Indian Reservation the Most Polluted Tribal Land in California

An article by the Los Angeles Times and posted on latimes.com reports that the Torres Martinez reservation is the most polluted Native American tribal land in California. An illegal dump owned by George AuClair Jr. has been cited as a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. AuClair could be levied fines totalling millions of dollars.

The Torres Martinez reservation contains 26 illegal dumps across its 24,000 acres. Federal officials have found it a hopeless task to try to shut them down. Clancy Tenley, the EPA's tribal program manager, is quoted by the Times, ""I would say this is in its own league. I don't know of any place that has this level of pollution."

The problem for the Torres Martinez residents is that they are poor. They haven't had anything to attract tourists and only recently have they had a casino. According to the Times, to compensate for their financial deficiency, some tribal residents made their abundant land available to land developers who wanted to cut costs on waste disposal. Among products dumped on the land are trimmings from golf courses, oil, batteries, and sewage.

While AuClair's dump is bad, there is one a few miles away that is 40 feet high, 300 feet wide and nearly 1,000 feet long, composed almost entirely of human excrement. It's been dubbed Mt. San Diego, because San Diego is where the sewage originated.

Not only is there air pollution from the dumps; there also appear to be human health problems. Although AuClair has lost his hair and has headaches, he denies that pollution from his dump is the cause, says the Times. However, school nurses in the Coachella Valley have reported high levels of asthma, bronchitis and skin rashes among local students, and they say that the illegal dumps are the cause. "We think the community health has been impacted, and we want the schools to know, we want the families to know and we want the tribe to know," Rick Alvarez, assistant superintendent of the Coachella Valley Unified School District, told the Times.

Federal officials say the problem with illegal dumps began in 1989, when a tribal member agreed to allow composted sewage to be put on her land.

The Times reports that Mt. San Diego is close to three schools and beside a lot that is advertised as a future home site. State environmental documents, obtained by the Times, say that the sewage mound still "poses a significant threat not only to the...reservation but also to the neighboring communities."

The Times says that AuClair is the only tribal member involved in illegal dumping to express shame over what has happened. "We are destroying our environment," he told the Times. "I don't have the money to pay for it, but I'll be damned if I won't clean this up. Look at this place. My ancestors would roll over in their graves if they saw it."

Sources:

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dump2jun02,0,7610180.story
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1855994/posts