A 1,300-MW pumped storage project in the California desert, in the planning and regulatory process for nearly 30 years, has stumbled short of starting line for construction. It could take an act of Congress to resurrect the controversial Eagle Mountain project nestled near the Joshua Tree National Park.
Santa Monica-based Eagle Crest Energy Co. has been pushing the project to turn an abandoned Kaiser Steel iron mine in the Coachella Valley 1.5 miles from the national park, which surrounds it on three sides, into pumped storage to support solar and wind development in the state since 1990. The pumped storage facility would use abandoned mining pits for the reservoirs needed to make the storage work.
The project has the backing of NextEra Energy Resources and all the governmental approvals its needs to start construction, including the backing of California Gov. Jerry Brown, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Interior Department. The state assemblyman who represents the area, a Democrat, also supports the project.
But the developers missed a FERC deadline late last month to start construction on the $1.4 billion project and it may take congressional action to keep the project alive. Eagle Crest has yet to line up buyers for the electricity the project would store, which accounts for their failure to start construction. Rep. Paul Cook (R-Calif.) has introduced a bill to give the developers six more years to line up customers and start work.
Cook, 75, is a three-term member of Congress. He serves on the foreign affairs, armed services, and veterans’ affairs committees. His legislation, H.R. 5817, was introduced in May and assigned to House Energy and Commerce Committee. So far, it has no cosponsors.
Local environmental groups are opposing the project, based on threats to endangered desert species such as the desert tortoise and bighorn sheep and the plan to tap into the local aquifer to supply the project. The National Parks and Conservation Association, which opposes the project, points to the inability of the developers to line up a power purchase contract for the project and says distributed energy storage is overtaking the economics of the Eagle Mountain plan. “It’s essentially a failed project at this point,” Chris Clarke of the NPCA told the newspaper.
FERC approved the project in 2014 and extended the deadline for starting construction from 2016 to 2018, the Desert Sun newspaper reported.
Eagle Mountain, which Kaiser abandoned in 1982, is a ghost town. A recent Lost Angeles Times feature described it: “Just beyond the southeast corner of Joshua Tree National Park, rows of boarded up houses, gouged mountainsides and concrete ruins are an ugly reminder of the never-ending battle over the West’s public lands.”
California industrialist Henry J. Kaiser in 1942, in response to the World War II effort, built a large integrated steel mill, the first on the West Coast, in Fontana, Calif. Kaiser shipyards built many vessels for the U.S. Navy during the war. In 1948, Kaiser bought the mine property from the Southern Pacific railroad for its rich iron ore deposits, and the mining community of Eagle Mountain sprung up around the mine.
Wikipedia describes that community at its peak as having a population of about 4,000. “It had wide, landscaped streets lined with over four hundred homes, some with as many as four bedrooms. Two hundred trailer spaces and several boarding houses and dormitories provided living space for Kaiser’s itinerant workforce. Other amenities included an auditorium, a park, a shopping center, a community swimming pool, lighted tennis courts, and a baseball diamond. Businesses included a bowling alley, two gas stations, eight churches and three schools.”
In 1981, Kaiser cut steel production at Fontana in half and announced the closing of the Eagle Mountain mine. The land sat idle until plans hatched later in the 1980s to use the property. The state corrections department used the shopping center land for a privately-operated minimum security prison, which closed in 2003. In 1988, a collection of privately-operated trash and trash hauling companies proposed the mine site as a landfill for waste from Southern California. After years of litigation, that project died in 2013.
Now, with another plan for the site – the hydro project – in play, the question is whether this scheme will come to pass.
— Kennedy Maize