opinion

'New city' plan could harm Joshua Tree National Park

Despite Joshua Tree National Park’s record number of visitors, the park’s eastern half has remained remote and wild. Just a bit off the pavement, visitors can go for days without seeing another soul, the only sounds coming from wildlife and the wind. Once the sun sets a million stars shine unimpaired by artificial light, earning Joshua Tree formal designation as a Dark Sky Park. Eastern Joshua Tree is a treasure: a place where urban Southern California seems a world away. Unfortunately, a real estate developer wants to change all that.

GLC Enterprises has proposed building Paradise Valley, a new city of 15,000 affluent residents, on the park's southern boundary. Paradise Valley would plunk almost 8,500 homes and hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial and industrial development on intact desert just a few miles from Joshua Tree National Park’s Cottonwood entrance.

Sitting in the middle of an important desert tortoise conservation area, Paradise Valley would pose additional risk to California’s state reptile by introducing thousands of vehicles into existing habitat. The site is filled with dry wash woodland, a habitat whose development is strictly protected by the Coachella Valley’s conservation plan. Paradise Valley would destroy so much woodland it could hinder development elsewhere, even if that other development is sited far more sensibly.

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Putting 15,000 residents here also would negatively impact desert bighorn sheep, which use the area for migration between the park and the Chuckwalla Mountains south of Interstate 10. The park’s bobcats, kit foxes and coyotes will be more likely to fall victim to diseases like distemper and toxoplasmosis as they encounter pets allowed outdoors. Households and businesses using chemicals like weed killer and rat poison also could harm the ecosystem’s wild plants and animals.

A previous version of the development was widely condemned for its unacceptable impact to the park. Now, GLC Enterprises is promoting its alleged commitment to environmental protection because it anticipates the same opposition, touting planned swaths of open space and amenities such as dark-sky friendly lighting.

Open space and special lights won’t change the fact that the wild habitat of Shavers Valley would be forever destroyed by this project, and the park’s hard-won dark-sky status endangered. Open space and dark-sky friendly lighting make urban landscapes much more livable, but when we talk about developing an area that is still undeveloped and wild, such amenities are simply window-dressing.

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The company also claims Paradise Valley would address a critical Coachella Valley housing shortage. Yet the project’s draft environmental assessment notes the project would create “resort-style” housing, meaning East Valley residents in need will be unlikely to benefit. However, these residents will contend with increased auto traffic and tailpipe emissions from the thousands of extra vehicles on Interstate 10 heading to and from the new city.

Joshua Tree National Park has been able to remain wild due to the protections against large-scale developments like Paradise Valley. This desert wonderland needs to be considered in the draft environmental assessment, something GLC Enterprises has been reluctant to admit during the process.

It is imperative that the public speak up for our wild places during the public comment period process ending March 19, and tell GLC Enterprises that development should never come at the expense of our national parks.

Email Chris Clarke of Joshua Tree, California Desert Program Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, via npca@npca.org.