Judge Blocks Proposal for Huge Dump : Garbage: Ruling says environmental report failed to consider impact the Eagle Mountain landfill would have on desert and ground water.

Plans to construct the world’s largest garbage dump--known as Eagle Mountain, and big enough to handle Southern California’s trash for 115 years--were derailed Tuesday by a judge’s ruling that the project’s environmental impact review contains serious flaws.

Among the inadequacies in the environmental review is the fact that the developer ignored how the landfill would affect the neighboring Joshua Tree National Monument, including the region’s “natural peace and solitude, the clean air, the pristine desert,” said San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell.

In her 18-page ruling, she said the review also failed to adequately consider what effect the landfill would have on the threatened desert tortoise, on the region’s ground water in the event of a major earthquake, and on the expected growth of the small hamlet of Desert Center, including how that growth could affect the desert environment.

Riverside County judges deferred the lawsuit to the San Diego jurist because Riverside County was a defendant in the contested environmental impact report.

Eagle Mountain officials say they will correct the omissions and resubmit an impact report to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors. The board approved the controversial project in 1992 by a 3-2 vote, but a new board majority opposes it. The November election could cause board support of Eagle Mountain to go either way.

“This is a great day for the desert,” said Donna Charpied, a jojoba farmer who lives two miles from the landfill site, 200 miles east of Los Angeles in central Riverside County. “The issue here was water, water and water, and the EIR clearly did not show that our ground water could be protected.”

Dan Roman, another lawsuit plaintiff, characterized McConnell’s ruling as “a major victory for the people who live in the California desert. It’s time for the people of Los Angeles County and other urban areas to start addressing real alternatives to solid waste management. The desert is not an alternative and will not be California’s toilet. We won’t let it happen.”

The Eagle Mountain project had progressed the furthest among several proposals to deal with Southern California’s garbage in a wholesale, long-term manner--by transferring urban trash by rail to huge dumping grounds in relatively isolated areas. Similar projects are on the drawing boards for Imperial and San Bernardino counties.

Eagle Mountain is a onetime open pit iron ore mine dug by Kaiser Steel Corp. from 1948 to 1983; its three pits, up to two miles long, are large enough to accommodate 20,000 tons of garbage daily for at least 115 years.

Until McConnell’s ruling on Tuesday, the project faced only two more substantial hurdles: final approval by the California Integrated Waste Management Board in Sacramento, and a judge’s pending decision on a controversial land swap between Eagle Mountain and the federal Bureau of Land Management so enough land could be packaged for the project.

But with McConnell’s decision, Eagle Mountain must again win permission from Riverside County.

Richard A. Daniels, president of Mine Reclamation Corp., which has shepherded the Eagle Mountain project since 1989, said he was “disappointed but not discouraged” by McConnell’s ruling.

Daniels expressed confidence that Riverside supervisors will approve a redrawn impact report because of the need for a huge dump to serve not only Southern California but Riverside County itself.

The company--owned 60% by Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., the nation’s second-largest solid waste disposal company--has spent “tens of millions of dollars” on its investment so far, he said.

But even as Houston-based BFI reconsiders its role in the project, the local firm has enough resources to pursue Eagle Mountain at least through the approval and development stages, Daniels said.

BFI spokesman Peter Block in Houston said an announcement on the firm’s involvement in Eagle Mountain will be made within weeks--and that reconsideration of its role was under way even before Tuesday’s ruling by McConnell.

Joel Moskowitz, attorney for Eagle Mountain’s opponents, said the judge’s rejection of the impact report was not necessarily the project’s death knell.

“Clearly they can fix the EIR--the environmental equivalent of truth in advertising--by rewriting it to properly disclose the environmental effects of the project,” he said. “But having done so, they’ve then got to go back to the decision-makers for judgment on whether the environmental consequences are too high to pay for this facility.”

County Supervisor Bob Buster, who will continue on the board even after November’s election, said he challenges the need for a dump as large as Eagle Mountain--particularly since the county would be liable for any environmental disasters caused there.

Times researcher Kate McCarthy in San Diego contributed to this story.