Pechanga Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro shows sacred site where quarry was proposed.
Cheers rang across the Temecula Valley on Thursday when the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians announced it had purchase the site of a proposed open-pit gravel mine.
The purchase assures the mine will not be dug on land sacred to the tribe.
It also saves Temecula taxpayers further costs in a lawsuit against Riverside County over fast-tracking the approval of the controversial mine last month.
I thought it also saved the taxpayers of Riverside County the costs of defending the suit. But Supervisor Jeff Stone told me Granite Construction — the company that proposed the 414-acre mine — is paying the county’s legal costs.
That in itself is very good news.
After Thursday’s announcement of the tribe’s purchase of 354 acres from Granite, county supervisors double-checked the agreement with Granite and confirmed the company agreed to cover the county’s legal costs, Stone said.
Pechanga and Granite officials jointly announced the $20.35 million deal in an afternoon news conference.
There’s much about it to celebrate:
The people of Temecula and the mountain community of Rainbow are spared the blasting, dust and rumbling gravel trucks as 174 million tons of aggregate were to be torn out of the mountain over 50 years.
The tribe saves the site of its creation myth.
And the county is spared the embarrassment of an irreversible mistake in approving the unpopular mine.
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