America's New Landfills May Be Its Indian Reservations

Waste-disposal companies are eagerly eyeing the vast lands of Native American reservations, hoping to make them dumping grounds for garbage from the nation's big cities and industries.

Kaibab Paiutes and Navajos in Arizona, Mississippi Choctaws, Mohawks in New York and the Mission Campo band have considered developments.

In Washington state, the Yakima Indian Nation is going to court to stop the building of a landfill in Klickitat County it says threatens unmarked graves.

On one side, tribal officials who have been approached on dozens of reservations have said garbage could be as good as gold for their desperately poor people. And big, sophisticated landfills would make it possible for tribes to clean up their own considerable pollution problems.

On the other, Indians who oppose the landfills and are backed by environmental groups say these projects will destroy land that is held sacred by many tribes.

"All you guys left us was our land," said Ron Valandra, who leads the opposition to a planned 5,700-acre dump on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. "Why should we set up our tribal land to take the white man's trash?"

"If companies were trying to come here, they'd get hung up on," said Gary Frazer, executive director of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. "There may be good money in it, but that can come back to haunt you later."

Proposals have been attractive to tribal administrators struggling to lure economic development onto reservations, where unemployed residents far outnumber those with jobs. The benefit for waste companies is less regulation: Although tribes must follow the Environmental Protection Agency's rules, their legal sovereignty allows them to ignore state regulations.

The industry's move onto reservations has come at the same time opposition has hardened nationwide against establishing new landfills and waste-processing plants. And new, tougher federal waste-disposal rules have increased the pressure on local governments and industries to find more environmentally benign disposal methods for the 450,000 tons of waste that are created nationwide every day.

"It's extortion," said Bradley Angel, a toxic-substance coordinator for Greenpeace who is helping dozens of tribes fight waste-site proposals. "The industry is targeting poor populations that are looking for economic development and making them the dumping grounds for the whole country."

The Rosebud landfill would cover hills and grassy draws south of Interstate 90 near the town of White River, S.D. It would accept municipal garbage, shredded tires, ash from the burning of garbage, coal and sewage sludge, as well as the tribe's own waste, which now is hauled to 14 dumps on the reservation.

"It'll be big enough to take care of all the waste in the United States. It could handle Minnesota's for the next 500 years," said Maurice Hoban, president of RSW Inc., the company planning the landfill.

Although construction hasn't started and the landfill won't be operating for at least a year, Hoban has been shopping for customers as far away as 1,000 miles from the reservation.

Rosebud tribal officials and RSW signed a contract last November that will pay the tribe $100,000 up front and at least $1 for every ton of waste taken to the landfill. The tribe can dump its own waste at the landfill free.

"It's a good fit," said Rhett Albers, who directs the project on the reservation for RSW. "They need revenue, need jobs, and we think we can address their unique problems."

Tribal officials struck their deal in secret, but as word got around the reservation late last year, opposition quickly hardened under the banner of the Good Road Coalition. It took its name from a tribal graveyard that would have been covered by the landfill, a plan RSW has since changed.

"Somebody's going to make a killing on this, but it won't be the tribal people," said Valandra, who heads the Good Road Coalition. "The tribe doesn't have the laws to protect us, and once RSW gets in here, where are they going to stop?"

Opponents fear the landfill could contaminate underground water sources, pollute the air and foul the land that tribal belief holds sacred. They're outraged about being saddled with the trash of faraway households and factories.

In addition to attracting the support of national environmental groups, the coalition has gotten the backing of Sen. Thomas Daschle, D-S.D. He plans to hold hearings later this year on what he called "reservations becoming waste dumps for the nation."

"We don't have any damn choice, pure and simple," said Cleve Neiss, the tribe's emergency-planning director who's heading the landfill project. "We're not stupid, you know. That company's not going to screw us, and we're going to make sure nobody screws up."

Neiss says the tribe is over a barrel: New federal waste rules will require it to correct its own shoddy waste-disposal practices, which he said could cost $25 million. RSW's plan for a huge regional landfill allows the tribe to solve its problem free, while enjoying profits and new jobs at the site.

"I'm more of an environmentalist than those buggers in the Good Road Coalition," Neiss said. "I live on the land. But give me an alternative."