Although the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and the town of Aquinnah, Massachusetts are in locked in a federal court battle over the tribe’s plans to build a Class II bingo hall on its reservation, they have come to one agreement. They concur that the tribe should be allowed to secure its building site so it’s safe.
U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Saylor IV in Boston ruled the tribe must submit to the town’s permitting regimen, although its basic right to build a casino is unchallenged. While the tribe appeals, it stopped building, but then began activities that struck the town as suspiciously like continued construction. The tribe insisted it just wanted to make the site safe.
Judge Saylor ordered the tribe to install covers on exposed rebar “that present an impalement hazard,” erect barriers to exposed trenches and install fencing to keep the public off the site.
Under a plan approved by the both parties, the tribe is pouring concrete and backfilling trenches “for the purpose of closing the trenches such that rebar steel is not exposed in a manner that risks serious injury or impalement.”
The joint stipulation states that the Wampanoag must provide a copy of the bingo hall’s foundation plan to the town’s building inspector and give him the right to make comments on it. The tribe may or may not consider the inspector’s concerns. It concludes, “Both sides agree to act in good faith in making and/or considering comments and concerns.”
The tribe, based on Martha’s Vineyard, spent several years in federal court fighting for the right to build a casino after signing a federal land settlement in the 1980s when it waived its rights to a casino. It successfully fought this, citing the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which the courts ruled, trumped the land settlement’s stipulations.
That case went almost to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. After losing, the town tried a different tack, maintaining that the original land settlement does give it the right to impose permitting oversight, which the judge agreed. The safety work was expected to be completed by September 15.
Tribal Chairwoman Cheryl Andrews-Maltais had previously written: “Since the court’s decision in June, the tribe has been attempting to safely secure the construction site. We are happy that despite the town’s insistence to the contrary, the court understood that the site was dangerously unsafe if left as it is and granted our request to move forward.”
