SACRAMENTO — Swayed by emotional pleas from San Diego County residents and hints of lead poisoning in Riverside County, an initially skeptical Senate committee Thursday approved a bill that would force California Indian tribes to comply with state environmental rules when building garbage dumps on their sovereign lands.
Thursday's committee hearing before the Senate Toxics and Public Safety Management Committee provided the toughest test yet for the measure, sponsored by Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-La Mesa) and inspired by the controversy surrounding plans by the impoverished Campo tribe of Mission Indians to put a solid waste landfill on a small portion of its southeast San Diego County reservation.
Initial questions by committee chairman Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) seemed to indicate that the measure faced overwhelming odds because of a legal opinion by the Legislature's own attorney that the proposal would run afoul of federal law, which has long held that American Indians are sovereign and need only comply with federal regulations. As a result, Indian reservations are exempt from local zoning requirements and state income taxes.
But the momentum of the lengthy hearing shifted when Peace offered a parade of sometimes emotional witnesses to buttress his arguments that the Campo case is part of a nationwide strategy by large solid waste companies to use Indian sovereignty as a way around strict state and local standards for hazardous waste sites and garbage dumps.
He said that the state has a legitimate interest to make sure dumps on Indian lands don't endanger other Californians living nearby, and added that offering tribes less than equal environmental protection than their non-Indian neighbors would be treating American Indians as "second-class citizens."
To demonstrate the potential danger, Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Nixon testified that he is conducting a criminal investigation into allegations that an unregulated hazardous waste dump on an Indian reservation is leeching lead into the soil and water. The Bureau of Indian Affairs promised to perform an environmental study of the dump but never got around to it, he said.
"We have looked at an area on an Indian reservation that is highly environmentally sensitive," Nixon said, declining to name the tribe. "It is adjacent to a flood channel, it is in an overflow area. It is upgradient to several dairy farmers and upwind to several produce farms.
