Following a negative environmental report from the California Energy Commission, a major energy firm has ended its plans to build a big power plant seven miles from Joshua Tree National Park. Environmentalists had feared that a new state law to speed power-plant approval, which was created in the wake of California’s energy "crisis" this spring, would mean that plans for the power plant would go ahead. But the commission gave the thumbs down to the InterGen plant, comforting park officials who feared that it would harm the endangered desert tortoise and other animals by bringing more dirty air to the area, which already suffers from being downwind from smog-laden Los Angeles.
