Monday, June 20, 2005 | 11:09 a.m.
Continued population growth in the Southwest and insufficient federal funds have placed Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley National Park near Southern Nevada at risk, a national parks watchdog group said.
Potential water and air pollution and archaeological vandalism continue to threaten the parks, the National Parks Conservation Association said in a report released last week.
California's desert parks lie between two major developing metropolitan areas -- Southern California and Southern Nevada -- said Howard Gross, the association's California desert program manager.
With a population of 1.7 million, Las Vegas continues to grow at a rate of 5,000 people a month, the report said.
"Skyrocketing population growth in and around the desert region has meant increased demands on the region's most precious commodity -- water," Gross said.
Along with more people, more cars and trucks also threaten clear skies in national parks, he said.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued cleanup standards for national parks to reduce polluting haze from area power plants last week. A court-ordered settlement with the national group Environmental Defense produced the standards. Each state must submit a plan to reduce power plant pollution by December 2007.
Potential land development is also threatening other Southwest parks, the report said. Joshua Tree in Southern California faces a large proposed dump known as the Eagle Mountain landfill with rail cars and trucks delivering 20,000 tons of garbage each day to the site for 117 years.
Developers are also proposing a 60,000-home development east of Death Valley.
The proposed Ivanpah airport just north of Mojave near the Nevada-California border also poses a threat to experiencing the park's silence and dark night skies. The report also notes the airport could bring in thousands of homes.
A proposed high-level nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, 50 miles northeast of Death Valley's border, could deplete or contaminate the ground water, the report said.
The report noted that limited park staff and poor funding prevented Park Service rangers from monitoring air pollution and groundwater in the parks.
The potential pollution from the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain, if the dump is built could affect Death Valley in the future, said Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of Citizens Alert.
"I can't think of anything more polluting than what we've done at the Nevada Test Site and what we propose to do at Yucca Mountain," Johnson said.
A total of 928 nuclear weapons were exploded above and below ground at the Test Site from 1951 until 1992. Yucca Mountain could receive up to 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel.
The Energy Department has been trying to develop a groundwater computer model that will help track flowing water contaminated with radiation from the nuclear blasts. Radiation has not been detected off-site in Nye County.
Before contaminated water threatens the park, however, explosive growth in both Nevada and California poses a more immediate threat, the report says.
Johnson, a former real estate agent, said Southern Nevada will continue to grow.
"We can't stop growth," Johnson said, "but we can manage growth."
While the National Park Conservation Association report calls for a comprehensive plan to manage and fund the parks, Johnson said it is time to ask the Bush administration what it will do to protect the national parks.
"We're going to have to take a look at how we grow," Johnson said, including improving schools and diversifying economic resources.
Former National Park administrator Ed Rothfuss said that the problems haven't changed much from his time at Death Valley National Park. He retired from the Park Service in 1994.
In 40 years serving as superintendent at such parks as Mount Rushmore, Rothfuss said he found that desert parks always got "short shrift" in funding and attention by the federal government.
Death Valley's springs and Devil's Hole with its endangered pupfish could be drained of water or the springs could become contaminated, Rothfuss said. Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository and the invasion of non-native plants and animals as well as protecting prehistoric and historical sites are major problems. "These are still big issues today and perhaps even more threatening," Rothfuss said.
"What we see here is a lack of understanding and appreciation of desert resources and parks, even among some high-placed officials who ought to know better," Rothfuss, a Sierra Club member, wrote in an e-mail.
Jane Feldman, a leader in the local Sierra Club chapter, said that the problem with the desert environment is its fragility.
"The problem is, we live in the driest desert in North America," Feldman said. "In such a fragile environment, anything we do to it has enormous impacts."
The National Parks Conservation Association began assessing the health of national parks nationwide in 2000.
The current report also notes the impact that invasive species, such as wild burros and non-native grasses, have on desert parks.
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