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The Cowlitz gambling syndicate has skewed the federal environmental review process for its proposed casino by understating potential revenues and overstating the tribe's needs -- ostensibly to help ensure the selection of the site at Interstate 5's La Center interchange.

 

The Cowlitz Tribe's preliminary Final Environmental Impact Statement (PFEIS), released last spring, states that the proposed casino would produce $415 million in annual revenue. However the new report by ECONorthwest finds that a similar facility would have annual gaming revenues of $611 million, due to new state-tribal gaming compacts approved before the PFEIS was released.

 

While the syndicate has been understating how much revenue a Cowlitz casino would make, it has been vastly overstating how much the Cowlitz Tribe needs. According to an April 17 review by ECONorthwest, the PFEIS inflated the cost to provide health care and social services to the Cowlitz Tribe at least fourfold, leading to a $62.7 million average overstatement compared with other groups providing these services.

 

Citizens Against Reservation Shopping wants the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to insist the Cowlitz gambling syndicate's consultants produce a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that would provide accurate data and analyses, and consider the possibility of a casino site in the Vader, Wash., area, in the tribe's aboriginal homeland.

 
>> Read CARS' news release: CARS' news release (Nov. 16, 2007) [1]
>> Read Saturday's story in The Columbian [2]
>> Read ECONorthwest's studies:
 
 
 
CARS is a local citizens organization that is concerned about the practice of reservation shopping.
 
If you have not yet joined CARS as a member, we invite you to add your name to our membership list at www.NotHerePlease.org. Please forward this to others you think would be interested.
 
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CARS
PO Box 61801
Vancouver, WA 98666