Ione and County See Same Flaws In Buena Vista DTIER

Tuesday, 20 March 2007 23:26

Ione and County See Same Flaws In Buena Vista DTIER

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The city of Ione has established their position with the Buena Vista Band of Miwok Indians. That position has not changed within a year’s time or with another TEIR. The City and its officials say the new Draft Tribal Environmental Impact report is still not sufficient in how it addresses mitigations for impacts that will be caused by the tribe’s Flying Cloud Casino. The city addresses traffic issues and what is termed as “gridlock” in downtown Ione, as patrons and workers of the proposed casino are anticipated to clog local roads. This leads the city to discuss the staffing of the Ione Police department and the need to increase staffing to two fulltime officers on each shift, plus additional supervisory personnel. The costs of this alone are estimated at 100,000 dollars per officer and 115,000 a year for an additional sergeant.

The city also states that fire and emergency services will also be taxed not only in the city but through mutual aid to surrounding communities such as the Jackson Valley area. Public safety also includes environmental conditions such as the water situation in Ione which is tenuous at best. The City addresses another draw down on local water sources and indicates that under federal Law the tribe must performing testing that shows identifiable impacts associated with groundwater extraction. Amador County Officials agree with the overview presented by the city of Ione and goes as far as stating that the draft tribal Environmental Impact report is deficient in many important respects. Although, the County acknowledges that the new TEIR is substantially longer the previous attempt by the tribe, the county states it is not more substantive in its content and still contains an incomplete analysis of many of the critical areas of impacts and mitigations.

The county states that although the tribe dedicates a great deal of the new draft documents and its contents to discussing water and waste water issues, there is still inadequate details and no real resolutions presented by the tribe to critical areas like how they will supply the casino with water and how they will dispose of the casinos waste water. Again the lack of detail is cited by the county as an inadequacy of the new Draft TEIR. Many of the areas discussed include comments by the tribe that the impacts are significant and will require mitigations. However, the county notes there is no detailed statement made about what these mitigations measures will be to address what the tribe describes as significant impacts.

The county also emphasizes that the land proposed for the Flying Cloud Casino is still in a “fee title” and owned by the tribe. This means that any endeavors other than gaming, once gaming is approved by the federal government under the federal Indian Gaming Rules of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, will be subject to state and local rules. If any activity besides gaming, for example a hotel, will be subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. This could have a big impact on any projects to be developed in conjunction with the casino.