Feature
Claiming the Highlands
Geothermal Mining Confronts an Ancient Native Tradition
by Michelle Berditschevsky and Peggy Risch
Terrain Magazine, Summer 2000
Rising out of a sea of blue-green forested hills northeast of Mount
Shasta, the Medicine Lake Highlands volcano encompasses 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. 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, Painted Pot Crater, Medicine
Mountain. Absent is the grinding roar of engines we are accustomed
to. The contemporary industrial obsession with resource extraction has
not gotten a foothold here — and will not if Native American and
environmental defenders have their way.
Expected as early as May, final decisions are now imminent on two
geothermal industrial "parks" in the Medicine Lake Highlands, with a
potential for several more. Each of the complexes could cover up to
eight square miles with power plants, well fields, toxic sump ponds,
roads, above-ground steam pipes, and transmission lines fragmenting
the landscape — all within half a mile southeast and two and a half
miles northwest of Medicine Lake. Steam plumes, night lighting,
chemical odors, and the noise of well drilling, construction, and
operations would intrude upon the air, the water, the star-paved night
sky, the serenity of the landscape, and the practice of ancient
traditions.
Linked by traditional running paths, Mount Shasta and the Medicine
Lake Highlands share tribal stories that weave eternity, time, and the
land together. "The Lake, the Mountains around it, the springs,
hunting grounds, and gathering areas are an interconnected whole
whose parts are tied together through the Creator's power or spirit
that inhabits them," said Floyd Buckskin, Headman of the Ahjumawi
Band, Cultural Spokesperson for the Pit River Tribe, and Chairman of
the Native Coalition for Medicine Lake Highlands Defense. "When
someone acts out and contemplates the things the Creator has done in
times of creation, these are the models and examples for humans to
follow." In the Pit River Tribe's creation story, the Creator created the
world from Mount Shasta, went to Medicine Lake and, in the
geographic features of the lake and the Highlands, left important
instructions on how to live. "At the Creation of the World the Creator
made laws for nature and man to live by," Buckskin says. "Sometimes
the laws were established by the Creator's actions. When the Creator
and His Son swam in Medicine Lake, this set the pattern for the people
to follow. In many places They would do some act, speak some word,
which sets the Holy Pattern, the Sacred Laws."
Within the Medicine Lake Highlands, "traditional doctors, warriors, and
those seeking healing would journey to various sites to seek their
power, whether it was personal power or doctoring power," says
Buckskin. "Among the Shasta People, young men would have to spend
a number of days in the Highlands before they could be called
warriors."
Glass Mountain, on the northeast rim of the caldera, is a prime source
of high-quality obsidian, valued for projectile points and ceremonial
uses by tribes as distant as the coastal Yurok. Wild currant,
gooseberry, and other local plants are used as food; woodwardia is
gathered for basketry. Prince's pine and mountain hemlock are used
for healing, as is the pure water from lakes and springs. Their
association with specific sites give medicinal plants spiritual properties
that contribute not only to physical but also to spiritual healing.
"(The Highlands are) one of the most sacred areas in Pit River
country," says Theodore Martinez, spiritual healer from the Atsuge
Band of the Pit River Tribe who uses the area for healing rituals, plant
gathering, and ceremonies. "It is just as holy and sacred as the Black
Hills in South Dakota." People come from great distances to the sacred
waters of Medicine Lake and surrounding lands, says Ed Sanderson,
traditional practitioner from the Karuk Tribe, who uses the Highlands.
"Tribes from Idaho and Montana use it," he says, "The area is a
medicine-man training ground for the whole of Turtle Island (North
America)."
In more recent history, the area provided refuge from brutal
encounters with settlers and the US Army. "All the prophecies talk
about going to the high places as places of refuge," says Buckskin.
"The Medicine Lake Highlands are where we went in the 1850s when
Lieutenant George Crook rounded up the Pit River Indians to forcibly
remove them from their lands. The Modoc people were trying to get to
the Highlands during the Modoc Wars, and that's why the army was
trying to prevent them. Because the army knew that once the Modocs
escaped to the Highlands, then there would be no way to capture
them."
The Highlands are "more than archaeological sites and human
remains," Martinez explains. "These grounds are still utilized today. If
there weren't anything there, you wouldn't feel anything when you go
there, and you would go back with the same sickness you came to
heal." The energy under the ground "is tied to every one of these
mountains around there, tied to Medicine Lake, the springs, the
meadows, the plants, the animals. There are things we're talking
about that aren't acknowledged as part of our culture. That energy
that they want to take, that's a part of the spiritual power living there.
The whole caldera is an energy center, that's why they call it Medicine
Lake Highlands."
Between 1982 and 1988, the US Bureau of Land Management
auctioned off a series of leases for geothermal energy exploration on
55,000 acres in the Medicine Lake Highlands. With "limited" public
disclosure and no input from the tribes, the BLM sold the leases to
three giant oil companies for $10.6 million, says BLM Geothermal
Project Lead Sean Haggerty.
But as attorneys for the Native Coalition argued in an April 1999
challenge, the leases promised more than they should have. They
were issued based on a 1981 declaration, done jointly with the Forest
Service, that exploration would cause "no significant impact." But the
leases actually granted exclusive rights not just to explore, but to
"remove (and) sell" geothermal resources, according to Randall Sharp,
geothermal project coordinator for the Forest Service and BLM. Based
on the promise of development rights, two energy companies have
invested millions of dollars in purchasing leases and on environmental
studies. In issuing the leases without full environmental impact
statements, the agencies left themselves open to litigation; if the final
analysis finds that full development would cause adverse impacts, the
projects could fall through. Even though the agencies later
acknowledged traditional Native uses of the land, they admit they
issued leases with little effort to study the extent of cultural values or
how the development would affect them. "We didn't get input face to
face," says Haggerty.
By 1998, all but one of the leases had expired. By then, draft
environmental impact statements (EISs) had determined that
development would have significant adverse impacts. But in May 1998,
without providing public notice or review, the BLM granted retroactive
40-year extensions to the leaseholders, Haggerty says. In December
1999, environmental groups appealed renewal of the leases; a
decision is pending.
By 1995, two multinational energy corporations, San Jose-based
Calpine and Omaha-based CalEnergy, had acquired the leases in the
Highlands. By 1997, each company submitted development plans —
Calpine at Fourmile Hill; CalEnergy at Telephone Flat. The Bonneville
Power Administration, a federal agency which had contracted to buy
power from the companies, has promised them $20 million if the
projects go on line. Proposals for the two power plants, each costing
roughly $100 million to build — with associated wellfields, pipelines,
and transmission lines — were evaluated in EISs released in 1997 and
1998.
Within weeks of release of the environmental documents,
homeowners, the Native Coalition, and environmental groups
mobilized, combing through the documents, attending public meetings,
educating the public, and bringing concerns to the agencies. Native
Americans and activists protested at the US Forest Service office in
Alturas, Martinez performed a traditional prayer ceremony, and
posters went up opposing "desecration of our sacred lands." The group
has submitted extensive written comments on the plan. The Pit River
Tribe and the Native Coalition have developed an informal NativeBioregional Alliance with the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center.
In the past year, the tribes have sent two delegations to Washington,
DC, to educate decision makers on the sacred meaning of this
extraordinary landscape. A final decision on the EISs is expected as
early as May, Haggerty says.
The geothermal projects are driven by "green energy" subsidies. In
spring 1999, the governor-appointed California Energy Commission
pledged $49 million over five years to the two companies — assuming
the projects begin operation by January 1, 2002. Funded by consumer
electric bills under deregulation, the two awards ($21 million and $28
million respectively) account for nearly one-third of the subsidies
allotted to 55 green energy projects, says commission spokesperson
Tim Tutt. On a national scale, the Department of Energy has launched
a Geowest Initiative calling for geothermal mining to meet 10 percent
of the West's electrical needs by the year 2020. As critics point out,
that is support diverted from conservation efforts — and cleaner
energy alternatives such as solar.
Unlike fossil fuels, geothermal energy does not produce large
quantities of "criteria pollutants," particularly carbon dioxide, sulfur
oxides, and nitrogen oxides. However, geothermal development has its
own impacts.
Developers tap large underground beds of boiling brine sitting on top
of magma-heated rock. To mine the brine at the Highlands, they would
have to drill more than 80 wells during the 45-year life span of the two
49-megawatt plants. Drilling production wells, an arduous 25- to 90day process, requires boring down 9,000 to 10,000 feet. Miles of
above-ground, high-pressure pipelines would carry the 400-degree
Fahrenheit water to a power plant. These nine- to ten-story power
plants would be the tallest buildings in rural Siskiyou County, in the
midst of the Modoc and Klamath national forests.
The hot, viscous geothermal brine contains mercury, arsenic, boron,
cadmium, and other hazardous compounds. The plants would release
the fluid as steam to turn constantly humming turbines. High voltage
transmission lines would buzz roughly 24 miles through the Medicine
Lake Highlands to the nearest power station. According to the
environmental documents, bald eagles could die colliding with
transmission lines, and the development would disrupt habitat for
endangered and sensitive species including bats, goshawks, and pine
martens. But the coalition also points out that steam plumes release
large quantities of moisture containing traces of brine contaminants. In
the bowl-shaped caldera, most of the contaminants wouldn't leave the
local ecosystem.
According to the plan's documents, about 18 percent of the
geothermal fluids dissipates into the environment, and the remaining
82 percent is re-injected into the earth. Sump ponds with a capacity of
500,000 to 1 million gallons would hold the spent geothermal fluids
before more miles of pipelines take the material back to the periphery
of the plant site, to be pumped back into the ground. Without this
process, the land would subside from the fluid loss. The re-injection
can produce small earthquakes, contaminate drinking water sources,
and with time, cool the geothermal resource so that it can no longer
make steam. After pressure loss and cooling, wells would be
abandoned, sealed, and could rupture or leak years after a plant has
been decommissioned.
"Although geothermal energy is sometimes referred to as a renewable
energy resource," says a 1994 US Geological Survey report, "this term
is somewhat misleading." Scientists are studying whether the
replenishment of a hydrothermal system would require "hundreds or
thousands of years," the report says.
"We clearly support green energy if it's truly green. This is not," said
Clancy Tenley, Indian program manager at EPA's San Francisco office,
referring to the Medicine Lake projects. "It's unfortunate that subsidies
would go to a project like this."
In advocating any number of "green energy" projects, particularly
geothermal, people are unwittingly advocating intrusions into some of
the wildest places in the world. The volcanic "ring of fire," places
where geothermal developments could be possible worldwide, can
coincide with the purest water sources, often in uncharted and
undocumented sacred areas.
All told, the two Medicine Lake proposals could bring serious problems
and uncertainties to the area.
• Explosions: Although the documents fail to describe the hazards,
they show 21 percent of geothermal facilities nationwide have had
ruptures or "blowouts." A May 1998 blowout at the CalEnergy plant
near the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley devastated the area,
particularly soils and vegetation.
• Drilling blind: According to testimony by a hydrology expert,
developers would have to drill through an 800- to 1,000-foot
Highlands aquifer, risking water contamination — especially since the
aquifer has not been adequately mapped.
• Water pollution: A Bonneville Power Administration evaluation of
various power sources puts it unambiguously: "Brine coming to the
surface from supply wells and returning through injection wells has the
potential to contaminate local water tables."
• Water table: The Fourmile Hill exploration project alone would draw
200,000 gallons a day from wells at Arnica Sink within the Medicine
Lake Caldera.
• Acreage and fragmentation: Accounting for direct visual impacts,
noise, odor, and lighting, direct effects would cover more than 24,582
acres — over 38 square miles.
• Cumulative effects: As many as six power plants the size of the 49megawatt facilities currently proposed could be accommodated by the
proposed 300-megawatt transmission corridor.
• Seismic hazards: Environmental documents erroneously state that
the nearest major earthquake faults are 50 to 75 miles away; the
California Department of Conservation Division of Mines has located
active faults with potential for 7.0 quakes within 12 miles of the
proposed developments.
Inadequately weighed against irreversible environmental damages and
the loss of Native American culture, the plans project 19 permanent
jobs, an annual revenue of $1.3 million to Siskiyou County, and federal
royalties payments of $15 to $25 million over the first 20 years of the
project. Of the 98 megawatts the two companies propose to extract
from the Highlands, only 80 megawatts would be left over from
running the two plants. That energy — along with the estimated 400
megawatts the projects do not immediately propose to extract — could
be better obtained by intelligent energy conservation, the coalition
argues.
The plants might not even work. "Our power project development and
acquisition activities may not be successful," Calpine admits in a
recent report. "The development of power generation facilities is
subject to substantial risks including start-up problems, the breakdown
or failure of equipment or processes, and performance below expected
levels of output or efficiency."
In the face of the evidence, and in the face of two multinationals with
legal resources, the agencies find themselves between a rock and a
hard place: "Construction of the projects would significantly impact an
area holding spiritual and cultural significance for regional Native
Americans," states a Forest Service briefing document. "There is a
concern that denial of the projects would be a taking of property rights
associated with the geothermal leases."
In a July 1999 decision that strengthened the case for protection, the
Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places designated the entire
Medicine Lake Caldera — "an interrelated series of locations and
natural features" — eligible as a Traditional Cultural District.
The Keeper, Carol Shull, cited "historic and continuing value of the
area to Native Americans for maintaining their traditional cultural
identity." The Forest Service, which is responsible for the surface land
(the BLM regulates underground resources), has yet to evaluate
important areas outside the caldera, including sites in the Fourmile Hill
area. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the California
State Historic Preservation Officer have taken strong positions to
assure that decision-makers adequately consider traditional cultural
values.
But even with the National Register's acknowledgment of sacred
values, developers and land managers continue to reduce the land to
an object of grids, profit charts, and product outputs, juggling
quantities so that it seems possible to mitigate impacts. Agency
analyses describe geothermal steam plumes, which would be visible
from practically anywhere in the Highlands, as visible only if you look
in that direction.
Consider the tribal perspective:
"When you're supposed to be in a state of deprivation of food and
sleep, of contact with people and all worldly things, then any contact
with humans, seeing the plumes, construction activities and operating
activities, all will interfere with that pure state," said Martinez, the
Atsuge Pit River healer. "A big part of utilizing these cultural resources
is having no contact with other human beings or anything modern. The
plumes, smells, lights (even downward-facing lights), structures,
noise, etc. cannot be reduced to a level where they will not interfere
with the heightened state of awareness that comes out of this state of
deprivation."
By way of mitigation, the agencies suggest that tribes could plan their
cultural activities around schedules for roads construction, well drilling,
or power plant construction to avoid the noise, increased traffic, air
pollution, and other impacts. "We speak to our elders, and when it's
time to go to a place, it's time to go, especially when elders send you
at a moment's notice when there's something that has to be done,"
said Martinez.
In ritual plant gathering "a healing ceremony may require a plant from
a distinct area," says Buckskin, the Pit River Tribe spokesperson. "We
need to protect the wholeness, so that plants from all specific locations
are available and access is unobstructed." The plants must be
protected: "The steam plumes might dissipate, but the chemicals
would come back down through the clouds and the rain; those
chemicals would enter the plants. The uncontaminated environment of
the Highlands and the associations of that environment make all the
plants special."
The Medicine Lake Highlands contain sacred water, the essence of
healing, which must be preserved, Martinez says. "Whatever happens
to the Medicine Lake Highlands area affects our spiritual and physical
existence, and our environmental existence because of the water, the
largest source of fresh water coming into the Pit River." As Buckskin
put it: "When the water is being used for spiritual and healing
properties, we don't want anything else in there from geothermal
development. Any impacts would fail to meet the Tribal water quality
standards of purity for spiritual and medicinal use."
In the end, there is a larger issue at stake at the Medicine Lake
Highlands. To feel the spiritual quality of a place lets you know what
behavior and activities the place can accept. In Native tradition, an
empathetic sense of kinship can lead to a very exact reading of what
the landscape needs — embracing long-range practices based on
continuing observation and interaction. This reciprocal relationship to
the land is as much an endangered species as the coho salmon, and its
habitat is these sacred lands. A protected Medicine Lake Highlands,
where that world view can still be predominant, allows the soul to
connect to the land, to other life forms, and to healing with all our
relations.
In the words of Jerald Jackson, Spiritual Leader of the Modoc Tribe:
"The Spirit of Creation, just being there with what I call my relatives —
sun, wind, trees, rocks, brush, everything that God has created, I'm
part of that when I'm out there at that altar, and it continues when I
come away from that altar. That water out there, Medicine Lake, is
sacred because it's the life blood of Mother Earth, it's also the life
blood of the people."
To Native Americans, cultural restoration — ensuring that places and
traditional ways vital to cultural survival are preserved — means
taking care of the land, listening to the land, the plants, the animals,
and the wind; and avoiding damaging practices. As Willard Rhoades,
Spiritual Elder of the Pit River Tribe, has put it: "Working on protection
of these places lets you be adopted into the land. This is what allows
you to understand."
Michelle Berditschevsky is Project Director of the Mount Shasta
Bioregional Ecology Center and Secretary for the Native Coalition for
Medicine Lake Highlands Defense.
Peggy Risch is Environmental Research Associate with the Mount
Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center.
For more information, contact the coalition: P.O. Box 1143, Mount
Shasta, CA 96067, or phone (530) 926-3397.