Tribe agrees to clean up trash heap

By Kevin Woster, Journal staff | Saturday, December 29, 2007

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RED SHIRT - Residents of this small cluster of houses in the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation are hopeful, if skeptical, that a recent court settlement will clean up the wind-blown piles of trash that have marred the prairie just west of the community for years.

A consent decree filed Dec. 14 in U.S. District Court in Rapid City requires the Oglala Sioux Tribe to clean up the Red Shirt site and 10 others like it elsewhere on the reservation. The tribe has agreed to spend $3.47 million on the cleanup and maintenance project, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Indian Health Service providing $275,000.

The court order requires the tribe to clean up the sites by June 1, 2008, and follow up to see that they are properly managed and picked up. A private consultant will monitor the cleanup to assure it is completed as required. The consultant will be available for at least five years to consider complaints about the operation of the waste sites, and could require further cleanup work.

Plaintiffs, including tribal members and landowners on the reservation near the solid-waste sites, will have the option of returning to court if it doesn't.

It all sounds good to Robert Two Bulls, a retired minister and president of the Red Shirt Village board.

"It would be nice if they would really get that all cleaned up," Two Bulls said. "It's been kind of ongoing, the problem. We've been calling and calling quite frequently, and they say they'll clean it up. I just lost trust in them."

Even so, Two Bulls said: "We're hopeful that something good will happen."

Rapid City lawyer Jim Leach thinks it already has. The court settlement will require the cleanup of troublesome sites deemed harmful to the environment and threats to human health and safety. The issue began in court in 1985, brought by lead plaintiff Mattie Blue Legs, a reservation resident.

The case eventually resulted in court-mandated improvements at the sites, which are supposed to be collection and transfer points, not dumps.

The trash is supposed to be collected at 10 transfer sites across the reservation, taken to a baling facility and buried at a center landfill. But over the years, the transfer sites were neglected and quickly deteriorated.

Leach revived the case and had represented relatives of Mattie Blue Legs, who is deceased. Leach currently represents plaintiffs Margaret Jenkins, who now lives out of state, and Roddy Thompson.

Leach said the design and operation of the sites themselves and failures in proper maintenance and pickups often left reservation residents with few reasonable trash-       disposal options. Residents of the area should not be blamed, he said.

"The problem is the sites," Leach said. "The way they've been left by the government, no human being could make them look good."

The Journal was unsuccessful last week in reaching Oglala Tribe officials or their attorney in the case to discuss the cleanup work.

Two Bulls said there have been periodic improvements in the Red Shirt site, sometimes after complaints or news coverage. But overall, the trash piles up and is often joined by old appliances.

Wind blows it across the prairie. Dogs and other animals scavenge the piles, ripping into bags and strewing trash about.

"Dog, wild dogs and even coyotes get in there," Two Bulls said. "And it's supposed to just be a staging area, and get picked up every week."

Two residents of Red Shirt, who declined to give their names, said dogs often drag materials from the site back into the community. Sometimes, the trash blows into their yards, they said.

The cleanup list includes 10 transfer sites, as well as a dump site near Pine Ridge, which is expected to become a transfer site.

The list also includes a  collection and transfer site on an island of Oglala tribal land outside of reservation boundaries near Martin.

When properly managed at the transfer sites and collected regularly, the trash can be baled and buried at a central landfill between Red Shirt and Oglala, a process that will protect the environment and the health of reservation residents.

That's the stage in the legal process that Leach looks forward to the most.

"The next level will be when those things actually get clean and stay clean, and people don't have to live in that kind of environment," he said.

"No one in the world could ever want those dumps to be in the condition they've been in."

Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com