Granite Mountain and the valley North and East of it are virtually untouched pristine areas. Places like this are very rare in this part of the Mojave Desert. There are no roads or trails on Granite Mountain. In fact there is only one access road through the area I speak of. What a perfect environment for wildlife to live and breed in without noise or too much intrusion from vehicles. To blast and cut roads or scrape the top of the mountain flat is the worst plan I have seen for a renewable energy project in the Mojave. (And there are plenty of proposals).

I am a resident of Lucerne Valley. In fact I live on Spinel Street which is designated as the main access road for the project. Granite Mountain Wind LLC estimates there will be vehicles passing over a hundred times per day during the construction phase of the project. This is supposed to take from 10 months to one full year. That is totally unacceptable amount of time for that much traffic. That amount of traffic on this small residential dirt road will create more problems than can now be foreseen, in both animal and human terms.

According to the EIR there are desert tortoises and a rare form of butterfly present on Granite Mountain. “Implementation of the proposed project could result in the permanent loss of potential desert tortoise habitat.” Avoidance and mitigation techniques on a job of this size have minimal impact at best. How do you use avoidance and minimization while cutting and blasting a 40 foot wide road across the top of a virgin mountain?

Being a very tall prominent landmark, Granite Mountain is visible from most parts of the Victor Valley. Thus constructing twenty eight, 400 foot tall towers topped with broad fan blades would make this an eyesore to our communities. An eyesore that we, the residents, must live with for the rest of our lives.

For these reasons I strongly oppose this use of our beautiful mountain and I hope you, as public land users, will oppose this project as well.

Dennis Morrison

Lucerne Valley Resident/Public Land User