Photo by Stan Lim/The Press-Enterprise
Mojave Desert Vista Restored- Castle Mountain Venture finished a reclamation effort, which cleaned up after a decade of open pit mining.
Check out the story here where utility crews removed 18 miles of power lines, leaving the Mojave Desert just like it was before gold mining began in the early 1900’s.
The Castle Mountain Venture is a large open pit, heap, leach, and milling operation located in northeastern San Bernandino County, operated by Viceroy as 75% owner and MK Gold as 25% owner.
Gold was discovered in the Castle Mountains in 1907. The modern-day mine produced 1.34 million ounces of gold and about 400,000 ounces of silver in about 12 years. The mine stopped operating in 2001.
The utility crew finished the job in early January. They used a crane to hoist 5,000-pound bundles of wire onto a flatbed truck and hauled away piles of utility poles.
In addition to removing wires and poles, Castle Mountain Venture also shaped the spent ore into contours and niches that mimic the desert landscape, and re-established native desert plants.
However, this section of desert is far from finished.
The Mojave National Preserve surrounds this section, so naturally conservationists and at least one legislator want to add this “restored” desert to the preserve. And BrightSource Energy Co., a solar energy developer, wants to buy the land to conserve wildlife habitat. BrightSource wants to make up for desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) habitat loss due to the Ivanpah solar plant development. The BrightSource project has already displaced 23 tortoises, a species threatened by extinction.
To further complicate the situation, Oak Creek Energy Co., a wind energy company, wants to build wind turbines in this section of desert and erect new power poles along the same route where utility workers from Castle Mountain Venture just finished taking the old ones down and “restored” the habitat.
Hopefully, this time around this section of desert remains “restored” and not succumb to developers.
Spaceship Factory in the Mojave Desert- The Spaceship Company (TSC), a new aerospace company founded by Virgin Galactic, chief Sir Richard Branson and Scaled Composites, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman that designed the Virgin SpaceShipTwo, broke ground on the world’s first spaceship factory.
TSC plans to build a 68,000 square foot hangar in the California Mojave [...]
Native Americans against Solar Project-BrightSource Energy Co’s. plan to build a large scale solar plant on 5.6 square miles in the Ivanpah Valley on the California-Nevada border is approved by the California Energy Commission, despite concerns from biologists and environmentalists about the relocation of endangered desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) and possible reduction of the fringe-toed lizard [...]
