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Help the Sierra Club Fight the Cortina Landfill Help protect hundreds of acres of pristine landscape, rugged canyons, open space, habitat and agricultural land in southwestern Colusa County from millions of tons of garbage. The Cortina Ridge, located about 10 miles southwest of Williams, is a beautiful place of oak woodlands, chaparral and deep wooded valleys, a source of fresh water, and a place for deer, black bear, mountain lion, and the occasional Tule elk. It is about to be trashed. The Cortina Band of Winton Indians has agreed to lease 443 acres of its lands on the Cortina Ridge to Cortina Waste Management, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Earthworks Industries of Vancouver, Canada, for a landfill. The landfill would be sited on the Cortina Band's sovereign territory, exempt from local and state laws and regulations that would normally govern projects of this type. It would have the capacity to accept up to 1500 tons of solid waste per day or a total of 12-15 million tons throughout its approximately 50 year life-time. The landfill will destroy this pristine area, ultimately render the tribal lands unlivable, threaten water quality in waters of the state, and pose dangers from potential seismic activity. The project will fill four pristine canyons with garbage. The watershed from these canyons feeds into several creeks and ultimately the Colusa Drain which empties into the Sacramento River. Pollution of ground and surface waters from the landfill threatens these waters. There are stringent federal EPA requirements for liner design for landfills. The proponents are asking EPA for waivers to those requirements. The landfill will be located within 200 feet of known earthquake faults and on a highly unstable soil. Activity on these faults could cause failure of the soil beneath the landfill and of the landfill itself, sending pollution down the canyons and into the watershed. Current EPA regulations prohibit siting landfills within 200 feet of a fault. The proponents are asking EPA for waivers to this requirement. Even the best landfills leak: it is a question of “when” not “if”. However, the proponents do not propose any funding for long-term monitoring and maintenance of the landfill after its closure. When it does leak and erode, the tax payers will be left with a superfund site clean-up and a polluted landscape. This project is a bad idea. The Sierra Club has joined with the Colusa County Citizens for Safe Water, the Colusa County and Lake County Boards of Supervisors, the Colusa County Farm Bureau, the Family Water Alliance, the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority, the Colusa County Resource Conservation District, Congressmen Wally Herger and Mike Thompson, and many others to oppose this landfill.
Help us stop this project.
The environmental studies for this site were done several years ago. There is much new information. Ask EPA to require a new NEPA environmental study and a reopened public process. |
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