I, however, do. Please avoid a kneejerk reaction to the plans for a solar field--part of their plan is actually a good thing (and part of it is absolutely NOT, which I'll explain).
I'm in the beginning stages of a documentary photography project (link at the bottom of my post) on the current status of the restoration of the lower Owens River and the Owens Lake. It's a very complex situation, with a history going back over 100 years. I'll offer a little information, as well as some insight from environmentalists who actually live near the lake, and who have worked hard on restoration efforts.
LADWP was forced under court order (finally) to begin rewatering the lower Owens River, and began doing so at the end of 2006. The rewatering was begun not as an environmental restoration project--more on that in a moment--but as a means of mitigating the dust storms coming off the lake. The LADWP had already installed a network of "bubblers" all over the lake, which are little more than heavy-duty water sprinklers that keep portions of the lakebed moist.
By re-diverting a set level of water back into the lower Owens, the upper portion of the lake began to refill (as did the lower Owens River itself). The lake, incidentally, was never totally dry, as parts of it are fed by springs (including Cottonwood spring on the west central side of the lake), but it was certainly mostly dry. This indeed worked to mitigate the dust problem, but it also had the benefit of restoring a portion of the lake's old ecosystem, a marshy and riparian area that used to host millions of birds every year before the aqueduct opened up in 1913 (the lake was essentially drained by 1926).
Environmentalists in the area--represented by the Eastern Sierra Audubon Society, the Ancient Bristlecone Pine chapter of the California Native Plants Society, the Eastern Sierra Land Trust, and the Owens Valley Committee, among others--suspected that the rewatering would begin to revive the ecosystem, and weren't just proved right, but proved dramatically right. Bird counts done annually since the rewatering began show that the environment is bouncing back with astonishing speed, and thus gives the groups serious ammo in forcing LADWP to continue and expand restoration efforts. It's now more than just a dust mitigation project, and those groups I mentioned above are currently working with the LADWP to establish a Master Plan for the Owens Lake to expand restoration.
Now, about that solar field--there are portions of the lake that are considered (even by the environmental groups) to be unrestorable. They're too toxic to bring back, too utterly decimated. If you go to the lake and drive around the lakebed--and I have on many occasions--it's easy to see which areas of the lake are coming back, and which aren't (and won't). Even the local environmental groups have no problem with establishing a solar field on
those parts of the lake--it WILL be a beneficial project on many levels, and won't interfere with the environmental restoration going on in other areas of the lake.
What they have a problem with--as do I--is LADWP's suggestion recently floated that they'd like to install a massive solar field on the valley floor east of the town of Independence. THAT is significantly overstepping, and would endanger a very fragile ecosystem, so that's the part of the plan the environmental groups are NOT supporting.
How'd I get involved in this? Well, I spend a huge amount of time doing landscape photography in the eastern Sierras, and became fascinated by and started to really investigate what's going on with the lake over the past year. As a former journalist, I'm kind of hard wired to jump into this kind of project, and so my documentary project was born. I've gotten the (generous) assistance of the environmental groups in the area, especially the local Audubon group, and the project will take off with intensity in about a month when breeding season kicks into high gear at the lake. My intention is to document the current state of the lake, and what the rewatering has done to revive it. How the bird populations have reacted is the best barometer, so that's what you'll see a lot of on my site in the coming months. I'll also be giving a lot of attention to the valley ecosystem, especially the extremely endangered alkali meadows, in hopes of showing people why the second part of the LADWP solar project (occupying the valley floor, and not just the decimated parts of the lakebed) is a bad idea.
There's no other re-emerging ecosystem that I can think of that compares to what's going on at Owens Lake right now, and I hope more people become interested in it. If anybody is curious about the history of the LADWP and the Owen Valley, I can recomend a few really good books on the subject.
http://www.owenslakeproject.com
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