Showdown at Ash Meadows
Click the link above for the companion video Creative FRONTLINE KPFK Episode "Timbisha" Aired May 6, 2024.
Following the fast track development?of Thacker Pass and the abrogation of various laws?like Section 106 NHPA, NAGPRA, NEPA, and others, the continuing pressure on Oak Flat and mixed interpretation of laws, there, and the unknown unknowns of Salton Sea lithium/geothermal extraction, BLM, DOI, and the Biden Administration are on a roll.
It's mistakenly called "Green Energy Development," which sometimes means moving the pollution and destruction somewhere else, increasingly poorly done and administered, at the expense of public lands, biodiversity, climate resilience, and tribal and rural communities.?
Now next up is Ash Meadows, a lush oasis and "biodiversity hotspot" an emblematic icon or meme of nature at its best, delicate, diverse, hardy and thriving, where Rover Metals, a Canadian company, would like to dig 30 some boreholes just over the fence from the springs and their tiny?blue Pupfish?and the other species in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.?
Center For Biological Diversity and Amargosa Conservancy sued to prevent this and BLM did not issue a permit. However, like many potential "Dracula" projects, Rover Metals can file an amended permit application or a new permit, and now as we roll on toward the election there are two outcomes likely. One is that Biden will not get reelected in which case the Republicans go "whole hog" on industrial development, the "dam" breaks, our ecosystems and cultural resources are likely given little or no consideration and we "lose" the West to destructive practices across the board.
?If Biden is reelected, a likely outcome suggests a trend continues toward being more accountable, especially in a second term. I see this as The Showdown at Ash Meadows, the impacts of which will be felt forever, literally, as we possibly lose places like Ash Meadows and beyond, or choose to protect them.
And now comes the the news a secret shipment of plutonium crossed Nevada's highways, rivers and streams to a private "midnight delivery" to the closed and hotly debated just upstream from Ash Meadows, Death Valley, the Timbisha Tribe, the Pupfish, the 28 Endangered Species and ancient aquifers proposed to be water mined for drinking and irrigation for Southern California.
领英推荐
What do we not understand about "It's all connected?" On the land and by our own mistaken endeavors and behaviors.
###
Robert Lundahl
Tracker Ginamarie Rangel Quinone
Agence RLA, LLC
415.205.3481