West Mojave Plan FEIR/S - Desert Managers Group

geothermal fields in the Western United States. There are four production wells on BLMmanagedland in addition to 10 production wells and two water injection wells on Navyadministered land, three 25 MW power-plants under construction or completed, with four powerplantsplanned for the near future. Presently there are two producing leases covering 5,100 acres,and an additional lease of 2,555 acres is considered “held in production” on BLM-managed land.Since December 1988, the Minerals Management Service has collected approximately $50million in royalty, with 50 percent going to the state.Roughly 30,000 tons per year of pumice are produced from the Coso Mountains in InyoCounty.Aggregates: Sand and gravel and other aggregates are produced at a number of locationswithin the planning area from alluvial fans and other sedimentary deposits. Commercialdeposits, however, are limited by transportation costs and, therefore, are usually located nearmarket areas. These commodities are used primarily for ongoing major highway constructionand repair and as aggregate for concrete in urban areas.Service Rock Products (previously Owl) has produced sand and gravel from the Barstowpit on private land since the 1960s. The Crystal Creek drainage in Lucerne Valley has beenmined for sand and gravel as early as the 1950s. The current operator is Hi-Grade Materials.The aggregate resources in this area have an average thickness of 225 feet based on mining inthis area (Miller, 1993, p.39). Production in the Little Rock Creek deposit (near Palmdale andLancaster) began in 1941 (Joseph et al., 1987, p.10) with several operators in production by the1950s (Evans, et al, 1979, p.17). The pit in Twentynine Palms off of Mojave Road has beenoperating since the early 1950s by Hi-Desert Concrete Products, now owned by GraniteConstruction. Channel Basin & Reclamation is opening the Cushenbury pit in Lucerne Valleywith a production capacity of a million tons per year (Heter, 2002). The Opah Ditch site, in theSoda Mountains southwest of Baker, has been used in the past and will undoubtedly furnishaggregate for paving jobs along Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County. About 10,000 tons peryear of sand and gravel are produced from BLM lands in Inyo and Kern County. Crushed stonesales in the Barstow area for roofing and landscaping rock are estimated to range from 40,000 to50,000 tons per year. Flagstone production from public land in Rand Mountain is estimated ataround 15,000 tons per year.A summary of the most important deposits in the planning area, listed by county, ispresented in Table 3-50.Chapter 3 3-234