Our General Assistance Program Grant commonly just referred to as our "GAP" grant is used to address one of our biggest issues — Illegal Open Dumping on Tribal lands. Under this grant, we have been working to identify , evaluate and cleanup the numerous illegal dumps located on AST tribal lands. These dump sites can be monitored using surveillance cameras prior to cleanup in the hopes of identifying those responsible. In most cases,there is not sufficient evidence to go after the violators but we still try to clean up the problem. Below are some examples of what we have seen at a few of these sites. It has become very clear that many of these dumps are occurring as a result of commercial entities dumping construction and demolition debris on tribal lands which are not subject to state or county regulations.
The cleanup process involves restricting site access, bringing in a dumpster, sorting wastes and disposing of non-reclyable, non hazardous waste by program staff. Below are before and "Clean UP in Progress" photos of one dump site that the tribe has identified. The saddest aspect of this site is that this is occurring near a highly sensitive cultural site for the tribe -- a tribal cemetary.
