FALLBROOK ---- The Pala band of Mission Indians has been granted state-like status in weighing in on projects that affect air quality within a 50-mile radius of the reservation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided earlier this month to give the Pala tribe what it calls 'treatment as a state' status. The designation means the tribe must now be notified when a project that may cause air pollution is proposed within 50 miles of the reservation.

Tribal environmental health director Lenore Lamb said this week the agency's decision means the tribe's concerns about proposed projects will be taken more seriously in the future.

Colleen McKaughan, a deputy air division director for the agency, said the decision essentially means that Pala now has the same role and status in providing input on air quality issues as a government, instead of as a group of private citizens.

Lamb said the tribe's new status probably won't allow it to hold up the Gregory Canyon landfill proposal, a solid waste landfill that would be built just west of the reservation to the south of Highway 76. The tribe has fought the project for more than a decade. She said, however, that it's a good thing that the tribe can expect to be notified when a project may affect the 650 tribal members living on the reservation.

"In the past, projects have popped up and we had no idea they were being built," said Lamb, adding that the Pala band will now "have a seat at the table" on local air quality issues.

She declined to predict whether the change will result in an increase in feedback from the tribe, or whether officials would want to comment on projects as far away as 50 miles.

"It would be my job to bring that information back to the tribe, and then the tribal government would decide what needed to be commented on," Lamb said.

Doug Elmets, a spokesman for the Pala band, said the agency's decision recognizes Pala's sovereignty to protect its people and safeguard public health on the reservation.

"It's as much a recognition of the status of the tribe as it is their ability to comment on air quality issues that would affect members," said Elmets.

McKaughan said that a 1990 amendment to the federal Clean Air Act directed the Environmental Protection Agency to begin working more closely with American Indian tribes. She also said that several other tribes in California are in the process of applying for the same treatment-as-a-state designation Pala now has.

Pala applied for the designation in March 2007. To earn the designation, the tribe had to show that it could provide professional input on air quality issues.

"We've had to prove to the EPA that we can run our own air quality program," she said, adding that "we have had an air program here in Pala since the '90s."