After showing their feelings toward Indian gaming by being one of only fifteen counties to vote against Propositions 94-97, Amador County residents expressed their feelings about the local Indian gaming issue, the proposed Buena Vista Rancheria, at a meeting Thursday evening in Ione. The made it clear to the County Board of Supervisors that they wanted the Board to continue the fight.
According to the announcement of meetings to discuss the issue, the county can either accept the Intergovernmental Services Agreement that has already been negotiated, or continue litigation opposing the casino. The Ledger-Dispatch reports that eighteen community members spoke in favor of continued litigation, while none spoke in favor of accepting the ISA. Earlier in the week, the Amador County Unified School District voted unanimously to oppose the ISA.
I plan on attending as many of the future meetings as I can. There are three more scheduled.
One wonders where has democracy gone when a very small group of people can literally come in to a community and adversely affect the entire community of thousands of residence without any concern for the greater welfare of the community. That is basically the license tribes have in their greedy pursuit.
But as Cathy Christian, a Sacramento attorney hired by the county to provide outside counsel, explained, “Amador County has been put between a rock and a hard place. It’s a rotten situation. The tribe can start a casino no matter what.”
The ISA has been called inadequate in mitigating the toll the casino will take on the community at Lake Camanche, not to mention the county as a whole. At issue are roads, water, sewage, public safety, and land and home values. All will deteriorate, and given the limited resources of the area, there is little that can be done to mitigate the negative affects of a second casino in the county.
“The dollars they are throwing at us won’t make up for the harm this casino will produce,” was the feeling of Ione resident Tom Bamert.
“Amador County has been put between a rock and a hard place. It’s a rotten situation. The tribe can start a casino no matter what.”
That may be an understatement from Sacramento attorney Cathy Christian, hired to provide outside counsel. It is certainly a grim assessment, but true. Because tribes fall under federal jurisdiction and are considered sovereign nations, they seem to be able to do whatever they want, regardless of the larger environmental, social, or community implications. So much for all those television commercials we were subjected to that showed a Native American crying over the spoiled environment. I guess a casino doesn’t have any negative environmental impact; or it could just be the money.
Sheriff Martin Ryan says that the payment of $27 million proposed for law enforcement and criminal justice would provide only “some semblance of protection.” I don’t know about you, but “some semblance” just doesn’t cut it for me. I’d feel quite a bit more comfortable with assurances that public safety was completely addressed by the tribe. “Gaming takes a terrible toll on our community,” Ryan went on to say.
While still on public safety, let’s take a look at fire protection. As the ISA stands I understand it has language about “fair share” on the cost associated with fire protection. Sounds good, but what does it mean? According to CAL FIRE division chief Mike Kirkley nothing. Amador County is covered by volunteer fire protection. “The fair share of zero is zero,” said Kirkley.
So, the ISA comes up way short on public safety. We get “some semblance of protection” against crime, and “zero” against for fire protection, which includes emergency medical response.
Water. Anyone who has lived in Amador County for any length of time understands that water is a precious commodity not to be trifled with. Mike Israel, the county’s Environmental Health Director says the casino will need between 40 and 50 thousand gallons of water per day. Where does it come from?
If that quantity of water is not available from wells or if the casino’s wells draw down the water table too far, he said, “There may be other sources available.” When pressed for names of other sources, Israel’s mention of Jackson Valley Irrigation District water brought the evening’s only chorus of “no’s.” For wastewater, he said, “The plan is to construct a tertiary treatment plant.”
The ISA doesn’t adequately address traffic and road issues. The area where the casino is proposed, along Coal Mine Road in Buena Vista, is no where near ready to begin handling the traffic that the casino hopes to draw. It would be great if people would just bypass Buena Vista and continue up the hill to the established casino, but that isn’t likely to happen. Narrow two lane roads used mainly for getting to and from Lake Camanche and the movement of agriculture equipment is no place to even begin thinking about building a casino. The proposed mitigation is to put in some new stoplights. Sure, that’ll help.
People spoke about single-lane roads in the area, 20 school bus stops, flooding of the roads, dangerous tight curves, careless drivers, wagons and horses on the roads, and alcohol.
To mitigate against these realities will be extremely expensive, time consuming, and ruinous to the rural environment that we all enjoy and want to preserve. There are some things that cannot be mitigated against.
Finally, not mentioned in the article is something that just cannot be mitigated against at all. Housing and land values in the area surrounding will surely plummet. Many in the area have already lost value with the burst of the “housing bubble,” and further erosion of home and land values have the potential of causing unrecoverable devastation. Mitigate that!
As you can tell, I’m not happy about the Buena Vista Rancheria. It goes beyond a “not-in-my-backyard” attitude. I moved up here five years ago because my wife and I needed to move closer to Stockton where she works from Sacramento, where I still work. We didn’t want to pay the price of moving to Elk Grove, and it’s a good thing we didn’t. We decided to build at Lake Camanche, close enough to work for both of us, and far from the rush of anyplace along the 99 corridor. Unfortunately, the rush seems to have followed, and I am saddened, not just because it followed me to my back yard, but more so to the backyards of all of us who love our rural way of life.
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February 22, 2008 at 4:20 pm
[...] A friend of mine, Debbie Dunn, and I were chatting in the halls of the new county administrative building one evening, and she had mentioned a very good point. In the Pledge of Allegiance with our hands over our hearts, we recite: “…one nation, under God, indivisible…” Debbie and I agreed about the significance of this pledge, and gave me food for thought these past few weeks as I sat through two full workshops and three presentations regarding the Buena Vista casino. [...]