Landfill project approved for Goshute reservation

A planned landfill project on the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation has received the approval needed to move forward.

The Tekoi Balefill, which was recently approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, will be located on the southwest corner of the 18,000-acre reservation in Tooele County, about 50 miles from Salt Lake City. No hazardous waste will be stored at the site, officials say.

Construction and demolition waste and common municipal waste for the CR Group, comprised of the solid waste companies Ace Disposal and Metro Waste, will be dumped at the site.

The waste will be transported to the reservation after all recyclables are removed, said Paul Richards, chief executive officer of CR Group.

Tribal Chairman Leon Bear said jobs and income from the land lease will be a "tremendous and necessary benefit" for the estimated 150 tribal members, about 20 of whom live on the reservation.

He said the tribe's Pony Express gas station will also benefit, since it will fuel the diesel trucks. He said funds from the project could be used for reservation infrastructure, "new electric lines, maybe even sewer; we're still developing ideas." The project is expected to generate at least $15,000 per month for the tribe, with the potential for much more when it is fully developed.

About 36 jobs will be created in trucking and at the landfill, which will be viable for 50 years, Richards said. CR Group has agreed to give hiring preference to tribal members, based on their abilities, and will also pay a royalty per ton of waste to the tribe, he said.

By majority vote in August 2003, Goshute Tribal members entered into the lease with CR Group, but the project's support is not unanimous.

Margene Bullcreek said she's concerned about the possibility of groundwater contamination from the waste, and she's not sure what kind of waste will be stored there.

"I do disapprove because what Leon Bear is doing is trying to make a wasteland out of our reservation," she said. "I don't think we should be taking other people's trash . . . We don't know what kind of trash they're bringing out there."

The tribe has been divided on disposal issues since a proposal was made to store spent nuclear fuel rods in a Private Fuel Storage facility on the reservation. That issue remains undecided.

Bear said his opponents "don't want anything on the reservation . . . We've exhausted everything we could to promote it could be safely done, we would buy back any cultural resources."