Judge Delays Land Swap

A Department of Interior administrative judge has halted a land swap by the Bureau of Land Management that is necessary for the development of a huge garbage dump east of Palm Springs that would serve much of Southern California for 100 years.

Judge David L. Hughes ordered a stay on the land exchange because of a pending appeal to the Interior Department by opponents of the Eagle Mountain landfill, located near Desert Center, who contend that the dump would cause irreparable harm to the environment.

Hughes ordered that the appeal be expedited but noted in his ruling that critics of the landfill showed merit in challenging the land exchange between the land management bureau and Kaiser Resources and Mine Reclamation Corp., co-developers of the dump.

In his ruling, issued Tuesday in Arlington, Va., Hughes said that the bureau action contained procedural flaws, and that he found “serious, substantial, difficult and doubtful questions” about the land exchange.

The land swap, approved by the land management officials in October, gave Kaiser 3,481 acres of bureau land at the former open-pit iron ore mine and permission to haul garbage by railroad across government lands in exchange for giving the bureau nearly $140,000 and 2,846 acres that is considered valuable for the preservation of the desert tortoise.