US Supreme Court Will Not Hear Eagle Mountain Landfill Case

Date: March 29, 2011

Source: News Room

The developers of the controversial Eagle Mountain Landfill east of Los Angeles hit another hurdle in their 20-year battle to win approval of the 4,654-acre project. This week the US Supreme Court declined to hear appeals brought by project developers Kaiser Ventures LLC and Mine Reclamation LLC. The companies had appealed a string of lower court decisions invalidating a land swap between Kaiser and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management necessary for the project, which would turn an abandoned iron mine 60 miles north of Indio into one of the largest landfills in the country. The land swap was first ruled invalid by a U.S. District Court in 2005, a decision upheld by the 9th District Court of Appeals in November 2009. Rick Stoddard, Kaiser's CEO, said he was disappointed with the court's decision, but his company is still working with federal officials to come up with a land swap that will pass judicial muster. "Since the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the BLM's determination that the public interest is well-served by the land exchange as required by law, it is just a matter of working with the BLM to identify the best path that may be implemented to fix the identified deficiencies," he said.

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