Statement of Robert Smith, Chairman of the Pala Band of Mission Indians, Regarding Senate Bill 833
On behalf of Chairman Smith and the Pala Band of Mission Indians, I wish to express the Tribe’s dismay with the proposed Board of Supervisors’ letter opposing Senate Bill 833, a bill which would protect critical water resources and sites considered sacred by Native Americans from the proposed Gregory Canyon Landfill.
In contrast to what the draft letter states, SB 833 does not restrict the County’s ability to site new landfills as it only applies to this landfill. The County has had no authority over the siting of the proposed Gregory Canyon landfill since Proposition C passed in 1994. The key point is that the siting decision was removed from the Board’s hands by the developers of the proposed landfill in 1994 and not by SB 833.
The Pala Band and other Tribes have consistently opposed this project since the late 1980s, long before they had the financial ability to “even the playing field.” One reason for that opposition was the project’s impacts to sacred sites, Gregory Mountain and Medicine Rock. Even reports prepared by the County as early as 1990 clearly identified these sites as sacred and the Final Environmental Impact Report for the project termed the impacts to these sites “significant and unmitigable.” The problem is that, as was done before, the unelected Director of the County Department of Environmental Health simply will find that there are “overriding considerations” that support the desecration of these sacred sites and will approve the project.
And for what are those “considerations”? There is no need for the Gregory Canyon landfill. Disposal rates have decreased in the County by 25% in the last five years, and the 2010 update to the County Integrated Waste Management Plan concludes that 18 years of capacity remains in existing landfills and their proposed expansions without Gregory Canyon. Critically, that analysis is based on a conservative 50% diversion rate. If the diversion rate increases to 60%, there would be another 28 or more years of capacity left. Notably, the Senate Environmental Quality committee determined that there is 78 million tons of landfill capacity remaining, which will provide adequate capacity for another 25 years.
Given this capacity and the decrease in trash generated in the County, it will only be a matter of time before the proponents of the project will need to import trash from out of the County to service the enormous debts they have taken on. If the Board truly believed that this project is needed for “North County” trash, it would pass an Ordinance barring the facility from receiving out-of-County trash.
Gregory Canyon always has been the wrong place for a landfill. While it may be unfortunate that state legislation is needed to stop the desecration of these sacred sites and to protect critical resources, that is what SB 833 will do. The Pala Band supports the bill and believes that the County’s extraordinary action is unnecessary and wrong.
