PO Box 63 Shoshone, CA 92384 760.852.4339 www.amargosaconservancy.org February 23, 2015 California Energy Commission California Energy Commission Dockets Office, MS-4 Docket No. 09-RENEW EO-01 DOCKETED 1516 Ninth Street 09-RENEW EO-1 Sacramento, CA 95814-5512 TN 75171 [email protected] FEB 23 2015 Re: The DRECP and the Amargosa Watershed On behalf of the members and Board of Directors of the Amargosa Conservancy, please accept our comments herein on the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan. Please refer to our second comment letter, dated February 23, 2015, for our comments on National Conservation Lands and Special Recreation Management Areas. Please also refer to the letter from Kevin Emmerich and Laura Cunningham, dated January 30, 2015, which the Amargosa Conservancy is signatory to. This letter details the need for a new program alternative in the DRECP which properly evaluates rooftop solar. To sum the key points of this letter: No groundwater pumping should be permissible in the Amargosa Watershed, including Charleston View, Silurian Valley, and Stewart Valley. Such activities would cause direct mortality of endangered species such as the Amargosa vole. USFWS take permits should be required for any groundwater pumping, and such permits should not be issued given the precarious conservation status of the vole. No mitigation can adequately compensate the ecosystem for the damage done by groundwater withdrawal. Retirement of water rights is not sufficient, and monitoring and triggering schemes are completely inadequate to protect the resources of the Amargosa Wild and Scenic River. Due to numerous biological, cultural, and social resource conflicts, Charleston View is not an appropriate place for utility-scale solar, should not be designated as a Development Focus Area (DFA). We defer to the National Park Conservation Association’s comments for Silurian Valley. Silurian Valley is not an appropriate place for utility-scale solar. The Special Assessment Area should be eliminated, and all Public Lands in Silurian Valley should be designated as National Conservation Lands. The DRECP variance lands in Stewart Valley should be eliminated, and the land should be designated National Conservation Lands. Dedicated to the future of the Amargosa Watershed PO Box 63 Shoshone, CA 92384 760.852.4339 www.amargosaconservancy.org Groundwater Pumping and Endangered Species in the Amargosa Watershed The Amargosa Watershed and Groundwater The Amargosa Watershed is one of the most unique hydrological systems in the world. From its beginnings in the Oasis Valley north of Beatty to its ultimate evaporation on the salt flats of Badwater Basin, the Amargosa River’s water provides the vital resource which sustains life throughout the Watershed. But the Watershed must be defined more broadly than simply the surface runoff patterns. Complex subterranean carbonate and alluvial fill aquifers transmit water from self-contained basins to the north and east of the Amargosa River’s surface watershed into the basin itself, emerging at the many springs which constitute the Amargosa’s surface flow. The interconnectedness of this system is only now being fully understood. The State of the Basin Report- 2014 (SBR), a report written by Andy Zdon & Associates, Inc. with support from the Amargosa Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), adds significantly to our knowledge the system. The SBR itself, included with this comment as Attachment A, is vital for planners to read and be familiar with. It outlines an extremely complicated hydrological system which relies on subsurface groundwater flows from a variety of sources. Perhaps most pertinent to our current discussion, the SBR makes clear that a substantial portion of the water in the Amargosa system comes from the Pahrump Valley aquifer. This water flows through carbonate bedrock and alluvial fill aquifers, moving along multiple flowpaths into the springs of the Amargosa River. One flow path goes beneath the Nopah Range, entering into the Amargosa surface watershed in Chicago Valley, and flowing thence both downward to Resting Spring and Tecopa Marsh and underneath the Resting Spring Range to Shoshone. Another flow path runs under and around the southern Nopah Range, flowing through the Charleston View area and California Valley, collecting water from the Kingston Range and emerging to the surface at Willow Spring. Yet another flowpath moves to the north, emerging at Ash Meadows and Carson Slough. The interconnectedness of this system is beyond dispute, based on the latest trace mineral and isotopic analysis included in the SBR. Additionally, there is a secondary flowpath which enters the Amargosa River from Salt Creek. Salt Creek is the hydrologic system which drains Silurian Valley. While it does not contribute a large proportion of the overall water budget of the Amargosa, the abundance of water apparent at Salt Springs just above the confluence with the Amargosa River indicates that there is a substantial volume of groundwater flowing through Silurian Valley and into the Amargosa. Dedicated to the future of the Amargosa Watershed PO Box 63 Shoshone, CA 92384 760.852.4339 www.amargosaconservancy.org Figure 1: The complex flowpaths of the Middle Amargosa Basin. Zdon, 2014. This information needs to be specifically considered when evaluating the proposed DFA in Charleston View, the Special Analysis Area in Silurian Valley, and DRECP variance lands in Stewart Valley. Any groundwater withdrawals for utility-scale solar within the Pahrump Valley or Silurian Valley aquifers, which are an integral part of our unique watershed, could have detrimental effects on groundwater flows within the Amargosa River system itself. Given the complex and somewhat paradoxical nature of the system, the exact effects of such withdrawals cannot be accurately predicted. But down-flowpath effects are a certainty. Take Permits for the Amargosa Vole and Other Species The Amargosa vole (Microtus californicus scirpensis) is considered potentially the most endangered mammal in North America, and was listed federally in 1984. Its sole remaining habitat is the bulrush marshes of Tecopa Hot Springs, where the Amargosa bubbles to the surface Dedicated to the future of the Amargosa Watershed PO Box 63 Shoshone, CA 92384 760.852.4339 www.amargosaconservancy.org at a series of watering holes. Voles rely on bulrush to make their nests, take cover from predators, and as their primary food source. Groundwater pumping in the Pahrump Valley has decreased the amount of water emerging from these springs, thereby lowering the water level in the marsh. This has, in turn, dried out portions of the marsh, eliminating bulrush and decreasing the connectivity between vole habitat patches. This increased fragmentation has only been exacerbated by the limited development present in Tecopa, and decreasing precipitation in the desert as a whole. As a result, the vole sits precariously on the brink of extinction. There are fewer than 200 individuals left in the wild, all within a few square miles of Tecopa Marsh. A single cataclysmic event, such as a lowering of water levels secondary to groundwater pumping, could wipe out the species. This was evidenced in recent history, when a small alteration to the drainage system across the Tecopa Road caused a drop in water levels, which dried up much of the bulrush and precipitated a population crash. By late 2013, there were fewer than 36 individuals left. That a slight adjustment in the drainage system which caused the water level to rise by several inches has begun to reverse this damage is further evidence as to just how sensitive of a balance exists between water output from the springs, bulrush, and the vole. 1 Thus it is incumbent upon the REAT to examine the potential effects of groundwater pumping of any kind in the Charleston View DFA, Stewart Valley, or Silurian Valley on the Amargosa River and the species which depend on its water. Due to the critically endangered nature of the Amargosa vole, solar development in these areas should require take permits from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Such permits should not be issued by FWS, because the vole exists in too precarious a position to allow even one take. The Amargosa vole is not the only endangered, threatened, or otherwise special status species which relies on consistent groundwater flows in the Amargosa Watershed. Two halophytic plants, the federally endangered Amargosa niterwort (Nitrophila mohavensis) and the federally threatened Ash Meadows gumplant (Grendelia fraxino-pratensis), exist in California only in the Carson Slough area east of Death Valley Junction. These species have extremely limited distributions, living only on seasonally inundated alkali flat habitat with specific soil densities and characteristics.2 Any alteration to the flow regime and groundwater level in Carson Slough has the potential to wipe out these species completely. This is especially of concern with regard to variance lands in Stewart Valley. No groundwater pumping of any kind should be permitted 1 Klinger, Cleaver, Anderson, Maier, & Clark. 2015. “Implications of scale-independent habitat specialization on persistence of a rare small mammal.” Global Ecology and Conservation 3, 100-114. 2 San Diego State University Soil Ecology and Research Group, 2004. Demographics and Ecology of the Amargosa Niterwort (Nitrophila mohavensis) and Ash Meadows Gumplant (Grendelia fraxino- pratensis) of the Carson Slough Area. http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/SERG/restorationproj/mojave%20desert/deathvalleyfinal.htm