Medicine Lake Highlands & Aquifer Protection Campaign
Program Update
Through our large landscape campaigns that include Mount Shasta and the Medicine Lake Highlands, we are protecting our bioregion’s important contribution towards stabilizing the earth’s climate through intact ecosystems, securing large sources of California’s water supply, providing safe havens for biodiversity, recognizing Native American sacred sites and the value these natural sanctuaries hold for human health and renewal.
In the Medicine Lake Highlands we’re working to safeguard a pristine sacred landscape that includes a 113-square mile Native American Traditional Cultural District and an immense pure aquifer that emerges as California’s largest spring system, the Fall River Springs. These are threatened by industrial-scale, polluting, fracking, landscape-fragmenting, water-intensive geothermal development on 66 square miles of this public landscape.
Breaking news on the legal front! We continue to be grateful to Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, representing our tribal-environmental coalition in our long legal challenge of geothermal development. We’re glad to report that in January 2021 at the U.S. District Court in Sacramento—where BLM and Calpine were seeking to dismiss our latest lawsuit—Judge Mendez denied the motion to dismiss! This means we can move forward with our court challenge of the remaining lease in the Medicine Lake Highlands. You may recall that in September 2019, we had a Ninth Circuit Court victory that invalidated 26 geothermal lease extensions. This 27th lease includes the Unit Agreement, which could serve as a basis for reactivating the 26 leases.
Our efforts toward protection of California Volcanic Headwaters include taking part in numerous forums to advocate for the immense aquifer of Medicine Lake Volcano in the State’s water policies and programs, including input to the Governor’s Water Resiliency Portfolio, a discussion with the Department of Water Resources, participating in the statewide NGO Groundwater Collaborative, and providing Case Studies on the Highlands aquifer to these various forums.
Forming a Volcanic Source Waters Alliance—together with our allies the Pit River Tribe, Native Coalition for Medicine Lake Highlands Defense, and Medicine Lake Citizens for Quality Environment—we produced a 6-page Fact Sheet that reflects our coalition’s plans to move toward this goal.
In our long-term protection efforts, we’re currently considering various designations to achieve recognition of the Medicine Lake Highlands as a pristine natural sanctuary, prime Native American cultural area, and a major volcanic source water system that is vital to California’s water supply. We expect to make headway with the favorable Biden administration, which selected Deb Haaland to be the first-ever Native American Secretary of the Interior. Our goal is for the Medicine Lake Highlands and Mount Shasta to be included as part of the administration’s 30-30 plan—to protect 30 per cent of U.S. lands by 2030.
By Michelle Berditschevsky
Founder & Senior Conservation Consultant