Don't Waste the Desert on Trash

A desert tortoise enjoys breakfast. PHOTO BY DONNA CHARPIED

The Eagle Mountain dump will be the repository for Los Angeles' garbage for the next 117 years. Proposed by Kaiser Ventures and a shell corporation, Mine Reclamation Corporation, (Kaiser/MRC), the dump was sold to the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts shortly after gaining local, state, and federal approval. This is a plan to build the World's largest garbage dump on 3,481 acres of federal land nestled in the arms of one of the Nation's premier desert environmental resources, Joshua Tree National Park. Under this plan, this part of California's fragile desert ecosystem would become a receptacle for massive amounts of waste from Southern California's ever increasing urban population. Joshua Tree Wilderness areas are located to the north, west, and south, forming an amphitheater around the proposed dump, with a buffer of a mere 2500 yards to the Park's boundary. It is in the heart of an area that offers the most refuge for the greatest number of species from human impacts of any area in southern California (Ernest Quintana, former Joshua Tree National Park Superintendent). In addition, the dump site is directly across from the Eagle Mountain Elementary School. Idling trains & trucks spewing diesel, landfill gas, dust, and support facilities are expected to pump 5,000 tons of air pollution annually affecting the school children, the Park, and residents of the surrounding area. (See www.ccaej.org for more info.)

The project began in 1987 and has been mired in litigation since it's first approvals in 1992 in State and Federal Court. On September 21, 2005, environmentalists won their lawsuit in the Federal District Court filed in 1999 by Donna & Larry Charpied, the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, and the Desert Protection Society, to reverse the land exchange and rights-of-way, among other issues of law. National Parks Conservation Association filed a companion suit shortly thereafter. The Government and Polluters have appealed the lower court's decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and the case was heard on December 6, 2007. We await the Appeals Court decision.

Professors from Pomona College, Scripps Institute, Cal Poly Pomona, and University of Redlands have brought students to the area for tours of the site and to discuss land use issues, our consumptive society and political/corporate rule in poor policy-making decisions. We have also provided tours for environmental organizations and politicians because there is nothing like ole fashion show & tell to get the message out.

Mary Moore from Scripps College and Rudy Alex from Pomona College produced a documentary on the dump, and have become Champions for Joshua Tree National Park and Desert Communities. (Contact: Donna Charpied at stopthedump@yahoo.com if you are interested in obtaining a copy of the video).

Mary, an art major with a second major in environmental analysis gathered all her trash for a semester, with help from her classmates, to build three gigantic Joshua Trees, for her Senior art Project entitled Desert Wasteland Mary writes, The perceived ease of creating a new dump site offers little incentive to slow down consumption. Instead of creating new landfills, Southern California should encourage alternative waste disposal strategies and question the amount of waste that is thrown 'away'. . ..

The ultimate goal is to place the ole Kaiser mine back to Joshua Tree for its historic significance in the development of the steel industry on the west coast, and its superlative interpretive value, and develop the Eagle Mountain townsite into a sustainable community. See http://www.ccaej.org/rockinforjoshuatree/theNEST/narrative/index.html for more on the Vision for Eagle Mountain. The N.E.S.T. by Beryl Lopez and Marlen Alvarez who are graduates of California Polytechnic University Pomona, Architecture. Pomona College Prof, Rick Worthington says, Get involved! How? Become acquainted with the area, Joshua Tree National Park is a pretty cool place to explore. Volunteer programs at colleges could help to organize such visits. Support the Give It Back! Campaign (www.ccaej.org). Be a part of the solution and recycle and reuse whatever you can. Talk to local decision-makers to begin recycling programs. A few years ago, Pomona College began a program RECOUP. At the school year's end, there is furniture, TV's sofas, refrigerators - lots of great useful stuff that would normally get thrown out. The students collect and separate the material and one year gave it away to charities and last year they sold the products and gave the money to support student programs. Just think if every college and university did this. There would be no perceived or real need to dump on our National Heritage, Joshua Tree National Park.