Copyright © 2002 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Medicine Lake Highlands, CA - As a citizen of the Iss Awee (Abalone Shell People-Aka Pitt River Nation), I am requesting to speak to you at this time. Emergency support letters are needed to help influence decision makers to not award a permit for the development and operation of a geothermal exploration project at Telephone Flat, part of our Sacred Medicine Lake Highlands in Northern California.

November 15, 2002 is when the decision will happen to approve or not approve. Therefore, our letters need to be faxed and mailed before the actual decision date so that they can be included in the departmental review. Recommended date for your letters to be sent in is: NO LATER THAN NOVEMBER 8TH (Friday), 2002.

Prayers are vitally important-pray for this process - pray for the decision makers to look inwardly at themselves and see true humanity and affection and peace and protect this most sacred place-pray for us all. Thank you for listening. Please share this information and let's take immediate action together. Please make copies of your letters or resolutions and send a copy or fax to:

Pit River Tribe Environmental Office
37014 Main Street, Burney, California 96013
Phone: 530-335-5962 FAX: 530-335-5069
E-mail: ajuma@c-zone.net or shastamedicine@snowcrest.net

Below are: 1) Telephone Flat decision makers and their contact information; 2) Quik key points; 3) Complete electronic version of comments made by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation; 4) Complete Fact Sheet; and 5) Native American Significance Fact Sheet.

1. Telephone Flat decision makers:

Honorable Gale Norton, Secretary Honorable Kathleen Clarke, Director
Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, DOI
1849 C Street NW 1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240 Washington, DC 20240
FAX: 202-208-6956 ~ FAX: 202-208-5242

Honorable Rebecca Watson Honorable Dale Bosworth, Chief Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals United State Forest Service, USDA

Department of the Interior P.O. Box 96090
1849 C Street NW Washington, DC 20090-6090
Washington, DC 20240 FAX: 202-208-3144

United States Senators:

Honorable Senator Barbara Boxer,
Honorable Senator Dianne Feinstein
Attention: Stacey Lybeck Attention: Michael Walker
501 I Street, Suite 7-600 One Post Street, Suite 2450
Sacramento, CA. 95813 San Francisco, CA. 94104
FAX: 916-448-2563 FAX: 415-393-0710

2. Quick Key Points:

* From time immemorial, the Medicine Lake Highlands have been and continue to be an area of prime spiritual and cultural significance to Indigenous people of Northern California and Southern Oregon. The Sacred Medicine Lake Highlands are located adjacent to the Sacred Mount Shasta, and the two landscapes are directly related in the Indigenous stories of the people, the land, and each other. As in the beginning of time, today there continues to be ceremonies of vision questing, healing, praying, medicinal foods and medicinal plant gathering, and hunting.

* The local Indigenous Nations stress that the traditional practices will survive only if the natural integrity and cultural landscape of the Medicine Lake Highlands remain intact. Underlying the importance of preservation is the belief that each element of the Highlands ecosystem is linked to other earthly and spiritual elements by a complex set of physical and spiritual interactions. Damage to any one of these elements-the air, water, soil, animals, or vegetation ? will impact the Medicine Lake Highlands' physical and spiritual equilibrium in a way that will compromise both the sacredness of the land and the practices that take place on that land. No measures can mitigate the adverse effects of this project.

* On September 27, 2002, the National Advisory Council on Historic Preservation concluded the National Historic Preservation Section of the 106 Process on the Telephone Flat Project and concludes 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 ACHP hereby recommends that you support the joint decision made by BLM and the Forest Service in May 2000 and reaffirm the denial of permits to construct and operate the Telephone Flat project."

* Contamination of California's largest fresh water spring system, the Fall River Springs, which draws from the Highlands huge aquifer.

* Mining the brine at the Highlands would require up to 80 wells during the 45-year life span of the two plants. Each well would take 25-90 days of 24-hour noisy drilling, boring down 9,000 to 10,000 feet in the ground.

* Miles of above-ground, high-pressure pipelines would carry the 400-degree Fahrenheit water to the power plant. These nine- to ten story power plants would be the tallest buildings in rural Siskiyou County.

* Sump ponds with a capacity of 500,00 to 1 million gallons would hold the spent geothermol fluids before they are reinjected.

* Hydrogen sulfide emissions from the two projects would rise to dangerous levels of 38 tons per year, especially within the Caldera which is prone to thermol inversions.

* The proposed route for the transmission line cuts through the Mount Hoffman Roadless Area. Parts of the proposed projects are located within Late Successional Reserves. Large, old trees would be cut to clear paths for the transmission lines, pipelines, well fields and power plants.

* Habitat for the pine marten, fisher, northern spotted owl and other species dependent on late successional forests would be adversely affected.

3. [Electronic version of comments by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation concluding the National Historic Preservation Section 106 Process on the Telephone Flat Project]

September 27, 2002

Honorable Gale A. Norton
Secretary of the Interior
1849 C Street, NW
Room 6151
Washington, DC 20240

Dear Secretary Norton:

In accordance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and implementing regulations "Protection of Historic Properties" (36 CFR Part 800), I am writing to convey to you the final comments of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) on the proposed Telephone Flat Geothermal Project on the Modoc National Forest, California.

Background:
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) sold a number of leases for geothermal exploration and development in the Medicine Lake Highlands in the 1980s. The ACHP first became involved in consultation on the Telephone Flat Project in August 1999, when the U.S. Forest Service notified us of its determination that two proposed geothermal projects, Telephone Flat and the Fourmile Hill Project, may adversely affect historic properties in the Medicine Lake Highlands. Consultation in 1999 and 2000 resulted in our execution of a Memorandum of Agreement with the BLM, Forest Service, and California State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) for the Fourmile Hill Project just prior to the May 2000 Record of Decision. At that point, the understanding was that the Telephone Flat Project would not be approved.

BLM re-initiated consultation, regarding the Telephone Flat Project, with ACHP and other parties in April 2002 in response to a settlement reached between the Department of Justice and the CalEnergy Corporation. The settlement agreement required BLM and the Forest Service to reconsider their joint decision to deny a permit for the development and operation of the Telephone Flat Project. The purpose of consultation, as required in the Council's regulations, is to seek ways to avoid, minimize or mitigate the adverse effects of a proposed undertaking on historic properties. Of critical concern in this case is the effect of the project on the Medicine Lake Highlands Traditional Cultural Places (TCP) district, a property determined to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. In order to meet a November 1, 2002 deadline imposed by the settlement agreement, and despite requests by the three participating Indian tribes to continue with consultation to resolve adverse effects, BLM terminated consultation and requested ACHP comments on August 16, 2002.

To respond to this schedule, I appointed a panel of Council members to consider this case. The panel consisted of Bruce D. Judd, Emily Summers, and Kelly Sinclair, representing the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. On September 16, 2002, the Council members met with representatives of BLM, the Forest Service, the California State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), tribal officials, and Calpine Corporation officials to tour the project site. That evening the Council members conducted a public meeting and received testimony from concerned tribal government officials, organizations and individuals. The comments and recommendations that follow are based on consideration by ACHP of the facts in this case and the review and deliberations of this member panel.

Findings and Recommendations
The Medicine Lake Highlands contains an interrelated series of locations and natural features associated with the spiritual beliefs and traditional cultural practices of the Pit River and Klamath/Modoc Indian tribes. For centuries, the area has been vitally important to the culture of these two tribes as a place for physical healing, prayer, spirit quests and other traditional activities. These cultural values and practices by the tribes depend entirely on maintaining within the district the environmental qualities that now exist, including natural land forms, heavy forested cover, scenic vistas, and a natural quiet that reinforces a sense of solitude and contemplation. The Pit River Tribal Chairman, in a recent letter to the Council, emphasized the natural qualities needed for continued use of the traditional cultural places within the Medicine Lake district. In her determination of eligibility, the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places noted the unique nature of the area in relationship to important traditional spiritual activities and practices, noting that "...multiple lines of evidence substantiate the historic and continuing value of the Medicine Lake area and the volcanic caldera it rests in to Native Americans in maintaining their traditional cultural identity."

The proposal under reconsideration is the construction and operation of a 48-megawatt power plant and associated wells, pipelines, and power lines. The proposed power plant would be the tallest building in the northeastern part of California and would be located only two miles from Medicine Lake, the central feature of the TCP district. A well field, pipeline system, and associated access roads would encircle the power plant. Within the 8 square mile lease area for this project, there would be a minimum of 10-12 well pads, 3-5 acres each, to extract or inject geothermal fluids; each well pad having its own 500,000 to 1,000,000 gallon sump pond. The project would also require several miles of 36" above ground high-pressured pipelines to transport hot geothermal fluid to the power plant, and a 4 mile-long 230kV transmission line to transport generated electricity to existing lines. This transmission line would pass north, then northeast of the project, between two important mountains for Native American religious and cultural activity. The transmission line, power plant facilities, and cooling tower plumes would be visible from vision quest sites in the TCP district, and the power plant would be lighted 24 hours, seven days a week. The impact of these visual intrusions on Native American cultural use of the area and the increased noise caused by construction, drilling, and well testing are highlighted in the Final Environmental Impact Statement.

In your agency's own words, the permit was denied in May 2002, in part, because "development of the subsurface geothermal waters would adversely affect the Native American perception of the spiritual qualities of Medicine Lake" and construction and operation of the project would introduce visual and audible impacts that "will significantly degrade the current value of the cultural sites to the Native American practitioner." Public comments received by ACHP in writing and at the public hearing overwhelmingly oppose the development of this project. The ACHP believes that the visual and audible impacts on traditional cultural use of the Medicine Lake Highlands TCP district will be quite severe and will significantly and irreversibly diminish the characteristics that qualify this area for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The ACHP acknowledges the merit of renewable energy and inherent value in geothermal energy production in meeting our nation's energy needs. However, 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 ACHP hereby recommends that you support the joint decision made by BLM and the Forest Service in May 2000 and reaffirm the denial of permits to construct and operate the Telephone Flat project.

We further recommend that BLM and Forest Service immediately initiate discussions with ACHP to seek ways to better assess and consider the historic values, including traditional cultural values, associated with lands that may be opened to leasing for energy development. The current system of conducting Section 106 review at the point of authorizing specific projects, after leases have already been issued, puts decision makers and citizens concerned with historic preservation at a disadvantage by failing to provide them information that would alert them, in a more timely manner, to potential conflicts such as those that arose in the Medicine Lake Highlands. These difficulties are particularly acute when leases provide developers with reserved property rights to develop and utilize natural resources and the leased lands contain historic properties that are large in size. Our staff is anxious to work with your department to resolve this ongoing problem.

In accordance with Section 106, you and the Secretary of Agriculture, in reaching a joint decision on the permit for the Telephone Flat project, must take into account these comments of the Council. In accordance with Section 110(l) of the NHPA and the Section 106 implementing regulations, this responsibility cannot be delegated. Moreover, your response to the Council's comments must be documented in accordance with 36 C.F.R. § 800.7(c)(4). A similar letter (copy enclosed) has been sent to Secretary Ann Veneman.

Sincerely,

John L. Nau, III
Chairman

Enclosure:

cc: Honorable Ann Veneman

MEDICINE LAKE HIGHLANDS
Proposed Geothermal Industrial Development

Facts

1982-88 - Geothermal leases awarded by BLM for the "Glass Mountain Known Geothermal Resource Area" on 134,000 acres in the Medicine Lake Highlands, without consultations with the Tribes, no NHPA Section 106 Process and minimal NEPA review. Leases give full rights to explore, develop and commercially produce geothermal power.

1982 - Royball-Evans Study of Cultural Uses of the Medicine Lake Highlands by the Pit River Tribe Upriver Bands, indicating prime cultural significance of the Medicine Lake Highlands.

1995 - Geothermal exploration projects approved by US Forest Service and BLM without consultations with Tribes.

1996 - First consultation with the Pit River Tribe. Pit River Tribal Council passes Resolution No. 96-08-25 on August 19, 1996 expressing opposition to geothermal development in the Medicine Lake Highlands, and requesting a Cultural Management Plan for the Highlands. Ethnographic study begins.

1997-1999 ? Forest Service and BLM issue Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) on two geothermal developments - Calpine's Fourmile Hill and CalEnergy's Telephone Flat. The Fourmile Hill Project as proposed involves a 49.9 megawatt geothermal power plant, well field, and 24-mile, 230 kilovolt (300 megawatt) transmission line. The Telephone Flat Project would produce 49 megawatts of power and is comprised of similar facilities.

        Comments by the Pit River Tribe, Native Coalition, Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, and a coalition of environmental groups and the public weigh in at 90% against geothermal development. EISs disclose adverse effects and disproportionate impacts to Native American traditional cultural resources and values, but minimize environmental impacts.

May 1998 - BLM grants retroactive 40-year extension on the leases without providing public notice or review and without consultations in spite of strong Native American and citizen opposition to the projects.

1999 ? Exploratory drilling certified by Siskiyou County; Native Americans again request Cultural Management Plan before any development is considered.

May-June 1999 - Multi-agency consultation with Pit River Tribe and Native Coalition, followed by trip to Washington DC to meet with higher level officials.

1999 ? Medicine Lake Caldera designated as a Traditional Cultural District because of its spiritual and cultural significance to the Tribes in July 1999, with direction by the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places to evaluate areas outside the District, including the Fourmile Hill project area, for their importance to Native American culture.

May 2000 - Memorandum of Agreement on the Fourmile Hill Geothermal Project (concluding the NHPA Section 106 process) with Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Forest Service and BLM, providing for development of a Cultural Management Plan for the entire Medicine Lake Highlands within 6 months. Tribes do not sign MOA as concurring parties. A section 106 process was not concluded for the Telephone Flat project.

May 2000 - Decision issued by the Forest Service and BLM to approve Fourmile Hill Project (1/4 mile outside Medicine Lake Caldera), subject to a 5-year moratorium that prohibited further developments while the agencies could monitor the impacts. At the same time, the agencies issues a decision to deny the Telephone Flat Project (within the Caldera and hence within the Traditional Cultural District).

Summer 2000 - Appeals filed against the Fourmile Hill Project decision to Regional Forester and Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA). Forest Service appeal denied August 2000. IBLA issues Stay Order putting development on hold until appeals are resolved.

December 2000 - Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) agrees to purchase power from Fourmile Hill project for distribution in the Northwest (mostly outside of California).

May 2001 - Before the House Resources Subcommittee on Energy, Calpine discloses its goals to develop up to 1000 megawatts in the Highlands, including 100 megawatts in the Mount Hoffman Roadless Area, the highest and one of the most significant sacred sites in the Highlands.

June 2001 - Five Year Moratorium on further development lifted.

October 2001 - Calpine purchases CalEnergy's leases and is now sole holder of 66 square miles of leases covering the Medicine Lake Highlands.

November 2001 - First meeting with the Tribes on Cultural Management Plan.

January 2002 - California Energy Commission re-approves a conditional award of "green energy" subsidies for nearly $50 million for Calpine's Fourmile Hill and Telephone Flat projects, despite denial of the Telephone Flat Project, despite Fourmile Hill's failure to meet CEC requirements, and despite the fact that most of the power would be sold by BPA outside of California.

February 2002 - IBLA decision to deny appeals on Fourmile Hill development project.

April 2002 - Conditional settlement agreement on a Takings Claim between Calpine Corporation and Department of Justice, calling for reopening the decision on Telephone Flat project, with the final decision to be made by the Secretary of the Interior and the Chief of the Forest Service. If the decision is not reversed by November 1st, the claim will be reactivated.

June 17, 2002 - Earthjustice files lawsuit on the Fourmile Hill decision in the Eastern District Court on behalf of Pit River Tribe, Native Coalition for Medicine Lake Highlands Defense and Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center. Judge David Levy has been assigned to the case.

July-August 2002 - BLM holds consultations with Tribes on reopening the Telephone Flat project on July 16th. BLM decides to terminate NHPA section 106 consultations on August 22nd.

September 16, 2002 - Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to hold formal Field Visit and Public Hearing in preparation for final section 106 comments on the Telephone Flat decision. It is expected that the Advisory Council will again recommend denial of this project as it did in May 2000.

September 2002 - Advisory Council on Historic Preservation issues comments upholding original decision to deny the Telephone Flat Project.

SOME ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS - The impacts on groundwater and on Medicine Lake itself which could result from pumping geothermal fluid in and out of the earth are highly uncertain. This same activity could risk contaminating California's largest fresh water spring system, the Fall River Springs, which draws from the Highlands huge aquifer. Mining the brine at the Highlands would require up to 80 wells during the 45-year life span of the two plants. Each well would take 25-90 days of 24-hour noisy drilling, boring down 9,000 to 10,000 feet. Miles of above-ground, high-pressure pipelines would carry the 400-degree Fahrenheit water to the power plant. These nine- to ten-story power plants would be the tallest buildings in rural Siskiyou County. Sump ponds with a capacity of 500,000 to 1 million gallons would hold the spent geothermal fluids before they are reinjected. Hydrogen sulfide emissions from the two projects would rise to dangerous levels of 38 tons per year, especially within the Caldera which is prone to thermal inversions. The proposed route for the transmission line cuts through the Mount Hoffman Roadless Area. Parts of the proposed projects are located within Late Successional Reserves. Large, old trees would be cut to clear paths for the transmission lines, pipelines, well fields and power plants. Habitat for the pine marten, fisher, northern spotted owl and other species dependent on late successional forests would be adversely affected. Recreational use in the Medicine Lake Highlands is estimated at 40,000 visits per year and would be severely impacted.

MEDICINE LAKE HIGHLANDS
Proposed Geothermal Industrial Development

Native American Significance

From time immemorial, the Medicine Lake Highlands have been and continue to be an area of prime spiritual and cultural significance to the Native Americans of Northern California and Southern Oregon. The Highlands are located adjacent to Mount Shasta, and the two landscapes are closely related in Native American creation stories. Archaeological evidence indicates inhabitation for over 10,000 years. Activities have included ceremony, vision questing, healing, prayer, medicinal, food plant gathering, hunting and obsidian trading. The Highlands have also served as a place of refuge during adverse times.

The Telephone Flat and Fourmile Hill geothermal developments, and other foreseeable projects, would transform the Medicine Lake Highlands into an industrial zone. Native Americans assert that twenty-four hour drilling, night lighting and other geothermal impacts in a landscape where there are no freeways, no factories, and no power lines would drastically change the character of the area. Each development could involve drilling on up to eight square miles, and fragment the area with miles of new roads, above ground pipelines and transmission lines. The land would become pockmarked with toxic sumps, noisy drilling platforms, power plant and 10-story high cooling towers spewing emissions laced with heavy metals and toxic gases. Steam plumes, night lighting and chemical odors would permeate the pure night sky, the air, the water, and the beauty and serenity of the area.

Tribal opposition to geothermal exploitation of the Highlands extends beyond local concerns. The National Congress of American Indians, 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, which are within the Ancestral Territory of the Pit River and Modoc Tribes.

The Pit River Tribe passed a resolution in 1996 opposing any geothermal development in the Highlands. Since that time, the Pit River Tribe and Native Coalition have been giving input into the process on both the Fourmile and Telephone Flat projects, issuing long and detailed comments at every juncture in the NEPA, CEQA and NHPA review processes, as well as in other forums relating to these projects. Civil Rights Act complaints were filed with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, and participation in California Energy Commission hearings registered opposition against subsidies. The Tribe and Coalition have been active in the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, as well as with coalitions promoting sacred lands legislation.

Members of local tribes stress that their traditional practices will survive only if the natural integrity and cultural landscape of the Highlands remain intact. Underlying the importance of preservation is the belief that each element of the Highlands ecosystem is linked to other elements by a complex set of physical and spiritual interactions. Damage to any one of these elements -the air, water, soil, animals, or vegetation - will impact the Highlands' physical and spiritual equilibrium in a way that will compromise both the sacredness of the land and the practices that take place on that land. Traditional rites, such as spirit quests, require an individual to travel from one place to another, create stone piles to mark prayer sites, visit bathing areas for spiritual cleansing, gather food and medicines from particular areas, and seek isolation in places far from human contact for days at a time. The Tribes emphasize that these traditional practices rely on spiritual solitude and sensory deprivation, which is impossible when elements are strikingly out of character with the natural landscape.

The Tribes also stress that these traditions are inextricably rooted to the land of the Medicine Lake Highlands. Traditional practices cannot simply be relocated to unfamiliar territories because the practices themselves have evolved over centuries in harmony with the unique character of the Highlands. Moreover, the development of these lands on the scale proposed by Calpine irreversibly destroys the physical integrity and spiritual value of the Highlands. No measures can mitigate the adverse effects of this project.