Crusading Couple Trash Plan for Dump

They are the scrappiest of farmers, eking out a living in the barren desert just south of Joshua Tree National Park. Sometimes they work in the buff, their skin protected by oil from their crop of certified organic jojoba.

But don’t count Larry and Donna Charpied as just hippie holdouts producing shampoo ingredients. These desert rats, who fled urban Southern California 15 years ago for the solitude of the desert, are leaders in a fight against Eagle Mountain Landfill, a proposed dump that would handle much of urban Southern California’s trash for the next 100 years.

“We moved out here to get away from everybody and have a nice life,” said 43-year-old Larry Charpied. “And damn if it didn’t follow us.”

It’s hard to imagine a place farther away from it all. To get to the Charpieds’ home you drive past Desert Center--a cafe, gas station and ring of palm trees that some in these parts say is a UFO landing site--then down a dirt road that leads through nothing but dry chaparral.

Two mongrel dogs lie under a picnic table in the only shade in sight. The Charpieds’ home, a converted 1954 Airstream, seems to waver under the glare of the sun. It is perhaps not the place you would expect to be a nerve center in a battle over a multimillion-dollar project.

But this is Round 2 in a fight against what would be one of the world’s largest dumps. The site, an abandoned Kaiser Steel iron ore mine on the southeastern edge of the national park, could handle 20,000 tons of trash per day. About 90% of the trash would be shipped from urban centers in locked containers on trains.

The project was derailed last year when San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell ruled that its original environmental impact review contained serious flaws: ignoring among other things how the landfill would affect the national park, the threatened desert tortoise, the region’s air quality and--in the case of a major earthquake--the ground water.

Eagle Mountain Landfill officials say they have corrected the omissions. A second environmental impact report was released last month.

Eleven dusty cardboard file boxes stacked in the steamy warehouse where the Charpieds process their oil contain copies of the legal briefs Donna Charpied wrote for the San Diego lawsuit. She composed and typed them on her old Smith-Corona. In court, among multiple plaintiffs, Donna Charpied presented concerns about hazardous material and Larry Charpied argued that the landfill’s liners would not protect the region’s water in case of a major earthquake.

“The scariest thing in my life was arguing in front of a Superior Court judge,” said Donna Charpied. “I’ll never make another lawyer joke as long as I live.”

For more than two years the Charpieds went to every public hearing about the dump. They became part of a coalition of activists from across Riverside County and across the social spectrum--from a retired judge to an unemployed rock musician--that protested in front of houses and country clubs.

Donna Charpied wrote countless press releases, prompting one politician to say, “Give those kooks a fax machine and they’re dangerous.”

Both friends and foes describe the Charpieds as tart-tongued and sometimes volatile.

“Damn right I’m emotional,” said Donna Charpied, 41. “But I think those developers are just evil incarnate, and sometimes that makes it hard to be polite.”

Locals such as Ken Statler, owner of McGoo’s Mini Mart in Desert Center, see the developers as a godsend. The proposed dump could pump thousands of dollars into a local economy more shriveled than the landscape.

“It’s a safe project, and we need the money for our school and housing. We could have a sheriff,” he said. “Most people around here don’t care for the Charpieds at all. They’ll go to any extreme to kill something that’s good for the community. They’re squatting in a trailer on 10 acres in the desert and people want to know just who they are that they can squawk like this.”

The Charpieds are well aware that they are not popular among their neighbors.

“They said everything they could about us,” said Larry Charpied. “They said we were drug dealers and doing this for the glory. If I was a drug dealer, would I be living in a trailer with holes in the carpet? And we moved to the middle of the desert to be media stars?”

The Charpieds say they received phone calls threatening physical harm, but Donna Charpied took care of that by blowing a police whistle into the phone when she heard the anonymous voice.

“Ooh, you should’ve heard the dead air,” she chortles.

But sometimes, the tension catches up. “There are times I crawl into bed in the fetal position and cry for hours,” she said. “But it passes.”

This isn’t the life they had in mind when they left Santa Barbara for the desert in 1981.

“We were both working, but going nowhere,” said Larry Charpied, a graduate of UC Santa Barbara.

“And we were always saying, ‘Save the whales,’ and protesting offshore oil drilling,” said Donna Charpied, “so we decided to put our money where our mouths were--literally.”

Jojoba was being touted as the alternative oil of the future, identical in molecular structure to sperm whale oil and able to withstand higher temperatures than any other lubricant without igniting. It is used in everything from shampoo to spaceships.

The Charpieds researched jojoba, then bought 10 acres of its natural habitat--desert. They planned to hybridize the native jojoba plant and become the nursery supplying the larger farms with high oil-yield plants.

Donna Charpied, who hit the beach every day when she lived in Santa Barbara, had one thought when she first saw their arid land: “He’s moved me straight to hell.”

They walked miles gathering jojoba seeds, studying the plants, and eventually found beauty in the bareness and solitude.

“There wasn’t even a dirt road then, so we had to come back before dark to find our place,” said Larry Charpied. “In the evenings, we’d sit and fantasize what it was going to look like. We planned the fields, the warehouse. And I always pictured a 16-room house. After you live in a trailer, the ultimate fantasy is rooms you don’t need.”

Now the fields and warehouse are there. They have four acres of plants that they expect to produce 50% oil as compared to the 42% of average plants.

But Larry Charpied isn’t dreaming about the big house anymore.

“All this dump stuff literally [consumes] half our living space,” he said, looking around the living room, which is smaller than some closets. A fax machine is wedged against the couch; neatly stacked reports, letters and newspaper devour shelves. “It feels like it’s doing the same thing to our lives. All I want is my trailer back, my life back. We want this to be over.”

Kay Hazen, vice president of public affairs for the development company, says it is over.

“The thing about the Charpieds is they don’t know when they’ve won,” she said. “They got what they wanted. We addressed every concern they raised. But first the line was here, now it’s over here. C’mon already.”

The Charpieds see only one finish line: no dump.

“This isn’t over until we find real alternatives on how to process trash. Sticking it on trains and shipping it to the desert isn’t a solution,” said Donna Charpied. “And if by some unimaginable thwarting of good sense it does go through, then I have a five-year plan to shut it down.”