Planned Dump Seen Affecting Desert Site

Plans to ship 25% of Southern California’s trash by train to a new desert landfill in Riverside County could have a significant impact on air quality at nearby Joshua Tree National Monument, according to a draft environmental impact statement released Monday.

“Increases of nitrogen oxides . . . may worsen ozone concentrations within Joshua Tree,” states the report, citing concerns of the National Park Service. “ . . . Dust and other particulate emissions from the project would contribute to the increase in desert haze which has been documented by the park service over the years.”

The Eagle Mountain waste-by-rail project also could have a significant impact on the desert tortoise, an endangered species, the report says.

Opponents seeking to derail the project are expected to seize on such issues at a pair of public hearings scheduled for late August in Palm Desert and Desert Center by the U. S. Bureau of Land Management.

But officials of the Pomona-based Mine Reclamation Corp., who want to ship up to 20,000 tons of trash a day to a deserted open-pit iron ore mine, countered Monday that the report generally supports their plan.

The study, prepared for Riverside County and the U. S. Bureau of Land Management by a private consultant, found that the design of the landfill would protect water quality and drainage and meet noise-limit standards. Moreover, contends Gary Kovall, MRC vice president, a desert landfill would have less of an impact on people than new landfills closer to major population centers.

“Twenty thousand tons a day landfilled in the South Coast Air Basin generates dust, vehicular emissions from landfill equipment and gas emissions from the decomposition of refuse,” Kovall said. “That will all be taken out of the basin.”

MRC’s plan, one of two current Southern California waste-by-rail proposals, calls for up to six trains per day to deliver compacted waste in sealed containers to the old Kaiser Steel-operated mine at Eagle Mountain, 200 miles east of Los Angeles near the community of Desert Center.

The trash, from six Southland counties, would be placed on trains at a series of transfer stations that would also house recycling centers.

South Coast Air Quality Management District officials said Monday they had not yet studied the new report’s environmental data.

In general, said Connie Day, AQMD planning office program supervisor, the agency’s main concern is “to minimize exposure to the maximum amount of people possible.”

MRC, which hopes to begin operating the landfill late next year, has signed a memo of understanding with Riverside County for a 97-year development agreement in which the county would receive between $4 and $6 per ton of trash shipped to the Eagle Mountain site. Permission for the project must also be granted by the federal government.

MRC, Kovall said Monday, is willing to help solve problems that the landfill would create. While desert tortoises now reside along the rail bed, Kovall said, his firm is prepared to turn over 3,000 acres of privately owned prime tortoise habitat to the federal government.

But such concessions do little to mollify such environmentalists as Glenn Stewart, a board member of the Desert Tortoise Council, which seeks to study, preserve and protect the endangered species.

“The deserts of North America are unique in their own right and there’s a tremendous diversity of flora and fauna,” said Stewart, a Cal Poly Pomona professor.

Joshua Tree officials had no immediate comment on the report, but when the environmental impact study began in 1989, then-Joshua Tree Supt. Rick Anderson listed a series of concerns.

“The proposed landfill is less than one mile from the Monument’s boundary and adjacent to the 92,000-acre Pinto Basin wilderness unit,” Anderson wrote. “This unit represents the most pristine example of Colorado Desert ecosystem under wilderness protection.”