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Winter 2003

Save Medicine Lake Highlands
By Michelle Berditschevsky and Peggy Risch
In Native American traditions, sacred sites are zones of peace, places “where you go to listen,” say the elders. That seems even more important at this time when drums of fear and war beat louder and threaten to invade even these sanctuaries. It is more vital than ever to keep working for the values that further all life, to affirm the song of beauty that it may dissolve the forces of greed and destruction.

Telephone Flat Reversal
The dreaded event happened. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday commemorating early cooperation with Native Americans for sharing their bounty, federal agencies took away a victory that protected the sacred Medicine Lake Caldera from the onslought of geothermal development. The decision was to approve the Telephone Flat geothermal project.

By reversing the May 2000 denial of Calpine's 48-megawatt project, BLM and the Forest Service further opened this unique, near pristine land located adjacent to Mount Shasta to the ravages of industrial development. Telephone Flat leases cover 8 square miles in the heart of the 24-square-mile Traditional Cultural District designated by the National Register of Historic Places for its significance to Native Americans. Leases begin only 500 yards from Medicine Lake and encompass several other pristine lakes and springs. Calpine Corporation owns 66 square miles of leases in the Highlands and has publicly announced plans to develop up to 1000 megawatts, ten times the combined wattage and impact of the Telephone Flat and Fourmile Hill projects.

What triggered the reversal was Calpine's $100 million lawsuit against the government, resulting in a settlement agreement in April 2002. Rather than defending their original decision against the hugely inflated "takings" claim, as would have been expected of a government that has a trust obligation to Native Americans and to the public, the agencies caved in by reopening the decision. (see our Summer-Fall 2002 Newsletter).

Appeal by Tribes, Ecology Center and Other Environmental Groups
Our appeal of the Forest Service side of the decision went to the Secretary of Agriculture by the February 3rd deadline. Joining us in the appeal were the Pit River and Klamath Tribes, and the Native Coalition for Medicine Lake Highlands Defense, all expertly represented by Deborah Sivas of Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. The Department of Interior co-signed with BLM and declared that the only recourse is through the courts. A coalition of environmental groups filed a separate appeal.

The gist of the Forest Service appeal is that the government could not justify reversing itself. Need for the project hadn't changed (never proven in the first place). The project would still cause severe adverse effects to sacred sites as well as to health, visual and air quality in the Caldera. Cumulative effects from other foreseeable projects have increased, and the huge pure fresh water aquifer that feeds the Sacramento would still be impacted by pollutants and loss of water. So-called mitigations added to the decision are merely a token concession. The bottom line is that impacts are severe and cannot be mitigated. If anything, there is less need for the project now that California’s “energy crisis” has been exposed as a price manipulation by Calpine and others. Now the agencies are using California’s renewables mandate as a reason. Yet energy from this project is committed to Bonneville Power, which sells electricity in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. The decision shortcircuits the historic preservation process. In approving the Fourmile Hill Project just outside the Caldera, BLM and the Forest Service had an understanding with the historic preservation agencies that Telephone Flat would be denied, a Cultural Management Plan in place and a Forest Plan Amendment calling for stronger protections evaluated before further projects could be considered.

Historic Preservation Agencies Support Denial
In September the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation reaffirmed its opposition, stating that "the proposed site for the Telephone Flat project is wrong; the costs to the historic resources of Native Americans and our nation are too high."

The State Historic Preservation Officer wrote that " in addition to being an environment of great natural beauty, [the Medicine Lake Caldera] is a place of extraordinary traditional cultural and spiritual significance to Native American tribes of the area…. I believe that there exists a fundamental and irreconcilable incompatibility between the geothermal development proposed at Telephone Flat and the sanctity of the Highlands as a special place of the Creator."

Broad support for protection
The National Congress of American Indians, International Indian Treaty Council, the InterTribal Council of California and the California Council of Tribal Governments have all passed resolutions in opposition to geothermal development in the Medicine Lake Highlands. The California Wilderness Coalition included the Highlands in California’s Ten Most Threatened Wild Places report, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation is considering listing the Highlands as one of the Eleven Most Threatened Historic Places. In addition, the area is an important public recreational area that receives over 50,000 visits per year.

Fourmile Hill and Future Steps
Our attorneys anticipate that the appeal is likely to be denied and that the Telephone Flat lawsuit will be combined with the Fourmile Hill case (filed in June ‘ 02). Through the lawsuit we hope to prevent any drilling this summer. The desired outcome, of course, is denial of the permits that would allow such devastation. For the long term, we would like to see the Medicine Lake Highlands linked with Mount Shasta as one Cultural Landscape, a zone of peace. Please help us hold the vision!

How You Can Help!
Write letters, fax or call! It’s one of the most effective ways to influence decisions.

•Governor Gray Davis
State Capitol Sacramento, CA 95814
P phone (916) 445-2841, fax (916) 445- 4633

Ask Governor Davis to withdraw California Energy Commission’s subsidies of Calpine’s geothermal projects in the Medicine Lake Highlands. The CEC committed nearly $50 million in conditional awards once the power plants are built. Such awards, even conditional, prejudice the process and allow the corporations to sue the federal government for “takings” in the event project aren’t approved. Davis says he’s in favor of protecting sacred sites, and it’s a contradition to commit funds to their destruction.

•Senator Barbara Boxer
U.S. Senate Washngton DC 20510
Phone (916) 448-2787, fax (916) 448-2563

Please contact Senator Boxer to thank her for writing a strong letter supporting denial of the Telephone Flat project.

•Senator Dianne Feinstein
U.S. Senate Washington DC 20510
Phone (415) 393-0707, fax (415) 393-0710

Please ask Senator Feinstein for her support for protection of the Medicine Lake Highlands. Feel free to use any of the information on our website.

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The Medicine Lake Highlands

Located just northeast of Mount Shasta, the remote and spectacular Medicine Lake Highlands encompass California’s most diverse volcanic fields on the continent’s largest shield volcano.

The volcano's caldera, a 500-foot-deep oval crater about six miles long and four miles wide, was formed when underground magma flows collapsed the dome's summit in Pleistocene times. Later eruptions built a ring of smaller volcanoes around the rim of the basin. The azure waters of Medicine Lake lie embedded in this million-year sculpture of volcanic fury, with its striking variety of textures - lava flows, clear lakes, mountains of glass-like obsidian, slopes of white pumice, dark boulders, and silver-green mountain hemlock. Later eruptions built a ring of smaller volcanoes around the rim of the basin. The azure waters of Medicine Lake lie embedded in this million-year sculpture of volcanic fury, with its striking variety of textures - lava flows, clear lakes, mountains of glass-like obsidian, slopes of white pumice, dark boulders, and silver-green mountain hemlock. The Highlands' clear skies are home to eagles, goshawks, and rare bats. Tall forests shelter martens, fishers, and unknown numbers of sensitive plants. Filtered through porous rock, the Highlands' aquifer forms a major source of spring waters flowing into the Sacramento River.

For ten thousand years by the archaeologist's count, as far back as memory and signs hewn in stone can reach, the Medicine Lake Highlands have been a place of traditional spiritual practice. To Native American tribes known as the Ahjumawi (Pit River), Modoc and Shasta—as well as to more distant tribes—the landscape is a living scripture in which higher beings have left messages for the first people of the land. Today, the people continue their prayer, vision questing, healing, and subsistence practices in the Highlands. In this remote area there are no freeways, no trains, no factories, no power lines, no bright lights. Narrow winding roads take you to Glass Mountain, Pumice Craters Lava Flow, Yellow Jacket Ice Cave, Red Shale Mountain, Burnt Lava Flow, Paint Pot Crater, Medicine Mountain… Absent is the grinding roar of engines to which we have become accustomed.

Against huge odds, Native American and environmental defenders have been battling multi-national geothermal corporations, to assure that the industrial obsession with resource extraction will not get a foothold on this sacred ground.