Some of the youngest earth dwellers, students from the Soboba Tribal Preschool, made musical instruments from recycled materials and paraded through the Sports Complex outdoor area where the event was set up.

Teacher Ponie Mojado said the children fashioned tambourines from two paper plates sealed with pinto beans inside and then colored. Some of the students, who range in age from two through kindergarten, cleverly filled plastic eggs with pinto beans and then placed the eggs between two plastic spoons. After taping the handles together, it formed a rattle. Still others made rattles from empty toilet paper tubes filled with beans and taped up on both ends.

Shaking their instruments to “I Love My Planet (The Earth Song)” they learned, proud parents videotaped and photographed the budding musicians who learned an important lesson about recycling. Aceves said this was definitely his favorite part of the whole event.

“Getting the youth involved is always an achievement because they are the next generation that will play a pivotal part in environmental stewardship,” he said.

Students at Noli Indian School, which serves sixth through twelfth grades, used their science class time to create posters that matched this year’s Earth Day theme of “Invest in Our Planet.” Each visitor at the event was given a voting dot upon check-in to place in front of their choice for favorite poster.

 Noli science teachers Jay Dagostino and Sabrina Sobel tied the project into their lesson plans on Ecology. “I liked the creative art mixed with science and community involvement,” Dagostino said. Aceves said the class that created the winning poster will be treated to a pizza party, courtesy of STED. The second-place class will receive an ice-cream party.

Junior Nataly Lemus worked with two other classmates to create the “Help Save the Earth” poster that stresses reduce, reuse and recycle. “We collaborated on the whole design and then I put it together,” she said. Nataly made tree “leaves” out of pieces of green plastic soda bottles.

Seniors Sienna Goff and Bella Resvaloso, along with sophomore Jacklyn Ramirez, created their poster during chemistry class. Their artfully crafted message offered ways to help save the earth – use less water, plant more trees and stop pollution. The earth was shown as green and vital on one side where nature was key and the other half as brown and polluted where factories and poor air quality prevailed.

Sixth-grade students pointed out that if we don’t invest in our planet now, we might not have one to live on 20 years from now. They wrote, “If we don’t protect our environment and animals, future generations won’t be able to enjoy it.” A list of possible solutions included carpooling, planting more plants, turning off lights when not in a room and using cooling and heating systems less.

Another poster read, “Investing in our planet is important for our future because without our planet, there is no future. A healthy planet isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.”

Members of the Soboba Foundation, Tribal Council and Tribal Executive Offices are looking ahead to summer’s outdoor activities and provided water pool toys and kites to guests. Marketing team associates from Soboba Casino Resort had a fun watercolor craft for all ages. The younger artists were impressed with the “magic” that took place when Cheyanna Perez sprayed water on the paper plate they colored with blue and green markers to create a muted “earthy” masterpiece.

There was information on electric cars and solar energy. GRID Alternatives and ONYX Power shared details about the current solar back-up project they have at Soboba. Current Home focuses on residential solar projects and offered games for the children who attended.

Jonathan Reinig, the Western Riverside County Regional Conservation Authority Reserve Manager, and Jonathan Marin with Riverside County Transportation Commission tag teamed discussions about land and wildlife habitat conservation. “We have 146 species in Western Riverside County and 34 are considered threatened or endangered,” Reinig said.

Climate Science Alliance and Inland Empire Waterkeeper nonprofits have programs geared towards youth and showed them how they could get involved. River KATS (Kids Activism Through Science) is a program that offers workshops and field trips to teach children firsthand about watershed.

The Soboba Fire Department had a booth where they shared the importance of signing up for wildfire alerts and things that can be done to mitigate damage to homes and other property as fire season approaches. There were also plastic firefighter helmets in pink or black for the young children as well as crayons, a coloring puzzle and more.

The Santa Rosa Band of Cahuilla Indians gave a demonstration of a do-it-yourself water filter and representatives from the Sierra Club, Master Gardeners, the Forest Service Volunteer Association and other agencies shared hints on protecting wildlife, preserving resources and investing in our planet.

Southern California Edison Community Crew members Torrie Brandon and Jose Soto, who work with vegetation management, were passing out potted plant starters for those that wanted them while also sharing the important job SCE does in making sure trees are kept trimmed away from power lines. To learn which tree species are utility friendly, contact safetrees@sce.com before planting.

Trequitta Jennings and other members of the SCE Community Outreach Team gave away resiliency kits, explained ways to be energy efficient and how to sign up for the service that sends out alerts regarding power outages and other informative messages. To sign up, visit sce.com/outagealerts.

Hosea Jones and Taylor Hart with CalFresh talked to guests about eating healthy by growing fruits and vegetables, such as celery.

The Cultural Resource Department’s cultural garden is going strong and members shared fresh produce from the Soboba Indian Reservation garden. Other department representatives shared the importance of pollinators to help bees. They offered seeded pots of the types of flowers enjoyed by bees, bee-shaped bookmarks and a list of the native plants at the reservation that bees like: black sage, brittlebush, buckwheat, chia, cottonwood, elderberry, sagebrush, sycamore, white sage and yerba santa.

They shared that we should invest in our planet with native plants, those that occur naturally in a region in which they evolved. They are the ecological basis upon which all life depends. To learn more about the native plant species in your region, visit https://calscape.org. They further explained the benefits of native plants, such as promoting biodiversity by providing shelter and food for wildlife, supporting pollinators, reducing the carbon footprint while minimizing pollution as they require little to no maintenance, saving water since native plants are able to sustain themselves and controlling erosion due to their strong, deep and varying root lengths.

Mike Perez with the Riverside County Department of Waste Resources shared the many ways people can learn how to recycle and be more eco-friendly. Free in-person and virtual classes about composting, sustainable landscaping and zero waste are just a few that are available through www.rcwaste.org.

“We teach people how to keep things out of the trash that don’t belong there,” Perez said. He started out as a volunteer in 2017 and is now Volunteer Services Coordinator. “We also offer the longest-running composting class (since 1996) and the biggest one is the state.”

With the help of more than 10 volunteers, although they are always recruiting more, Perez said they work with schools and attend many community events, such as this one, to help educate others on the importance of recycling and how to do it properly.

Guests were also treated to a raffle ticket for some great prizes, a free cup of Kona Ice and a meal ticket for the In-n-Out food truck.

Aceves said the most beneficial thing the average person can do today to make a great impact in the future is to adopt sustainable practices. This can include carpooling, recycling, limiting single use plastic, reducing water use and many more.

“Adopting sustainable practices into your everyday life may not seem like a great impact but over time these practices really add up,” he said. “The environment rarely changes overnight; it’s the small changes over time that often make the biggest impact.”

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Project teams on site at the Soboba Fire Station included, GRID Alternatives’ Daniel Dumovich, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Nicole Bloom, Project Manager of Strategic Initiative along with the Inland Empire chapter’s Executive Director Jaime Alonso; Invinity Energy Systems’ Jan Petrenko, Regional Manager North America; California Energy Commission’s  Sean Anayah, Energy Commission Specialist, Energy Infrastructure Integrity and Sustainability-Agreement Manager for Fire Station Microgrid and Zoe Higgerson, Utilities Engineer, Energy Systems Research Branch-Agreement Manager for MORBUGs; ONYX Power Operations Manager Aaron Dyer and Casey Reams, Engineering; and from the University of California, Riverside, Alfredo A. Martinez-Morales, Managing Director, Research Faculty, Southern California-Research Initiatives for Solar Energy and Miroslav Penchev, Project Scientist.

Soboba Fire Chief Glenn Patterson said the solar panels and Invinity Energy Systems’ non-lithium battery backup have been installed at the station. He added that this solar and battery backup microgrid will not only offset energy costs but will provide power to the fire station and the Emergency Operations Center during an emergency or natural disaster ensuring emergency management personnel are able to continue to operate and serve the Soboba Indian Reservation.

GRID Alternatives was awarded a California Energy Commission grant for a microgrid community solar project and battery backup system on the reservation. The solar panels were installed on a carport used for employee and visitor parking. The resilient battery backup system can last 6-10 hours in case of power shut offs at the fire station, which will be an emergency source of power for the community.

With CEC EPIC Support, GRID Alternatives, ONYX Power and UC Riverside are partnering with Tribal communities to demonstrate and deploy grid-independent, modular generation systems to enable California’s Tribal communities to provide power when the grid is down, as well as mobile off-grid resources for facilities throughout the year. The generators provide immediate, flexible and scalable relief to families who are impacted the most by wildfires and grid outages, without the pollution and hazards associated with small portable gas generators.

Community Development & Tribal Program Manager Lisa Castilone said, “We are excited to use innovative technologies to advance climate resiliency in Tribal communities in California. This project will provide essential power to the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians Fire Station for the reservation, and the surrounding communities. This project will not only allow emergency services to continue during outages but will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate disasters that cause the outages in the first place.”

The Mobile Renewable Backup Generation, known as MORBUG, is for deployable community energy. Created by Casey Reams and Aaron R. Dyer of ONYX Power, the portable RHINO technology generators can provide quiet and clean power anywhere. The system has already been used at recent events on the reservation and has shown promise as a viable alternative to commonly used gas-powered generators. Dyer said he was told by Public Works that one was recently used on a construction site, with great success.

Many employees from Soboba’s Public Works Department were given a hands-on demonstration and explanation of how MORBUG and its solar blankets work and what to expect from their performance. That department, along with Soboba’s Emergency Services division, will oversee the storage and deployment of them. Ten units have already been delivered and are intended to be used much more for fun than for emergencies, although they can be used at residences if needed and requested. Being one of the first projects to utilize them, it is hoped that Soboba can offer a template for other Tribes to follow.

California’s Tribal communities are highly impacted by planned and unplanned power shut offs and grid outages due to their rural locations. Entire communities are often left without power, and many critical facilities are left inoperable. Not only can this greatly limit disaster response, but the dependence on gas generators exacerbates climate change and poses direct health and fire risks to the communities that depend on them. ONYX Power’s Rhino technology is quiet, emissions-free, can be deployed in real-time, can expand in energy capacity, requires no lead time nor permitting, can power a home through a transfer switch like a generator, and the batteries and inverter can be replaced or upgraded in the future. The battery units can be paired with rapidly deployable solar units.

GRID Alternatives Inland Empire Executive Director Jaime Alonso said, “We can provide adaptive technologies that don’t depend on large investments in terms of infrastructure. One of the biggest things we see in extremely rural areas is initial reluctance so education is a key component to our work in terms of showing what the value is and that really just takes relationship building and continuous engagement.”

He cited the long-term relationship GRID has with Soboba and is grateful the Tribe is progressive and open to new ideas. “Working with Tribal nations is something we see as essential to our mission. It lines up to our core mission to advance economic environmental justice through renewable energy.”

Alfredo A. Martinez-Morales, from UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering, is part of a four-member team. “The role of the university is to validate the performance of the technology,” he said. “These projects are intended to de-risk the technology, meaning to document, in the form of a case study, how well it performs and the benefits that are achieved through the project. So our job is to basically make sure the correct data has been collected and then analyze the data and draw certain conclusions based on the data as well as potentially make recommendations.”

Martinez-Morales said there is a combination of things that will be helpful to the end user, which is Soboba in this case, in showing how they can manage their system more efficiently but also it’s a product that is delivered to the CEC so that it becomes available to the public so all the facilities that may want to use this technology can see what went well, any opportunities for improvements, etc.

“We are involved in all the meetings with different groups within the project and provide feedback as the project develops,” he said. “At this point, a lot has been focused on the construction phase.”

He said the project is going well and a major milestone is on the horizon. “Once the system is fully constructed and commissioned, that’s a huge deal and I think we are getting very close to that now.”

GRID Alternatives is a national leader in making clean, affordable solar power and solar jobs accessible to low-income communities and communities of color, and its energy access work is powering off-grid communities across the globe. GRID’s vision: a successful transition to clean, renewable energy that includes everyone. GRID’s Tribal Program helps tribal communities become self-sustaining by providing resources to assist with their clean energy goals.

For more information, www.gridalternatives.org/ie or 951-272-GRID(4743).

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