developer of the Aratina Solar Center has government approval to cut down the thousands of trees on the site. The solar farm won a controversial exemption from rules protecting Joshua trees four years ago, after closed-door meetings between industry executives and state wildlife officials.
On Saturday, residents of nearby Boron and Desert Lake, as well as other opponents of the project, will demonstrate to demand that the project be stopped.
In this Mojave Desert landscape were dozens of Joshua trees, which 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 scaled back in size.
Residents said hundreds of Joshua trees were destroyed over the past week, but that in some parts of the site the trees are still standing. Neither the company nor government agencies have said how many trees were cut down. Avantus, the developer, said fewer trees will be destroyed than the government has approved.
Heavy machinery has not yet begun to level the land where the trees were cut down to prepare it for the installation of solar panels.
Residents fear the earthmoving work will increase the threat of valley fever, a fungal respiratory infection spread through dust. A local group found the fungus that causes Valley fever in topsoil samples from the five plots surrounding the locations where the solar panels will be built.
“I don't want another city to go through this,” Richards said.
Avantus executives say the company is following development guidelines set by the state and Kern County as they build the 2,300-acre project, which is expected to produce 530 megawatts of renewable energy. They said they would keep dust under control 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 are experiencing right now, projects like Aratina will help stabilize the grid and keep the lights on.”
Boro, where the poverty rate is twice the state average, won't have access to that green energy. Instead, it will be shipped hundreds of miles away to wealthier communities on the Central Coast and Silicon Valley. according to the contracts previously signed by the company.
A Joshua tree believed to be between 150 and 200 years old grows in the desert near Boron.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The controversy over the Mojave Desert project is an example of the many sacrifices being made in California to achieve a rapid transition from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy. Solar and wind farms are expected to help mitigate climate change (which is one of several factors pushing Joshua trees toward extinction), but they are also destroying undeveloped land, harming threatened plants and wildlife, and causing concern in rural communities.
“We need sustainable energy solutions that do not come at the expense of irreplaceable natural treasures,” says a petition seeking to stop the project, which has been signed by more than 51,000 people.
Joshua trees create 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 standards set by state wildlife officials are met. Workers have been trained to notify a supervisor when they see wildlife.
The site is habitat for desert tortoises and Mojave ground squirrels, both listed as threatened under the state's Endangered Species Act.
Avantus said they have so far found one Mohave ground squirrel and no tortoises.
In total, 44 animal species have been found at the project site. One of them is the desert fox, a cat-sized canid with long, delicate ears and fur on the soles of its paws to protect them from the hot sand of the Mojave Desert.
In a 2020 survey of the site, 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 development projects, such as solar projects, are often poorly sited and destroy important habitat for kit foxes.” the center says.
Kit foxes are among the many species of wildlife that inhabit the area where a huge solar farm is being built near Boron.
(Roy Richards)
Kern County documents state that Avantus must “passively relocate” fox pups by blocking their dens with dirt, branches and debris. The dens are then destroyed to prevent fox pups from using them again while the panels are erected, according to the documents.
Avantus explained in a statement to The Times that the tactics encouraged domestic foxes to move away from the construction site only “temporarily.” The company said the perimeter fence has an opening at the bottom so that wildlife can return after construction.
“Solar panels can provide shade and protection from predators, and we have found that foxes and other wildlife sometimes migrate back to an area once construction is complete,” the company said.
Fence posts were recently installed around the Aratina Solar Center.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The Aratina project was one of 15 solar projects that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Fish and Game Commission voted to exempt from rules protecting Joshua trees in September 2020 through a controversial “emergency” regulation. At the time, solar executives argued that all 15 projects had already gone through extensive environmental reviews and were so close to construction that they were “shovel-ready.”
Executives representing the 15 projects repeatedly told the state they were ready to build and that it would be unfair to force them to follow the new restrictions planned for Joshua Tree.
In fact, executives working on Aratina had just begun the project review process at the Kern County planning board, according to the documents. Construction did not begin until this summer, nearly four years after the county Board of Supervisors voted to approve the project.
“It’s clear they weren’t prepared to start working,” said Casey Kiernan, a photographer who lives in the town of Joshua Tree. Kiernan created the petition to stop construction.
A group of Joshua trees forms 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 children attend schools in Boron, said it was “hard to even watch” as crews began cutting down trees.
She was part of a team that found the fungus that causes valley fever in soil samples taken across the site.
Richardson said he has been working on signs for Saturday's rally, including one that reads: “Why is solar energy more important than health?”
“Nobody wants this to happen,” he said.
