 Coso Operating Company has settled out of court with Little Lake Ranch concerning Coso’s Hay Ranch water pumping plan. Now Little Lake attorneys are sending letters to the Inyo County Water Department accusing the county of misrepresenting important data for Coso and the county’s gain. File photo By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
1-7-2010 Just weeks after Coso Operating Company began pumping water from its Hay Ranch property, Little Lake Ranch has sent a formal letter of complaint to the Inyo County Water Department.
Coso is pumping water from Hay Ranch for reinjection into its depleting geothermal reservoirs. Basically, these reservoirs help create steam to drive turbines that generate electricity.
Little Lake had settled out of court with Coso in late August 2009 over disagreements about the project’s Environmental Impact Report, for an undisclosed amount.
Most of the opponents, such as the Sierra Club and the California Native Plant Society, did not have the money to file their own suits against Coso and were hoping to ride the coattails of Little Lake. But, when Little Lake settled, the other opponents had to back off.
Now, Gary Arnold, part owner of, and legal counsel for, Little Lake Ranch has sent the ICWD a formal letter objecting to the proposed groundwater baselines for the Coso Geothermal Plant Hay Ranch pumping.
The baseline is the pre-project condition, or water level, of the aquifer which all other mitigation will be measured against.
This measurement is the Occam’s razor, or rule of thumb, for which all mitigation of the entire pumping project will be tested against and, not surprisingly, the measurement is a source of contention. Throughout the more than a year of meetings and discussions, the issue of the baseline measurement was always a major topic. Some opponents of the project thought the lack of a baseline in the original hydrological models may have been a sort of loophole for Coso to continue pumping indefinitely.
The letter goes even farther, accusing the ICWD of misleading the public, and plainly stating that the county is setting low baselines for its own profit.
“Unfortunately, it appears that the baselines are being established to allow continued pumping for Coso’s and the county’s economic reasons only,” the letter states, “without giving due regard to the protection and safety of the environment.”
Water Director Bob Harrington said Tuesday that Arnold’s statements are “unfounded allegations” and that the county is setting baseline levels per the word of the mitigation and monitoring measures, not for any one party’s gain.
These include standards set forth in the Environmental Impact Report that protect Little Lake, Harrington said.
He added that there is “no straightforward recipe” for trying to determine these pre-project conditions. “Hydrographs jump up and down.”
For the last six months, water levels were collected from more than 20 different monitoring wells, including some wells with years of recorded water levels.
Harrington said that per the conditional use permit, Coso began pumping the day after the mandated preliminary six months of monitoring and setting the baseline.
The ICWD has been working incredibly hard on the project, according to Harrington, with monthly updates of the monitoring available on the department’s Web site.
And, per the CUP, Coso is paying for a third-party consultant to come in and re-evaluate the baselines.
Arnold uses the data from monitoring wells to argue that Harrington and the ICWD are establishing the lowest possible elevation baseline for no “good reason” and that the public was misinformed about the way the baseline would be set.
“The public was led to believe that the baselines would be established at levels which would be protective of the environment,” the letter states, “rather than at levels which are almost assured to inflict considerable damages upon the Rose Valley habitat and wildlife.”
Harrington said, “Based on the facts he (Arnold) presents, I would not have come to the same conclusions.”
Harrington added that the ICWD will be watching the progress of the project very closely, as it has done all along.
|
