Newsindhs l Independent News l July 27th 2019
There have been thousands of frustrated drivers from Desert Hot Springs who have found that Indian Canyon is often closed since the unforgettable rains we had on February 14th 2019.
That was the day that caused a massive turnover of sand and the uncovering of finer sand underneath stone and more heavy sand when the rain water moved tons of earth around the Coachella Valley.
The sand has now become a problem for drivers who use Indian Canyon on a regular basis.
So recently local governments sat down together and discussed what they might be able to do about the problem that they think might last a very long time into the future. One idea was to build a bridge but that was ultimately shot down due to it costing millions of dollars that they don’t want to spend.
Another idea was to put up the kind of fence sections that you’d see to help snow drifts from occurring in the interstate up north. But those only work when the wind entry side is higher than the road is. That’s not what we have going on where the problem is on Indian.
The real solution to the problem is easy to see. But a fix for it is never going to happen, at least as long as we will be alive I suspect.
If the current corporation who owns the solar farm along the East side of Indian Canyon just south of the railroad tracks is happy with their farm they are not going to be willing to move it anytime soon and they are going to want to keep their farm.
There’s your problem right there.
And anyone who was involved in that project that approved that location as a good location either was incompetent or the approval of it was intentionally creating this problem with the sand buildup. Either way that person or those persons are to blame.
Because as you can clearly see there is a berm of garbage concrete and landfill quality back fill that was dumped there to create a wall of earth to block water coming down the whitewater channel from getting into or under the solar farm.
The water that comes through the wind farm on the West side of Indian crosses Indian and then hits that berm and then heads offset slightly south as you can see in the lower right hand corner of this image below. The water is then free to run along the south side of the wind farm and on towards Gene Autry.
So why is there a problem with blowing sand covering the road now?
Again it’s the fault of the solar farm being where it is.
If that solar farm was not built there the whitewater channel would be the same height on the East side of Indian Canyon as it is on the West side of Indian Canyon. That evenness causes only a thin layer of sand to lay on the road at any time because the wind travels closer to the ground. The sand moves fast across the road and most of it makes it to the other side and dances along the East side of the road til it hits an obstruction.
That’s not what’s going on on Indian Canyon where the solar farm is located. We don’t have a problem along Gene Autry like we now do on Indian Canyon with sand build up. Again it’s because of the Berm being on Indian and not on Gene Autry. On Gene Autry we have the same free running sand with minimal buildup the same way that it is along Indian Canyon further south of the solar farm.
Here’s a view looking south of the solar farm where the road is even with the desert sand.
Sand is building up on Indian because of unevenness on the two sides of the road. When wind gets whipping across Indian canyon the wind travels from West to East and when it hits that man made wall of earth put there to protect the solar farm from storm water it forms a kind of vortex. It slows a bit and has to go upward to get over the wall of dirt. That causes sand to slow and get deposited grain by grain along that stretch of concrete and asphalt.
Both of these views show the large berm on the East side of Indian Canyon that disrupts the flow of the wind.
What the wind would like to do over time is deposit a land bridge of sand that would run from about 100 yards West of Indian Canyon up to and even with the solar farm to clear up and over the earth berm created to protect the solar farm. It would be like a giant pyramid of sand and if you could stand on it you would be dozens of feet over Indian Canyon Dr.
The wind/sand team works together to fill in gaps in the surface of the desert. It would be like trying to find your footprints in the sand a month after you walked through the sand. The wind carries sand over the footprints afterward and sand fills those low spots in with sand it will sacrifice in order to create a smooth surface for the wind to travel over.
And that man made ditch in the road along Indian Canyon is just that. It’s a great big giant type of footprint that the desert sand is trying to fill up with help from the wind.
So there you have it, the cause of the now routine need for sand clearing along Indian Canyon.
Government is never going to tell you this is the reason because it means people would blame the solar farm for the problem. Government can’t rat on this business because government is subservient to the corporations and especially to green energy corporations. They will never speak ill of the industries they intend on riding to grow their authority over us commoners.
But leave it to government to collectively try to figure out what to do about the problem and they will likely misdiagnose the cause of the problem and surely call for a fix that only makes things worse.
In case anyone is interested here’s a short video showing sand moving across a surface carried by wind.
