http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090329/ARTICLES/903299933/1350?Title=Hurdles-ahead-for-proposed-Ukiah-casino         

UKIAH — The Pinoleville Pomo Nation’s new gaming compact with the governor, announced last week, is just the first of many complicated steps the tribe must take before it can build a casino on the northern outskirts of Ukiah.

The 240-member tribe needs to choose a site, find financial backers, conduct an environmental impact review and negotiate with Mendocino County about how to mitigate the proposed casino’s impacts — processes that could take years.

Many more years could be added in the likely event the tribe decides to build a casino on land that is not now held in trust by the federal government.

Casinos are allowed only on land that is held in trust by the government, and transferring property into federal trust is a lengthy process with an uncertain outcome.

The tribe owns more than 100 acres throughout the county, but very little of it is in trust.

Only 2.8 acres of the Pinoleville Rancheria is in federal trust, and the tribe has not submitted applications for additional trust land, said Carmen Facio of the Bureau of Indian Affairs realty division.

An additional 23.5 acres are held in federal trust for individuals who own land on the rancheria, she said.

Transferring individual trust land to the tribe would require BIA approval, Facio said.

It’s difficult to know where a casino could go on the rancheria, which historically was about 100 acres and included property on both sides of Highway 101 just north of Ukiah.

The rancheria has been fractured over time into multiple parcels held by the tribe, tribal members, non-tribal members and non-tribal businesses.

An auto wrecking yard, a heavy equipment storage yard and vineyards intermingle with Indian housing and tribal offices to the west of Highway 101 where a majority of the ramshackle rancheria is located. About three acres with several homes on the other side of the highway on North State Street are held in individual trust, Facio said. Next door to those three acres, a former car dealership sits on what was once part of the rancheria. The commercial and industrial sites belonged to the Pinoleville Rancheria before it was terminated by the government in the 1960s. Outside encroachment crept in before the rancheria was reinstated in the mid-1980s.

Tribal members said Friday that Chairwoman Leona Williams is the only one who knows which of the checkerboard land parcels are in federal trust for the tribe. Williams did not return phone calls Thursday or Friday.

She has said the tribe has not decided where the casino will go.

Williams said last week that revenue from a casino could help elevate the tribe’s economy, provide additional tribal services and help buy back more ancestral land.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com.