The Madera County Farm Bureau has reaffirmed its opposition to a North Fork Rancheria-proposed casino for Highway 99, north of Madera.

Bureau executive director Julia Berry said a letter has been sent to U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar opposing the project.

“We have been against this project since 2005,” Berry said. “Being an election year, we thought it would be good to reaffirm our position.”

The letter, dated Feb. 2, was signed by Jim Erickson, bureau board president.

The letter said “… gaming should be confined to Indian reservation lands and that the practice of acquiring real estate with the intention of building off-site gaming facilities should be prohibited.”

The letter also said Madera County is in a drought situation and overdrafts its underground aquifer by 100,000 acre-feet annually.

“A project the size of the proposed casino will not be sustained by underground water supplies, and this project will have the detrimental effect of drying up wells on adjacent farms and homesites,”

“The farm bureau is very concerned that building a mega-casino on this property would overtax the region’s already depleted water supplies,” Berry said.

“We’re also concerned that this casino project violates the promises made to California voters that Indian gaming should occur on Indian lands, not off reservations,” Berry said.

North Fork Rancheria, whose tribal lands are nearly 40 miles from the Highway 99 casino site, is petitioning the approval of the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs before it can build the off-reservation casino near the Madera Airport. The agency has approved a small number of off-reservation casinos over the past 20 years.

Charles Altekruse, spokesman for the Rancheria, said its attorney in 2005 said the farm bureau would remain neutral on the issue.

“We are surprised regarding this recent announcement from the farm bureau opposing our project,” Altekruse said. “While the tribe is aware of a letter submitted in 2008 by the Farm Bureau, as part of the environmental review, expressing concerns on several issues, the tribe was not aware of any formal opposition to the project,” Altekruse said.

Alterkruse, in a prepared statement, said the tribe understands that water issues are critically important and that’s why its environmental impact statement proposes several mitigation measures concerning groundwater.

“The tribe is no newcomer to water issues,” Alterkruse said. “We signed a memorandum of understanding with the Madera Irrigation District more than three years ago that provides for water contributions to the district equivalent to the pumping rates for the project.”

Alterkruse said the North Fork Rancheria strongly supports water and farming issues for Madera and the San Joaquin Valley.

“The tribe is disappointed that six years after first announcing the project, the Farm Bureau has taken a position that is at variance with creating jobs and prosperity for Madera.”

Alterkruse also stated that the tribe is not sure why the Farm Bureau would want to “wade into complex legal matters relating to Indian land determinations, which seem a little beyond the scope of the organization.”

The proposed site is owned by the tribe’s financial backer, Las Vegas-based Station Casinos.