Yocha Dehe Tribal Council calls Vallejo casino project ‘reservation shopping’

The Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians plan to build a $700 million casino resort in Vallejo on a 128-acre site near Interstate-80 and Highway 37 under the authority of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

Members of the Yocha Dehe Tribal Council, however, don’t think they have been dealt a winning hand in the project.

At a virtual public hearing on Tuesday night, the council called out the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior for their refusal to involve Yocha Dehe in the Scotts Valley casino project process — and expressed serious concerns about the irreparable harm the proposal would cause to the environment, their cultural homelands, and tribal sovereignty.

“This Department of the Interior is supposed to help tribes steward their ancestral lands, yet this unprecedented distorted ‘public process’ and attempt at a secret land grab would allow Scotts Valley from Clear Lake, 100 miles away, and its wealthy Las Vegas casino investors to build a mega-casino on our land,” said Yocha Dehe Tribal Council Chairman Anthony Roberts.

The plan to build a $700 million, 400,000-square-foot casino resort includes a casino, restaurants, a hotel and spa, and a family entertainment center with a movie theater, arcade, and a bowling alley.

Roberts said that the Department of the Interior has determined on three separate occasions that Scotts Valley lacks the significant historical connection to the Bay Area needed to acquire land eligible for gaming. A ruling from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2022 returned the case to the Department of the Interior where it has moved forward without consideration for the Patwin people and their ancestral lands.

“This approval would set a dangerous precedent for ‘reservation shopping’ and further harm our continued protection of cultural sites,” said Yocha Dehe Tribal Council Member Leland Kinter. “We will not stand for the devastation of our cultural resources and the continued erasure of our culture and history in Solano County.”

According to a news release by the Yocha Dehe Tribal Council, a coalition of tribal governments, including local Patwin tribes, has repeatedly requested that the Department of the Interior establish a fair, transparent, and fact-based review of Scotts Valley’s proposed project. Instead, the Department issued the EA over a holiday weekend, without advance notice to any interested tribes.

In response, Yocha Dehe sent two forceful letters to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, citing many reasons for its opposition including critical habitat destruction, air quality impact, diesel pollutants and cultural devastation.

“The project is proposed to be built atop a known Patwin cultural site,” the letter from Yocha Dehe states. “Scotts Valley would bulldoze the entire site, which would be lost to the Patwin people forever. The EA does not even propose to allow Patwin cultural monitors to supervise the recovery and treatment of cultural resources that would be disturbed.”

On July 8 the BIA issued an Environmental Assessment of the Scotts Valley Casino and Tribal Housing Fee-to-Trust Project initiated a 30-day public review period, which will include the analyzing of the potential impacts that could result from the development of a gaming facility.

“We feel mistreated, we feel ignored, and now our worst fears have materialized with this expedited Environmental Assessment process that appears to have a predetermined outcome,” Roberts said Tuesday night. “This attack was launched on us and the many communities and governments that reside around this proposed mega casino on the Fourth of July weekend, knowing full well that many people were traveling, and governments would have very limited opportunity to respond due.

“So we are here today, just two weeks after you started this process to comment on one of the most complex and sensitive issues we have dealt with in recent memory,” Roberts continued. “I feel strongly that the 30-day response and now 15-day extension are cynical ploys to avoid public disclosure. It’s clear that Bureau of Indian Affairs has been working on an Environmental Assessment that will rubber stamp the Scotts Valley project for months now.”

After receiving feedback from the public on its environmental assessment, the BIA will decide whether to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement to further analyze the effects of the proposed development or proceed on the basis of lesser environmental analysis. The federal actions necessary to implement the Proposed Project trigger the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.

A Solano County news released stated that the county does not have regulatory jurisdiction or decision-making authority over whether a casino opens on land the federal government has taken into trust for gaming for a tribe.