Which word
doesn’t belong with “national park?” Wildflowers,
wildlife, hiking, night sky, garbage dump? No doubt you answered
“garbage dump,” yet the biggest landfill in the United
States may be developed right next to California’s Joshua
Tree National Park.
Fortunately, a lawsuit filed by the
National Parks Conservation Association and others is trying to
halt this misguided proposal. The lawsuit, currently under appeal
in the federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, argues that
the landfill fails to serve the public interest, that a land
exchange making the dump possible was improper, and the
environmental impact statement flawed.
“Who would have
thought that a federal agency that is supposed to be looking out
for the best interests of U.S. citizens would have allowed this
ridiculous proposal to come this far?” says Ron Sundergill,
Pacific Region director of the National Parks Conservation
Association.
The dump would receive 20,000 tons of trash
each day from all over southern California, and over its 117-year
lifetime, 700 billion pounds of trash would accumulate, towering
1,500 feet high over the rock-studded desert. What’s harder
to believe is that the landfill would be surrounded on three sides
by Joshua Tree National Park.
It doesn’t take a
rocket scientist to realize that a dump this size would destabilize
the fragile desert ecosystem. Losers almost certainly would be
desert bighorn and the endangered desert tortoise; winners would be
predatory ravens benefiting from the new free food. Noise and light
pollution from the trucks and machinery would definitely impair the
naturalness of the park, and although some will argue that the
nation needs more landfills, it’s hard to make the case that
this particular project is in the best interest of the public.
The way the deal came about is also questionable. The
BLM’s land transfer with Kaiser Ventures was improper because
it disregarded the Federal Lands Management Policy Act. The act
states that land transfers cannot significantly conflict with
management on adjacent federal lands. Yet by trading land to create
the nation’s biggest dump, the BLM undermined the Park
Service’s management of sensitive lands within Joshua Tree
National Park.
It’s not just the ecological
ramifications of this battleship-sized landfill that should have
people worried. A National Parks Conservation Association report
showed that in 2001, the 1.3 million visitors to Joshua tree
contributed $46.3 million to the local economy and supported 1,115
jobs. Desert tortoises and bighorn sheep wouldn’t be the only
species harmed by the Eagle Mountain Landfill.
The national parks nonprofit and other individuals also say that the land exchange between the BLM and Kaiser Ventures was flawed. When the public land necessary for the exchange was appraised, the BLM identified its value in vague terms — “holding for speculative investment and future capital appreciation” —
instead of acknowledging that its acquisition by Kaiser Ventures
would likely mean it would become a major landfill. This resulted
in an undervalued appraisal and taxpayers getting a raw deal.
Ultimately, the swap of 3,481 acres of public land brought in a
mere $20,100. Kaiser’s non-contiguous parcels that were
transferred to the BLM also added little value to public lands. The
paracels lie along the Eagle Mountain Rail Line, the very rail line
that would haul trash to the landfill.
Although the
National Park Service has accepted the environmental impact
statement for the Eagle Mountain Landfill, some federal agency
representatives say they remain concerned about the impact of the
dump. It is the National Parks Conservation Association and other
park-lovers who have taken on the job of challenging the EIS
because of its narrowly defined statement of purpose. The EIS is,
in fact, a facsimile of Kaiser Venture’s business plan, and
the effect of its narrow purpose statement led to limited
alternatives. For example, there is no mention anywhere in the EIS
of investigating other landfill sites on BLM land or increasing the
size and use of existing landfills.
Allowing the
nation’s largest landfill next to a national park is a little
like building a roller coaster next door to an elementary school.
It’s simply a poor idea. Let’s hope that the court
understands that a national park visited by millions of people each
year can’t be neighbors to a noisy, spreading landfill. The
tragedy, though, is that a court must make this decision.
Seth Shteir is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is
vice president of the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society in
southern California.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
