Goshutes winning support for a non-nuke landfill

Bales of construction and business waste are not as politically hot as spent nuclear fuel rods, and thus the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians is finding its latest project smoother sailing than its last, more controversial endeavor.

During a hearing Wednesday evening by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, no comments were given about the Goshutes' plan to build a landfill project that would take compacted cubes of waste from two solid waste companies.

The tribe has struck a contract with CR Group, made up of Ace Disposal and Metro Waste. The contract must be approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and, ultimately, by Congress.

Tribal chairman Leon Bear said that this project, like the contract for spent nuclear fuel with Envirocare, is essential to the economic future of the tribe's some 150 members, about 20 of which still live on the 18,000-acre reservation located 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City in Tooele County.

The proposal, introduced to tribal members and other Tooele County residents Wednesday, includes collecting construction waste from various home and office sites, as well as restaurant and other business waste and taking it to two facilities where recyclable materials such as cardboard, carpet pad, concrete, wood, hard plastics and scrap metal would be removed by hand, said Paul Richards with Metro Waste.

The remaining refuse, mostly dirt, glass, branches and small pieces of waste, would then be compressed into 4,000-pound bricks. They would then be loaded onto flatbed trucks, covered with a tarp and transported to the reservation's landfill via I-80.

Phil Reese, a consultant for the tribe's environmental impact study, said the 20-acre landfill cells would be 20 feet deep and lined with clay, a thick plastic liner and gravel to prevent seepage into the soil. A special pipe system would catch any liquid runoff created by rain, which would then be funneled into a retention pond. Once a cell was full, it would be capped with another liner and covered with topsoil and revegetated according to federal regulations.

Once the landfill is in full operation, it may create up to 20 jobs for tribal members and earn the Goshutes $15,000 a month.

Public comments Wednesday were limited to basic questions.

"This looks like a great project to me," said Tooele County resident Bill Hogan. "There's just not a lot you can do in Skull Valley." Hogan did ask about water collection and transportation issues, which were answered to his satisfaction by consultants.