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Casino Impact on town of 1,050 people =
$13.4 million
Former
Councilman Raymond Estey defended the MSA, saying that once the tribe
has land in trust, it will be sovereign, "they don't care what you
think. The idea was to get something in place before they open a
casino."
Study: Plymouth casino impact could be
$13.4 million
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
By Jim ReeceA nine-month study of a casino's potential impacts on Plymouth's infrastructure came to a rough end number last Thursday when a consultant said the toll on the city of 1,050 people could run as high as $13.4 million. Gary Goelitz, vice president of Matrix Consulting Engineers, told the Plymouth City Council the estimated impacts a proposed world-class Indian casino and hotel facility could have on the city, after his company studied the Ione Band of Miwok Indians' proposed casino using only an Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the tribe's own engineers, Toma & Anderson. He noted that the tribe had not returned his calls and messages seeking input on his study. Impacts included the need for two full-time police officers around-the-clock and the threat of a sewer system with a design flaw that could result in sewage sprayfield effluent running off the shale terrain onto non-tribal land. Goelitz, hired in February to conduct the study, said that tests of wells showed they were inadequate to supply water and that water use would be two-thirds of what Plymouth already gets from wells in the terrain's fragmented aquifers. He said the casino would produce wastewater flows requiring a more than double expansion of the Plymouth wastewater treatment plant. Goelitz would not divulge the size of the casino as listed in EIS plans used in the Matrix study. But he said that its size relative to existing casinos and lack of ground water, meant that the casino would need to resort to surface water provided by an Amador Water Agency pipeline. He said the casino's size, and the fact that it would serve alcohol in many areas of its facility, would require an 11-member police department with a $1.1 million operating budget and a start-up cost of $600,000. He based the finding on an existing contract with the Amador County Sheriff's Office, for $118,000 a year. The cost stems, in part, from the average response time of 30 minutes. "You can't afford a 30-minute response time when somebody is going nuts inside a casino," Goelitz said. Instead, he said the casino would need 24-7 coverage, 365 days a year by two officers. "You need urban response, which is five minutes or less." "Any call is going to need immediate back-up," he said, because of alcohol and potential drug use. "The proponent has significantly underestimated the impact of the casino," Goelitz said. "The workload generated will be significantly higher." The Municipal Services Agreement, between Plymouth and the tribe, listed police funding of $316,000, he said. Former Councilman Raymond Estey defended the MSA, saying that once the tribe has land in trust, it will be sovereign, "they don't care what you think. The idea was to get something in place before they open a casino." "Day to day, year to year, the cards the proponent shows change," Goelitz said. "It's the EIS alone that provided us with significant information to continue with the analysis." "The idea is that, should you go into arbitration, you should have this information," he said, to go into the talks "as an informed negotiator so you can protect yourself." Goelitz said the city's contract with the sheriff's office terminates automatically 45 days after either an Indian gaming compact is signed with the U.S. secretary of the interior or if the land is taken into federal trust. He said the city would then have to go into the law enforcement business, or create a new contract and the city should try to speak with the sheriff's office to try to get more than the 45 days to make such a transition. The Matrix study showed that Amador Fire Protection District is paid $22,250 a year for all fire coverage, with the all-volunteer brigade, Battalion 20, which made 136 calls in 2004, 95 of which were medical. "This will not work with a casino-hotel," Goelitz said. "The call volume would require a fully paid fire department." He said that would require a new facility, dispatch service and 10 fire fighters - all at the EMT2 level - plus a captain and a chief. Needs would include an engine, for about $500,000 and a new station for about $750,000. He said fire fighting costs were close to the MSA numbers, though water and wastewater services were very far from that document. "Water services - with or without a casino - face challenges," Goelitz said. "The casino would consume roughly two-thirds the amount that the city consumes as a whole." The city cannot meet the needs with wells, he said and the tribe can't either. The tribe's casino project "absolutely relies on a pipeline," Goelitz said. He noted that the tribe's own EIS showed that all but three wells in the vicinity of the proposed casino produced less than 15 gallons of water a minute. Four of those wells produce less that five gallons a minute. He said Toma & Anderson, contracted by the tribe, recommended not using wells. Instead, the firm recommended connecting to an AWA surface water pipeline, to serve the city and the casino. If not, the EIS said that the tribe would bring in tankers full of water every day to serve the project. Goelitz said the tribe's EIS also "did not evaluate the long-term impact of pumping 188,500 gallons per day out of the ground water supply." The Matrix study found that the tribe should pay $1.6 million toward the pipeline construction, plus $2.19 million to $3.7 million of additional connection fees. Goelitz said water flow would be greater on weekends and would need to meet fire flows, "which would probably require an additional water tank." The EIS also unveiled some problems in the design. A storage pond in the wastewater design is uphill from off-reservation property, which includes a spring. Goelitz said the state Regional Water Quality Control Board would have jurisdiction over potential off-site impacts on waterways and that a wastewater pond overflow would potentially impact the spring flow. He said that "horizontal flow" of wastewater spray at a proposed spray filed could be expected to run off-site, because of the nonporous shale land geology. "The soil is too thin to absorb wastewater and would flow off-site," he said. He said a membrane bioreactor also posed a difficult piece of machinery, and likely unmanageable for the tribe. "Flows would exceed those generated by the city," Goelitz said, noting that wastewater impacts would cost an estimate $6.1 million. "We're saying the project proponent should pay all of that cost." "We're going to have to more than double the capacity of that plant to handle the flow from the casino," he said. The council accepted the report and directed staff to meet further with Matrix and KASL Consulting Engineers of Citrus Heights, whose preliminary engineering report on a Plymouth/AWA pipeline was postponed, with the meeting continued to yesterday. Ledger-Dispatch |
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