Box Elder County has opened a new landfill over Shoshone protests that it is on sacred ground.
A handful of members from the Northwest Band attended the county's ribbon-cutting for the $2 million dump Monday.Among them was Leland Pubigee, who wore a sign that said: "Would You Dump Garbage on Your Church House Lawn?"
Pubigee, of Pocatello, Idaho, said his grandmother is buried on Little Mountain, where Box Elder County plans to dispose its refuse for the next 100 years.
"They (white people) like to see how rich the land is, and then they take it," said Pubigee, a Shoshone tribal elder.
County officials said environmental tests yielded few if any archaeological finds of significance.
They said Little Mountain has been designated as a landfill site for almost three years and no one has claimed - until now - that it has much historical meaning.
"It's a little late in coming," County Commissioner Lee Allen said of the Shoshone protests.
Little Mountain is about 20 miles west of Brigham City in a remote area surrounded by a few farms. The landfill lies between Brigham City and Tremonton - the county's two largest cities - and has clay-heavy soil, which makes waste seepage unlikely. For $7 a vehicle, county residents can dump their trash at the landfill.