Joshua Tree National Park's Eagle Mountains stretch toward the sky from the rocky floor of the Colorado Desert.

There is more than one mountain in the Eagle Mountains. This is arid, remote and subtly beautiful country — a place that's home to secretive desert bighorn sheep, comical roadrunners and sleek kit foxes. But for many of us, Eagle Mountain brings to mind the proposed Eagle Mountain Landfill, which would cause irreversible harm to our beloved national treasure — Joshua Tree National Park.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of the National Parks Conservation Association and put the brakes on the Eagle Mountain Landfill for now. The Department of the Interior should use the court action as an opportunity to immediately stop plans to build the Eagle Mountain Landfill. But proponents of the dump are already talking about ways to proceed with this misguided project.

The proposed landfill would be built on land belonging to Kaiser Eagle Mountain Inc. and the Bureau of Land Management that is surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park wilderness, less than 2 miles from park boundaries.

The dump would deposit up to 20,000 tons of trash, six days a week, 16 hours a day for 117 years and would be an eyesore for visitors seeking a wilderness experience. It would cause noise and light pollution, harm sensitive species such as the desert bighorn sheep and increase the population of predatory ravens that prey on the threatened desert tortoise. Landfill operations would also introduce nitrogen into the fragile desert ecosystem, fueling the growth of invasive plants and disrupting natural nutrient cycles.

In its recent ruling, the court found that the BLM undervalued the land it would swap with Kaiser Eagle Mountain Inc. It also found that the BLM's Environmental Impact Purpose and Need Statement, a section that describes project objectives, was so narrowly defined by Kaiser's business interests that BLM failed to adequately explore other options, including the possibility of developing a landfill on other Kaiser property, increasing waste diversion and exploring the use of alternative landfill locations.

Further, the court found that the Environmental Impact Statement failed to discuss the full impact of atmospheric nitrogen deposits into the environment from the proposed landfill. Nitrogen seeping into the soil can alter the nutrient cycles of the fragile desert ecosystem, fueling the growth of invasive species that crowd out wildflowers and contributing to catastrophic fires. The court called the sections on nitrogen deposition “neither full nor fair,” a clear indication that these scientific sections were neither complete nor accurate.

The ruling should cause a sigh of relief for local desert businesses that rely on tourism dollars from Joshua Tree National Park. According to the NPS Money Generation Model from Michigan State University, visitors to Joshua Tree spent more than $37 million in 2008, benefiting our local desert economy. The construction of the Eagle Mountain Landfill threatens Joshua Tree National Park's resources — resources that are directly linked to economic opportunities here in the desert.

Proponents of the landfill continue to argue that this proposed garbage dump would be a way to “reclaim” the scarred land left behind by Eagle Mountain's mining history. This is a seductive argument. It is also incorrect. Under the proposed plan, only one of the four open mine pits (the East Pit) could ever be filled in by the dump, and that would not happen until the later phases of the project — 76 years from now. Meanwhile, garbage would be dumped onto 1,868 acres of land west and north of the east pit, much of it virgin canyons and hillsides less than 2 miles from the Joshua Tree National Park border. The project's resulting mountain of garbage would rise 700 to 2,200 feet above current ground surfaces.

Landfill proponents also like to point out that the mitigation funds from the dump would stimulate the economy and fund the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan. However, despoiling the pristine lands of one of our nation's treasured national parks in order to provide mitigation funds for other environmental initiatives is simply poor policy, no matter how great the need.

Mitigation funds don't make a project desirable or necessary. Rather, projects have to be evaluated in terms of how they will affect the environment and the public interest.

The nation's largest landfill doesn't belong next to one of our national treasures. Building a dump at Eagle Mountain is like putting a sewage treatment plant next to the Sistine Chapel. It's simply a poor location for this type of project and would irreparably harm the pristine wilderness of Joshua Tree National Park. The time has never been better for the Department of the Interior to put an end to the Eagle Mountain Landfill once and for all, to protect Joshua Tree National Park for our children and grandchildren.

Seth Shteir is senior program coordinator at the National Parks Conservation Association in Joshua Tree. E-mail him at sshteir@npca.org