SOURCE: CAMPO TRIBE VOTES DOWN SHU’LUUK WIND

By Miriam Raftery

June 20, 2013 (Campo) – By a 34-44 margin, the Campo tribe’s General Council has voted against the Shu’luuk Wind project, a proposal to lease reservation land to Invenergy, according to  Donna Tisdale, Chair of the Boulevard Community Planning Group.  Tisdale indicated she has multiple sources on the vote outcome.

ECM  has contacted the Campo Band of Mission Indians to request comment on the outcome.

The project may not be  dead, however, as proponents hope to have another vote in the future.

According to Tisdale, objections included the amount of funds offered to tribal members versus administrators, as well as impacts of wind turbines on tribal members living nearby. For details on the project see http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/13372

The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Department of the Interior have not yet released the Final Environmental Impact Statement on the project. 

Meanwhile a years-long battle between Infigen and Gamesa over the 2009 catastrophic failure at the Kumeyaay Wind project on the Campo reservation has been settled:  http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11650;

“BIA and Dept of Interior never responded to our calls for an investigation into the cause of that failure--and those 75 highly flammable discarded turbine blades still litter the ground at the base of the turbines,” Tisdale told ECM. “There seems to be very little, if any, federal oversight on these turbine projects on federal / tribal lands--other than a few OSHA issues where workers were actually hurt on-site.”