Feinstein reintroduces bill to protect 1.6M acres in Calif.

Phil Taylor

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) yesterday introduced a bill to create two new national monuments, expand national parks, designate a quarter-million acres of wilderness, protect four waterways and improve recreation in Southern California.

Feinstein's "California Desert Protection Act of 2011" includes many proposals she pitched in the last Congress but is being introduced separate from provisions in last year's bill seeking to accelerate renewable energy development on private and disturbed public lands.

Those provisions will be released in a separate package through collaboration with other Western lawmakers, Feinstein said. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee prefers to consider energy bills separate from conservation proposals, she added.

"This bill is an effort to plan for the competing uses such as conservation, off-highway vehicle recreation, development and military training that are now being proposed for the desert," Feinstein said during a floor speech yesterday. "These uses of our public lands can coexist through comprehensive planning, but in the absence of such planning, it's quite possible that none will thrive."

The bill would create the Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow national monument protecting more than 1 million combined acres and would enlarge the Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks and the Mojave National Preserve.

The bill would also protect nearly 76 miles of four waterways, designate about 250,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness areas near Fort Irwin and make permanent four existing off-highway vehicle areas.

"I believe we've found the right balance between interests that were previously set against each other," Feinstein said.

The protections are needed, Feinstein said, because BLM had accepted applications to build commercial-scale solar and wind projects on lands that had been donated to the federal government or acquired with taxpayer funds specifically for conservation.

The Mojave Trails designation would cover roughly 941,000 acres and includes approximately 266,000 acres of the former Catellus-owned railroad lands along historic Route 66, she said.

Parts of the proposal met resistance last May during a Senate hearing in which Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the ranking member of the committee, criticized Feinstein's bill as a "not in my backyard" approach that has tied up solar projects nationwide (E&E Daily, May 21, 2010).

The previous desert protection bill also called for Renewable Energy Coordination Offices to streamline permitting on federal lands and sought to make some private lands available for solar development and expand the existing transmission infrastructure.

It also required the Forest Service and the Department of Defense to study which areas within their Mojave holdings would be suitable for solar development.

Feinstein yesterday lauded BLM's proposed designation of 24 solar energy zones covering 677,000 acres of public land in six Western states, where the agency has promised to streamline permitting while protecting other sensitive areas of the desert (E&ENews PM, Dec. 16, 2010).

"Senator Feinstein has worked tirelessly to preserve the California desert that is a legacy of our American West," said Paul Spitler, National Wilderness

Campaigns associate director for the Wilderness Society. "Her legislation will help ensure that the desert's unique and spectacular scenery will continue to attract visitors from around the world."

In 1994, Feinstein's first California Desert Protection Act created the Mojave National Preserve and turned Joshua Tree and Death Valley into national parks.

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Source: E&E News

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