Hunt for Trash Site Turns to Indian Lands : County Envisions Profits for Tribes Allowing Landfills on Reservations

Eager to find a palatable site in North County for a much-needed garbage dump, San Diego County officials have begun eyeing several Indian reservations in the region as a possible spot for a landfill.

County officials said Wednesday that half a dozen sites on Indian reservations are being considered, but that none of the tribes has been approached.

While past efforts to find a suitable place for a landfill in North County have met a chorus of opposition from community groups and environmentalists, county officials say they hope the reception will be different on the reservations.

As county officials envision it, the Indians could reap a sizable profit from a landfill operation, which could be established in a remote canyon far from any inhabitants.

“I think there’s the potential for a win-win situation if everything can be worked out,” said Kathy Lehtola, a program manager with the county. “There are tribes in North County with rocky and pretty much unusable land. They are poor and lack economic advantages. We can, perhaps, solve some of these various problems.”

Indian as Consultant

The county has hired Roy Lattin, an Indian, to act as a consultant in discussions with leaders of North County reservations. Lattin is a professional planner who has worked with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Assn., Lehtola said.

Lehtola would not specify the reservations being spotlighted in the study and emphasized that the Indian lands might not even be among the four to six finalists that will be selected in the next few weeks from a slate of about 20 contenders peppered across North County.

The region being studied includes eight reservations occupied by the Mission, Rincon, La Jolla, Yuima, Pala, Mesa Grande, Los Coyotes and Santa Ysabel Indian tribes.

Tribal leaders at most of the reservations could not be reached for comment, but at least one of the Indian bands has already taken a stand against a trash dump.

Rick Mazzetti, tribal administrator at the Rincon Indian Reservation, said the 400 reservation residents considered opening a dump in the past, but decided against it.

A spokeswoman for the Santa Ysabel tribe, meanwhile, said she “really couldn’t say” what the response of the 200 Indians living on that reservation would be if approached by the county about opening a dump.

Opposition to the idea of a county dump on reservation land has been voiced by an advocate of a proposed landfill site north of Escondido.

Melba Bishop, a former Oceanside councilwoman and spokeswoman for a property owner hoping to develop Keys Canyon as a landfill, said she is concerned because the Indian lands might not come under the stringent environmental laws that other sites would.

Bishop also raised the specter that problems could arise with a contract involving an Indian tribe, which she characterized as “a separate nation” unfettered by local laws and regulations.

Lehtola said county officials are aware of such potential pitfalls, but feel solutions are at hand.

A landfill on a reservation would be operated under the auspices of the county, and therefore would be subject to the same close environmental scrutiny as any other site, she said.

Moreover, a contract signed with an Indian tribe can be adequately safeguarded to protect the interests of the general public as well as those living on the reservation, Lehtola said. For example, a tribe could form a corporation that would be subject to the same state laws that guide any other business entity, she said.

“There has got to be advantages to both sides for this type of proposal to work,” Lehtola said.

Officials are hurrying to find a suitable landfill site to avoid a trash crisis during the coming decades.

To stave off problems, county officials have launched a multi-pronged effort involving the use of recycling, trash-to-energy plants and landfills.

In 1986, the county hired a consultant to search for potential landfill sites, but the six identified were deemed to be largely unacceptable because of environmental worries and the complaints of surrounding landowners.

The county expanded the area being surveyed to include a large swath of the rural eastern outback and hired a new consultant, SCS Engineers of Long Beach, in 1987. In addition, the Board of Supervisors ordered county waste management officials to begin studying the use of transfer stations, centrally located sites where trash trucks haul refuse and shift it into larger trucks for transport to a distant landfill.

After reviewing more than 50 spots initially, the consultant has narrowed the field to about 20. More intensive reviews of geological data and information about key factors such as ground-water levels will now be considered to reduce the list to about half a dozen finalists by mid-February, Lehtola said. At that time, a series of community meetings will be held to get public input, she said.

Whether the reservation sites will be among those selected remains to be seen, she said. “We will approach the tribes if any of the reservations look like they’ll make the next cut down to the final four to six,” Lehtola said.