Efforts by a subsidiary of Kaiser Ventures to establish a huge landfill operation at Eagle Mountain have received a succession of legal setbacks in recent years. A decision made earlier this week appears to be the final nail in the coffin. We mix our metaphors, as Dan Stork reports that the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County have thrown in the towel…
In a notice posted on its web site, www.lacsd.org on May 23, the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County announced that it “will cease negotiations with MRC [the Mine Reclamation Corporation — which had been trying to implement the Eagle Mountain landfill] and directed staff to undertake an ongoing evaluation of long-term waste management strategies.” In 2000, the Sanitation Districts entered into a purchase and sale agreement with MRC, a subsidiary of Kaiser Ventures, for the Eagle Mountain Landfill Project located in Riverside County, adjacent to the eastern portion of Joshua Tree National Park. The project would have provided long-term disposal capacity to be accessed by rail. The agreement was contingent upon successful resolution of ongoing federal litigation and the transfer of entitlements and requisite permits. Following a sequence of court decisions that went against it, MRC declared bankruptcy in 2011. The Sanitation Districts and MRC have been in negotiations since that time regarding the property and project. The National Parks Conservation Association is celebrating this week’s decision as the true end of a fifteen-year-long fight against the landfill project.
