Valley Voice

Bob Buster and Donna Charpied
Special to The Desert Sun
December 3, 2005

Federal District Judge Robert Timlin's recent ruling on the proposed Eagle Mountain dump is a huge victory for the desert communities, Joshua Tree National Park and Riverside County. This is the third successful lawsuit filed by environmentalists in 18 years, and it likely sounds the death knell for this ill-conceived plan.

The ruling kills the project because it knocks out the key financial assumption that the megadump's economic prospects rested on: free land. It kills the project because it determines that the scheme to get this land was illegal. It finally exposes the dump's corporate proponents as speculators on land they didn't own and were unwilling to pay for.

The deal arranged by Kaiser Ventures and Mine Reclamation Corp. with the federal Bureau of Land Management would have given away 3,500 acres of pristine desert land next to Joshua Tree National Park for $77 an acre, and the 465-acre Eagle Mountain town site for $106 an acre. In return, the public would receive 10 useless parcels of degraded desert land bisected by the old rail spur between Interstate 10 and the Salton Sea.

The court held that the Bureau of Land Management "unlawfully" appraised the lands it was trading away as if it was all raw desert acreage. The judge found that the bureau not only ignored the value of existing improvements and the revenue generated from the town's correctional facility, but also failed to account for the huge revenue potential that the world's largest garbage dump would generate.

By not requiring the payment of fair market value (estimated today at well above the $40 million the Los Angeles County Sanitation District was willing to pay for the project), the bureau was in effect helping to finance the dump with a huge up-front subsidy at taxpayers' expense.

Close call

What does this federal court ruling mean? It means that the incalculable value of Joshua Tree National Park will have a better chance of being protected. No amount of dollars in "mitigation" ever could dispel the negative reality of a dump next to the park. About 1.4 million people visited the park in 2003 - a record - bringing $48 million in tourism benefits to our area, according to Park Superintendent Curt Sauer.

It means that more mile-long trash trains and hundreds of trucks won't be rolling through our county, spewing diesel exhaust for the next 117 years on already congested rail lines and highways.

It means that Riverside County residents' concern that our area and national park not become degraded by becoming the "utility basement" for Los Angeles and other coastal areas has been heard. Riverside County residents never had any need of this dump for our own trash.

We hope it means that there will be a new impetus to reforming our throwaway economy. Investing in reducing and recycling more of our trash will help us avoid being forced into a future of high trash rates caused by expensive distant goliath dumps like Eagle Mountain.

A lot to lose

The court's decision comes at an opportune time. Joshua Tree National Park, 80 percent of which is in Riverside County, has just become a lot more accessible and friendly to Coachella Valley and Riverside County residents. The opening of the Cottonwood Visitor Center, off Interstate 10 between Indio and Chiriaco Summit, is an easy drive and corrects the old impression that the park was solely oriented toward San Bernardino County.

The Eagle Mountain's historic iron mines and townsite can become the eastern interpretive center and gateway to the Colorado Desert portion of the park. Certainly, the bureau's 3,500 acres that are part of a "keyhole" in the park's eastern flanks should be restored back to Joshua Tree National Park.

Unfortunately, three citizen-initiated lawsuits on economic and environmental grounds were needed to bring this project to its knees. What will it take for our local elected leaders to learn that protecting Riverside County's environment is the best economic investment we can make?

Reach Bob Buster, Riverside County supervisor, and Donna Charpied, executive director for Citizens for the Chuckwalla Valley: bbuster@rcbos.org and laronna@earthlink.net