Jan. 29, 2001 - Rancheria casino Environmental Assessment released

By CANDACE CRANE Staff writer

The Sierra Miwok have moved one large step closer to their dream of self-sufficiency with the release of an Environmental Assessment detailing their plans to build a 381,250 square-foot casino and hotel complex on their 160-acre reservation in Shingle Springs.

The EA, which is now in its public comment period, also includes a request to acquire in trust for the tribe a five-acre parcel of land that would link the reservation with Highway 50. A new highway interchange and road would be constructed there, providing access to the complex.

The county Board of Supervisors will be discussing the report at tomorrow morning's meeting and invites the public to attend.

As it stands now, comments on the EA are due to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, which is the agency that will make the final decision, by Feb. 11, but the board will make a request to extend this deadline. For one thing, according to District 3 Supervisor Carl Borelli's office, the report was just received on Jan. 22. Also, three supervisors, including Borelli, are new to the board and need time to study this complex issue.

³Besides time for board members' learning,² he said, ³staff should have at least 30 days to look at it to be fair with everybody.²

Although the county will submit official comments, and other public agencies, such as the City of Placerville and the fire districts probably will too, Borrelli said it's important for citizens also to submit their own comments individually.

He also said it's essential for people to understand that the decision on the casino project is a federal, not a county, decision. It will be made by the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The county and its citizens are being given the opportunity to have their voices heard but have no jurisdiction or decision making power.

The EA sets out three alternatives. The proposed alternative is a 250-room, five-story hotel with a casino complex connected to it offering a mix of gaming, restaurants, a convention facility, child-care facilities and family fun room and banking facilities. There would be parking under and around the casino for 3,000 cars. One main road entrance would be developed from a new Highway 50 interchange providing two lanes for traffic entering and exiting the Rancheria.

The EA states that the tribe will adopt and comply with health, safety, and environmental standards and regulations no less stringent than those of the state and federal governments.

According to county attorney Tom Cumpston, who has worked on the Shingle Springs Rancheria issue for several years, the El Dorado Irrigation District has determined there is enough water capacity for the development, and the Rancheria is now on an EID meter. The project will have its own wastewater treatment plant, which will pretreat the wastewater. This is a higher standard than that required by the county for septic systems.

The other alternatives described in the EA include a no-action alternative, under which the reservation would remain in its current rural residential state and no commercial construction or new road access would be developed.

Finally, there is a reduced-intensity alternative under which a 104,000-square-foot shopping center would be developed in place of the casino complex.

The Rancheria casino has been a very emotional issue in the county ever since the Miwok erected a tent-casino on their land in 1996. At issue is the tribe's effort to become economically self-sustaining, but the commercial venture within a surrounding area of rural residential development has drawn stiff rancor from homeowners.

Not only do they not want gambling in their neighborhood, but also, traffic bound for the rancheria has had to use private residental roads because there is no direct access to it. The rancheria's commercial traffic is now banned by a homeowner association lawsuit, leaving the reservation landlocked.

The Shingle Springs Rancheria is the only Native American reservation in the U.S. without road access, according to the San Francisco office of the Department of the Interior. This severely limits the tribe's ability to create an economic base for itself.

To be self-sufficient, according to tribal spokesman Nick Foseca, is his people's dream, who was unreachable over the weekend for comment on the EA. Unemployment in his tribe has been as high as 40 percent in recent years, and numbers in the reservation population, according to Borelli's office, have been as low as 25.

The Sierra Miwok once numbered in the thousands, with major encampments throughout gold country and in Yosemite Valley. They were known by neighboring Central Valley tribes as accomplished warriors, skilled in making bows, which were coveted by other tribes as trade items.

They were driven from ancestral homelands starting in the mid 1800s during the Gold Rush and early Euro-American settlement. The Shingle Springs rancheria was granted to them in the 1920s.

Several homeowners' groups in the area continue to adamantly oppose the casino project. A coalition of groups, Voices for Rural Living and Shingle Springs Neighbors for Quality Living, is very concerned about the EA itself.

³On the cover it looks very professional,² said spokeman Brad Pearson, ³but there's very little substantiation, very little hard data to support the things spoken of. It appears the federal officials are not sure how to handle some of these issues, like traffic mitigation.²

The county board of Supervisors is also concerned about the project. Previous boards, Borelli said, have passed resolutions three times opposing gaming in the county. ³We can pass all the resolutions we want to,² Borelli said, ³but how much are they going to listen to us? They want our input but we really don't have much say in the final decision.²

Early last year, voters in districts 2, 3 and 4 voted for reservation gaming when Proposition 1A was on the ballot. Districts 1 and 5 were opposed.

Comments on the EA, due by Feb. 11 unless an extension is granted, should be addressed to: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 2800 Cottage Way, Room W-2820, Sacramento, CA 95825-1846. Copies of the EA can be ordered by calling (916) 564-4500.

E-mail Candace Crane at ccrane@mtdemocrat.net