(September 14)  The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board has taken action against two San Bernardino County entities – a public agency and a private development company – for actions that compromised local water supplies or waterways.  In Victorville, the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority was hit with a $700,000 fine for a series of sewage spills that took place at its wastewater treatment plant two years ago.
Lahontan has also  ordered the Arimol Group to take immediate restoration steps at its Meadowbrook Road development site in Lake Arrowhead, preparatory to the levying of fines related to violations there.
As of press time this week, a settlement agreement between the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority had been forged, whereby the authority acknowledged that it had improperly discharged nearly 43 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Mojave River over a 15-day span from late December 2010 into January 2011 after the agency’s main pipeline in the riverbed failed during a storm; that the plant discharged another 110,700 gallons of partially treated wastewater from August 22, 2010 through August 28, 2010 because of operator neglect; and that 230 gallons of partially treated wastewater from its Victorville plant were discharged into the river on June 18, 2010 as the consequence of a power outage.
The Victor Valley Wastewater Reclamation Authority (VVWRA), which is still using a temporary bypass through the Mojave Narrows, is undertaking a $11.1 million project to move the pipeline out of the riverbed. It has also installed overflow basins.
At press time, it was anticipated that Lahontan would put its final imprimatur on the settlement, which has already been accepted by the VVWRA board. VVWRA will put $377,394 of that amount up in the form of a cash endowment from its reserves to the State Water Resources Control Board’s cleanup and abatement account. The balance –  $322,606 – will eventually be provided to construct desalter plants in the region.
In the San Bernardino Mountains, Lahontan has ordered Arimol Group and its president, Bill Moller, to initiate a trio of restoration steps at the Meadowbrook subdivision located at Meadowbrook Road and Cedar Court. The property, which is slightly larger than an acre, is adjacent to Moller’s Serenity Conference and Retreat Center. Lahontan wants channel alignments, widths and grades surveyed; a 30-inch corrugated metal pipe culvert and concrete headwall removed so to restore two creek beds to their historical flow paths; and drain rock, to prevent concentrated flows and sheet flows, placed around the perimeter of the concrete slab recently constructed on 995 Meadowbrook Road.
In general, the water board wants the Arimol group to take steps to prevent erosion and the disturbance of soil on the site.
The board first issued a notice of violation to Arimol on June 20. Arimol responded with a mitigation plan on July 20 that Lahontan considers inadequate.
Lahontan is in the initial stages of assessing administrative civil liability penalties against Arimol that will be adjudicated by the Lahontan board. Those penalties exist in the form of fines of $1,000 per day to $10,000 per day for each alleged violation.

(September 14)  The union representing San Bernardino County’s sheriff’s deputies and district attorney’s investigators has voted to approve a new contract that institutes a set of concessions on benefits and salary levels enjoyed by the officers.
The vote brings to a close a more-than-yearlong effort initiated by county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux to rein in public safety employee costs  as part of a strategy to limit current and future deficit spending by the county.  It is projected that by 2016, the county will sustain an “institutional” annual deficit of $130 million, meaning that contractual commitments to employee unions for salary and benefits will create a circumstance by which the county will take in $130 million less per year in revenues than is required to operate county government. The concessions made by the union, while substantive, were less far-reaching than Devereaux had previously sought. The reduced projected cost to the county under the deal eliminates for the time being the threat that Devereaux would impose on sheriff Rod Hoops a mandate to lay off a significant number of his deputies.
Sworn members of the sheriff’s department up to the rank of lieutenant and investigators with the district attorney’s office are represented by the San Bernardino County Safety Employees Benefit Association, known by the acronym SEBA. In a 681-91 vote of the rank and file, a proposal to have the union’s members accept five concessions was approved.  Those concessions included having the officers accept paying into their own retirement plans a sum equal to 4.72 percent of their yearly pay, which until now was being defrayed by the county; reducing previously granted 5 percent raises to 2.5 percent; giving back one percent of what the county pays into their medical retirement trusts; a reduction from 100 hours to 50 hours the compensation time union members can cash out annually; and having all new hired union employees accept a retirement plan that grants them the right to retire at the age of 50 and receive two percent of their highest yearly salary times the number of years they have worked with the county. The acceptance of the latter provision will create two classes of employees, since current union members are eligible to retire at 50 and receive three percent of their highest salary times the number of years they have worked with the county.
In accepting those terms, SEBA members sidestepped the imposition of the “last, best, and final offer” approved by the county board of supervisors in June, which called for a 4 percent pay cut and the elimination of compensation time.
The union members did wring from the county one additional perquisite, namely having each member’s annual leave increased from 40 to 60 hours.

(September 14)  NEEDLES—Bank of America will be making an exodus from the county’s smallest city, which lies on the extreme end of San Bernardino County on California’s  east coast at the banks of the Colorado River along the border with Arizona.
The closure of the bank will further force Needles, which boasts a population of 4,830, into the commercial and financial trade area within Arizona known as the “Miracle Mile” which actually extends 20 miles along Arizona’s Highway 95 and includes Bermuda Valley, Mohave Valley, the Mesa, Willow Valley, Fort Mohave and Bullhead City.
Bank of America’s closure in Needles is being precipitated by the ending of its lease for the building space it occupies at 1001 W. Broadway on February 28, 2013.
Notices to Bank of America customers in Needles will be sent out in middle to late November.
Contributing to the closure decision was a substantial decline in banking at the Needles institution, bank officials said. Bank of America indicated it would keep a full service ATM in operation to provide existing customers with deposit, withdrawal, transfer and account monitoring services.
After Bank of America leaves, the closest thing left to a bank remaining in Needles will be the local Desert Communities Federal Credit Union.
Needles City Manager David Brownlee told the Sentinel, “We are saddened and disappointed with the news that the bank is vacating this market. It is yet another indication that small communities are of little consequence to large money-center banks. Small banks cannot compete with them and credit unions are hamstrung by not being able to perform commercial lending. They have done everything in their power to create a market monopoly in Needles that shuts down smaller competitors and then they perpetrate the final indignity of vacating this market.”
Brownlee said that key city officials pleaded with Bank of America to reconsider its decision to no avail. “The director of finance and staff had a conference call with Patrick Kamachi, vice president and treasury solution officer with Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Los Angeles,” Brownlee said. “He said that the decision to vacate is irrevocable.”
Brownlee said that decision will be an inconvenience to some local residents and a hardship on others. “The real disservice that Bank of America will visit on the community is that it will financially strand those low income and senior citizen customers who do not have an automobile or are so infirm that they cannot drive the 32-mile round trip to Ft. Mohave, Arizona to bank at the in-store Bank of America branch within Smith’s Supermarket.  There is no public transportation from Needles to Ft. Mohave.”
Bank of America has branches in Lake Havasu City and Bullhead City. Chase Bank has a branch in Mohave Valley.
The city of Needles currently uses Bank of America to do its banking. The closure of the Needles branch will impose complications for the city, as well.

(September 14)  The main contractor on the county’s Adelanto Detention Center project this week was provided with change orders and contract amendments that will increase the overall contract amount to $99,316,987.
On December 14, 2010, the county board of supervisors awarded a construction contract to Lydig Construction of Bellevue, Washington for the construction of the Adelanto Detention Center at 9438 Commerce Way in Adelanto.
The original contract amount was for $90,951,937. Six previous change orders and contract amendments increased that contract to $97,856,518. Carl Alban, the county’s director of architecture and engineering, this week asked the board of supervisors to approve a contract amendment in the amount  of $557,668 to have Lydig install a stainless steel well casing for a new well and put in state fire marshal-required additional seismic upgrades to the fire protection lines.
Alban said he was asking Lydig to “upgrade the water well casing to address water quality issues discovered during the course of drilling for the new water well. The water quality test data indicated high arsenic concentrations approximately 3 times the allowable Title 22 Water Quality Limit and corrosive properties.”
Alban further asked the board to approve a $902,801 change order for the addition of detention ceilings at six 32-bed dorms, modifications to center core casework, guardrails and exhaust systems and other utility modifications and enhancements.
“This will compensate Lydig for the addition of detention ceilings to conceal piping in the 32-bed dorm areas in each of the six housing units; modifications to the casework, guard rails and exhaust system within each of the six center core areas; the application of an epoxy coating to provide for ease of cleanliness for all spoke, center core and columns within the six housing units; and various modifications to the security electronics, electrical and plumbing systems to provide security and safety enhancements,” Alban said.

(September 7)  Molycorp has intensified its effort to have the United States reassert itself as a major producer of rare earth minerals, based primarily on its mining operations in a remote area of San Bernardino County.
In recent decades, China has become the predominant supplier of rare earth metals.  Molycorps is making strides in challenging the Chinese rare earth production primacy.
Rare earth minerals, also known as rare earth metals, are a set of seventeen chemical elements, specifically scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium,  gadolinium,  europium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, and ytterbium. They have a number of critical industrial and technical uses and applications, including serving as components in mercury-vapor lamps. high-temperature superconductors, lasers, microwave filters, high refractive index glass, hybrid electrical vehicles, flint products, battery-electrodes, camera lenses, carbon arc lighting, didymium glass used in welding goggles, polishing powder,  ceramic capacitors, nuclear batteries, rare-earth magnets, memory chips, red and blue phosphors, green phosphors, fluorescent lamps, vanadium steel, x-ray machines and infrared lasers. Rare earth elements also facilitate hydrogen storage, fluid catalytic cracking, creating violet and yellow colors in glass or ceramics, catalyzing the refining of petroleum, oxidizing chemicals, neutron capture, and contrasting magnetic resonance images.
Because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found in concentrated and economically exploitable forms.
Until 1948, most of the world’s rare earths were mined in India and Brazil. In the 1950s, South Africa became the leading supplier of rare earth metals.
In 1949, the Mountain Pass Mine, which lies in the extreme northeast portion of San Bernardino County roughly 15 miles from the California-Nevada state line, was discovered by a uranium prospector.  The Molybdenum Corporation of America bought the mining claims, and small-scale production began in 1952. Production expanded greatly in the 1960s, with the Mountain Pass facility becoming the world’s dominant producer of rare earth elements. From 1965 until 1995 it was an almost exclusive supplier of europium, which is used in color television screens. The Molybdenum Corporation of America changed its name to Molycorp in 1974 and was acquired by Union Oil in 1977.
In the 1980s, the company began piping wastewater from the mining operation 14 miles to evaporation ponds at Ivanpah Dry Lake. Ruptures in the pipeline resulted in radioactive thorium and radium leaking into the desert floor, according to federal investigators, at least 60 times between 1984 and 1998, at which point the pipeline was shut down and chemical processing at the mine ceased.   Unocal was served with a cleanup order and sued by  San Bernardino County’s district attorney’s office in a civil lawsuit. The company paid more than $1.4 million in fines and settlements. The mine was shut down in 2002, by which time China eclipsed the United States as the leading supplier of rare earth metals. After Unocal in 2004 obtained a new operating permit for the mine, it was acquired the following year by the Chevron Corporation.
By 2005, 96 percent of the world’s rare earth elements were mined in China. In 2007, China restricted exports of rare earth elements and imposed export tariffs. In 2008, Chevron sold the Mountain Pass Mine to privately held Molycorp Minerals LLC, based in Greenwood Village, Colorado, a company formed to revive the Mountain Pass mine. On July 29, 2010, Molycorp, Inc. became a publicly-traded firm by selling 28,125,000 shares at $14 in its IPO. On September 22, 2010 China quietly enacted a ban on exports of rare earths to Japan. Later that fall, Congress passed legislation to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry, including the reopening of the Mountain Pass mine.
Initially, Molycorp lost money. But by the second quarter of 2011, the company was showing a profit. Molycorp acquired processing facilities in Arizona and Estonia. In March 2012, Molycorp Inc. acquired Neo Material Technologies Inc., a Canadian rare earth processing company, for $1.3 billion.
On August 27, Molycorp initiated Project Phoenix at the Mountain Pass Mine, a production run that is facilitated by the addition of an on-site combined heat and power plant, which is now providing  low-cost, high-efficiency electrical power and steam for the company’s extraction of heavy rare earth concentrate ore which is then processed into high-purity, custom-engineered  rare earth products at Molycorp’s production facilities.
According to Mark A. Smith, Molycorp’s president and chief executive officer, the addition of new equipment at the Mountain Pass Mine, together with processing capability provided by the facilities obtained in the Neo Material Technologies acquisition, has created “the most technologically advanced, vertically integrated rare earth mining and production operation in the world.”
Within short order it is anticipated that the mine will be the major source of the world’s bastnäsite, calcite, barite, dolomite, Cerium, Lanthanum, Neodymium and Europium.
Molycorp’s stock rose more than 11 percent during the first week of the Project Phoenix operation.

(September 7)  VICTORVILLE—Dr.  Kali Chaudhuri and his Riverside-based company drew closer to a final purchase of  Victor Valley Community Hospital following the California Attorney General’s approval of the sale on August 31.
Riverside-based KPC Group, which in 2011 tendered a $37 million offer for Victor Valley Community that was accepted but fell through when Chaudhuri and his partners were unable to line up the financing, this time has agreed to purchase the now bankrupt Victorville hospital for $33.8 million. Chaudhuri and KPC have until September 30 to close the deal.
Chaudhuri and KPC have committed to making $25 million in facility, equipment and service upgrades and improvements, as basic capital investment at the institution has been neglected for some time.
Victor Valley Community, which was founded as and remains a non-profit institution, has been in eclipse for nearly a decade. In September 2010, staggering under more than $20 million in debt, the 101-bed hospital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was put on the auction block. That attracted a $37 million offer from KPC Global Care, one of KPC Group’s entities, and a $3 million offer from Dr. Prem Reddy and his company, Prime Healthcare.  But after KPC failed to finalize the acquisition and bowed out in May 2011, a federal bankruptcy court judge approved an agreement allowing the non-profit arm of Reddy’s for-profit venture, known as Prime Healthcare Service Foundation, to purchase the hospital for $35 million. But after Reddy’s  offer was accepted by the bankruptcy court, the state attorney general’s office on September 20, 2011 intervened, blocking Reddy’s plan. A major consideration was that Victor Valley Community was founded and set up as a non-profit institution.  The attorney general’s office had moved to ensure that the High Desert preserve at least one non-profit hospital in an area with a multiplicity of for-profit medical centers, including one already owned by Reddy, Desert Valley Hospital.
Nevertheless, with Victor Valley Community teetering on the brink of financial collapse, Reddy on October 14, 2011 proffered capital in the form of loans and a consulting arrangement to prevent the hospital from having to close its doors. That assistance was codified in the form of what was called a “post-petition revolving credit and security agreement between Victor Valley Community Hospital as borrower and Prime Healthcare Management, Inc. as lender.” That agreement took the form of a $6 million financing and consulting arrangement. The California Attorney General’s office redoubled its effort to prevent that agreement from being actuated, though Victor Valley Community was sustained in the short term by an infusion of Reddy’s funding. In November, KPC Global reasserted its interest in acquiring Victor Valley Community, filing legal and financial documents to create an entity known as Victor Valley Hospital Acquisition Inc., and indicating it stood ready to put up $31.1 million toward that end. Victor Valley Community Hospital officials were somewhat resistant to the KPC Global offer at that point, and were seemingly more favorably disposed to working with Prime Healthcare.
In January, St. Joseph/St. Mary made a $35 million bid on Victor Valley Community Hospital but did not follow through with an arrangement on financing.
At present, KPC has commitments to cover the full $33.8 million purchase price of Victor Valley Community.  In providing her office’s approval, California Attorney General Kamala Harris required that KPC must hold $3 million in an interest-bearing account for emergency operating or capital needs for the next five years unless VVCH begins operating on a positive cash flow basis before then.
A portion of the purchase price will go toward recompensing Reddy and Prime Healthcare for the capital provided to keep the hospital running over the last year.

(September 7)  The city of Ontario has reached east, south and west to fill out the last two remaining positions on the board for the Ontario International Airport Authority.
The city, which in cooperation with the county of San Bernardino formed the joint powers authority as part of an effort to wrest back from the city of Los Angeles ownership and control of Ontario Airport, nominated both Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge and Orange County Business Council chief executive officer Lucy Dunn to the five-member Ontario International Airport Authority’s governing board.
Loveridge and Dunn join Ontario councilmen Alan Wapner and Jim Bowman and San Bernrardino County Fourth District Supervisor Gary Ovitt on the panel.
Ontario Airport, which began operations at its current location in 1929, was languishing under the direction of the city of Ontario in the 1960s. After signing on with Los Angeles, its fortunes turned around and the airport advanced and prospered under the management of the city of Los Angeles.
In 1966, just under 200,000 passengers transited through Ontario Airport. In 1967 the city of Ontario transferred management of the airport to the city of Los Angeles and its department of airports, a ploy which allowed the entity that owned and controlled Los Angeles International Airport to use its prestige and greater negotiating leverage to convince airlines to fly into and out of Ontario. Whereas previously, only two carriers had utilized Ontario Airport, Lost Angeles lured, induced or inveigled over a dozen airlines to utilize the Ontario facility and by 1969 ridership their increased dramatically. Under Los Angeles’s direction, over $550 million in improvements were made to the airport and in 1985 the city of Ontario deeded the airport to Los Angeles for no consideration. In 2007, use of the airport peaked, with 7.2 million passenger enplaning or deplaning in Ontario.
But over the last five years, the number of passengers flying into and out of Ontario has dwindled considerably, with 4.2 million passengers in 2011, and further declines are registering this year.
Ontario officials blame Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports, the non-profit entity Los Angeles created to own, maintain, administer and operate its division of airports, for the downturn in passenger traffic through Ontario in recent years. The once-cordial relationship between Ontario and Los Angeles has suffered as Ontario officials maintain that Los Angeles has purposefully increased enplaned passenger costs at Ontario and diminished marketing of the airport as a ploy to increase passenger traffic at Los Angeles International Airport, even as the airline industry in general has been contracting. Led by councilman Alan Wapner, Ontario officials have been pushing ever more aggressively to have Los Angeles relinquish the airport, maintaining that the entirety of the Inland Empire has seen its economy negatively impacted as a result of the loss of passengers transiting through Ontario Airport. That effort, which included videos, and a push to have legislation passed in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. to mandate what is referred to as local control of the airport, has angered Los Angeles World Airport officials, who maintain that the drop in passenger traffic through Ontario is a function of the sputtering economy and the doldrums in the airline industry generally.
Ontario pushed ahead with the formation of the Ontario International Airport Authority, insisting that local control of the aerodrome will serve to overcome policy and managerial decisions formulated in Los Angeles over the last several years that have contributed to the shrinkage of what is considered a key element of the inland region’s economy.
Loveridge was chosen in some measure because of his past support for Ontario’s effort to regain ownership and control of the airport. While Loveridge is not seeking reelection as Riverside mayor in November, indications are that he will remain on the airport board after he leaves elected office.
Reached by the Sentinel, Loveridge said, “I feel honored to be invited to participate as a member of the board. Ontario Airport is important to the region and certainly important to western Riverside County. There is a consensus that there is a need for local control. The current passenger levels at Ontario Airport are unacceptable. My understanding is the levels are down to what they were in 1983. We hope to change the trajectory of what is happening at Ontario and take steps to move in a much better direction.”
The choice of Dunn to some seemed curious, given her commitment to the advancement of Orange County’s economy. John Wayne Airport there has been cited as a major draw away from Ontario Airport and is perceived as a competing entity for passengers in the expansive Southern California metropolitan area.
She could not be reached for comment.
Ontario officials have publicly suggested that Los Angeles should simply deed the airport back to Ontario as a public benefit transfer, maintaining that the airport had no value as marketable real estate. Quietly, however, the city of Ontario made a confidential offer to purchase the airport for $50 million and an assumption of all debt related to financing for improvements that had been made to the airport.
Los Angeles officials have indicated they are not prepared to simply surrender their autonomy over the airport and they believe the aerodrome and its assets to be worth in excess of $450 million.

(September 7)  Stopgap repairs on Barstow’s historic First Street Bridge should be completed by January, city and Caltrans officials have indicated.
Built in 1930, the bridge is a key route of ingress to and egress from Barstow’s Railyard, the largest in the world. Connections from the railyard to the major roads and highways in the area have been hampered since 2010, when the city and Caltrans instituted weight limits on vehicles using the bridge, with the maximum load for a four-axle vehicle being 15 tons, well under the normal legal weight limit for most bridges of 40 tons.
Problems with the bridge, precipitated by an earthquake or trucks bearing excessive loads over the structure, were first recognized in 2003, triggering a directive from Caltrans that refurbishing and shoring up of the bridge be immediately undertaken. No repairs were ever made, however, and in 2010, Caltrans imposed the current weight restrictions. The Barstow City Council at that point approved repairs to a column and bracing other supports at a cost of $190,000. In 2011, an  inspection uncovered further damage to support beams.
In essence, traffic across the bridge is restricted to non-commercial vehicles such as cars, pickups, and SUVs, and small load commercial vehicles such as four-wheel stakebeds and the like. Larger vehicles such as 18-wheel tractor-trailers cannot use the bridge. Moreover, large public transportation vehicles including busses and public safety vehicles like fire engines must route themselves around the bridge. In the case of fire emergencies in north Barstow, this represents a potential safety hazard, as fire battalions are delayed in their responses.
The city has completed plans for repairs that will allow the weight bearing capacity of the bridge to be returned to the traditional 40 tons. Upon review and approval by Caltrans, the work will be initiated and completed within three months.
Meanwhile, the city has applied for federal assistance in undertaking a future total reconstruction of the bridge, which is estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $45 million. That project will not begin, at the earliest, until 2015.

(September 7)  wo lawsuits challenging a groundwater extraction project in the East Mojave Desert were filed last week, one on August 31 in San Bernardino Superior Court and the other on August 30 in U.S. District Court in Riverside. Four environmental groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association, the San Gorgonio chapter of the Sierra Club and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society – filed a suit in state court, naming both the county of  San Bernardino and the Santa Margarita Water District. Another group, the Colorado River branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association, filed suit in federal court against Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and San Bernardino County, further naming the Santa Margarita Water District, project proponent Cadiz, Inc. and a Cadiz, Inc. corporate offshoot, the FennerValley Mutual Water Company, as real parties in interest.
An issue explored in both lawsuits is San Bernardino County’s ceding of lead agency authority for the environmental certification of the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, which would pump 16 billion gallons of groundwater per year from ancient aquifers lying beneath the Cadiz Valley and the adjacent Fenner Valley.
Cadiz, Inc., which operates an organic grape, melon, tomato, citrus, and asparagus farm on 500 acres in the Cadiz Valley utilizing roughly 4,000 acre feet of water per year, intends to up its drafting of water to as much as 150,000 acre-feet per year and maintain an average draft of 50,000 acre feet a year for the next century and convey that water in an aqueduct to Riverside, Orange, and Los Angeles counties. In addition to serving as the lead agency on the project, the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies some 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley, has also entered into a water purchasing agreement with Cadiz, Inc. to utilize a major portion of the water to be removed from the desert.
The Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association, the San Gorgonio chapter of the Sierra Club and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society assert the county should not have allowed the environmental review of the project to be carried out by the Mission Viejo-based Santa Margarita Water District. The suit challenges the county for allowing Santa Margarita to commandeer lead agency status and calls into question as well the water district’s approval of the environmental impact report.
The environmental groups maintain the county violated its own groundwater management ordinance by not setting an acceptable rate of decline for the aquifer or danger levels that would trigger alerts of harm prior to the environmental impact report’s approval.
The water district ratified the environmental impact report on July 31. The environmental groups raced to file a challenge of that approval in state court within the statutory one month period.
The Colorado River branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association, led by Ruth Musser-Lopez, cited the failure of Salazar and the Department of the Interior to invoke the protocols and requirements of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, as well as the National Environmental Protection Act, which the association maintains should have been done because part of the project will involve a 42-mile right-of-way for the aqueduct on federal land. The county is named because in transferring the authority for environmental certification of the project to the Santa Margarita Water District, it failed, according to the plaintiff, to live up to its obligation to comply with federal law in reviewing the impact a permitted project might have on federal public resources and thereby trigger the necessary federal procedural review prior to the issuing of permits.
“Significant federal cultural resources, potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places are in the way of harm along the 42-mile railroad right-of-way corridor that would be used for the water conveyance pipeline, all without due process or public participation in determining whether water mining is even an activity that should be allowed on federal land in the Bureau of Land Management’s California Desert,” Musser-Lopez said.  “If the court finds that Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act is applicable, this is one of the keys to unlock the door for federal review of the entire project.  The Archaeological Heritage Association submitted the idea that an archaeological site often straddles political boundaries and that the impact on the half of the property within the railroad right-of-way is an impact upon the archaeological site as a whole.   The association argues that even if the court finds that the area within the right-of-way is exempt from federal review, the federal archaeological sites in the area of potential impact of the project on the right-of-way would not be exempt.  The federal agency, the Bureau of Land Management, may not cede its review to a state agency; it is the Bureau of Land Management’s responsibility to consult with the State Historic Preservation Office and the Advisory Council. They may not turn that responsibility over to a state agency or the project proponent’s contracted environmental firm.  It would have been a relatively simple, routine procedure for the federal government to simply submit the archaeological or cultural resource findings to the Advisory Board on Historic Preservation and allow them the opportunity to review as required by Section 106.  However, had the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management, the county of San Bernardino, or the lead agency, the Santa Margarita Water District, admitted that such consultation is necessary, it would have also been an admission that a federal review is necessary.”
When the Santa Margarita Water District moved to claim lead agency status on the project, county officials contemplated appealing the assumption of that authority by the Orange County-based entity to the California Office of Planning and Research but elected against doing so, instead entering into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water District to review a groundwater monitoring, mitigation and managing plan for the project. The county is slated to review Santa Margarita’s approval of the environmental impact report on October 1.
The lawsuits filed on August 31 were the third and fourth legal actions challenging the project. Delaware Tetra Technologies Inc., which operates a brine mining operation at two dry lakes near Cadiz’s property, previously filed suit questioning the legitimacy of Santa Margarita acting as the lead agency. A group of Orange County residents calling themselves Citizens and Ratepayers Opposing Water Nonsense have sued the Santa Margarita Water District over its approval of the environmental impact report and the water purchase agreement it entered into with Cadiz, Inc.

(August 31)  In what might be interpreted as a trend toward apathy, in four of San Bernardino County’s cities holding municipal elections in November, the races  for city council or mayor or both will be uncontested.  In Yucca Valley, Needles and Chino, the number of candidates running for city council matches the number of seats up for election, rendering the opinion of those cities’ electorates moot. In Needles and Barstow, there is only one candidate for mayor.
Moreover, in Rialto, Redlands, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, and Colton, the races for city clerk or treasure or both are uncontested.
In Yucca Valley, the only candidates for city council are incumbents George Huntington and Robert Lombardo.
In Yuciapa, six candidates are running for three council positions..
Victorville this year holds the distinction of having the most populated electoral field, with 14 candidates vying for three council positions.
In Upland three candidates are vying for mayor and five others are running for a single council seat.
In Twentynine Palms, three are running for two city council positions.
In Rialto there are six candidates trying for two council openings. Also in Rialto, incumbent Barbara McGee is unopposed for city clerk and treasurer Ed Carrillo likewise will not need to face any competition.
In Redlands, seven candidates are running for two council posts. Appointed incumbent Sam Irwin is unopposed for city clerk.
In Rancho Cucamonga, six candidates are running for two open council positions. Longtime treasurer Jim Frost is unopposed in this year’s race, as is incumbent city clerk Janice Reynolds.
In Ontario, nine candidates are seeking election to two council position. Incumbent treasurer James Mlhiser is unopposed.
In Needles, Tom Darcy, Tony Frazier and Jim Lopez are the only candidates running for three council positions. Mayor Ed Paget is unopposed in his effort to remain in office.
In Montclair, four candidates are running for two council seats.
In Hesperia, 11 candidates are in the running for two council positions.
In Grand Terrace four candidates, all of whom are women, are running for three open council positions.
In Fontana, five candidates are seeking two available council berths.
In Colton, which uses the ward system to fill out its seven member council, three candidates are running in District 6; three are running in District 5  and two are running in District 3. Colton’s incumbent treasurer Aurelio De La Torre has no opponent.
In Chino Hills, five candidates are competing for two council positions.
In Chino, two have thrown their hats in the ring for mayor but no one is opposing city council incumbents Glenn Duncan and Tom Haughey.
In Big Bear Lake, three  are running for two council seats.
In Barstow, the city council race for two openings has attracted six candidates, but in the mayor’s race, only councilwoman Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre is running.  And both Michael Lewis, who is running for treasurer, and incumbent city clerk JoJo Cousino will have a cakewalk.
In the town of Apple Valley, nine are running for two council positions.
In Adelanto, six are seeking election to two posts.
Two of San Bernardino County’s 24 cities, San Bernardino and Loma Linda, have not consolidated their municipal elections with the presidential and gubernatorial general elections.