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Published in Sonoma County Peace Press, 9/91
PeaceNet Address: sonomapp
Title: Dumping on the Sioux
This spring, the Rosebud Sioux Tribal Council, over the objection of
tribal members, signed a contract with a Connecticut-based waste disposal
firm to develop a 5,000 acre garbage dump to accept waste from
Minneapolis, Denver, and other cities. The firm has never before
developed or operated a waste disposal site.
The Sioux are not alone. Reservations in California, Arizona, Oklahoma,
New York and South Dakota have also been approached by waste disposal
firms with plans for large-scale garbage and hazardous waste disposal
sites. The garbage companies are looking for ways to dodge state
environmental regulations. Garbage and hazardous waste firms know that
the majority of reservations, which are governed by sovereign tribal
leaders, have neither strict environmental regulations to control such
sites, nor the technical personnel to properly enforce them. The garbage
companies also realize that many tribes, faced with unemployment rates of
80 percent or higher, are desperate for both jobs and capital.
The contract signed by the Rosebud Tribal Council is scandalously
exploitive. It states in part: "In no event shall any environmental
regulations or standards of South Dakota be applicable to this project."
It further forbids the Sioux from enacting new laws to govern the waste
project. The only regulation would come from the Environmental Protection
Agency, which has neither sufficient funding nor staff to properly
oversee existing waste dumps, much less new ones. The contract also
provides that the disposal firm, not the tribe, will have the "sole
discretion" to determine content at the dump site, as well as to monitor
the quality of groundwater running beneath the site.
If the tribe attempts to develop environmental standards to protect its
people more fully than EPA regulations provide for, the tribe would be
forced to compensate the disposal firm for any profits lost on account of
the new standards.
In return for playing host to other people's garbage forever, the Sioux
will be paid slightly over $1 a ton.
Source: Adapted by Shirley Johnston from an article by Thomas A.
Daschle, originally printed in the Christian Science Monitor