SLUDGE VICTIMS

have ordered the installation of air-monitoring devices to measure exactly what is being emitted by Pima Gro.

Suspicions run high on the reservation despite the new presence of the EPA. Joe Loya, a tribe member who said he was inspired by a divine revelation to help organize the group Members Against Sludge, makes a habit of asking difficult questions of the government, the sludge operators and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

He wants to know why the EPA did not become involved until controversy over the sludge farm became public. He wants to know why the Indian Health Program at Morongo, which provides medical services from a small trailer on the reservation, has not begun an aggressive examination of tribe members' health complaints.

And even though Pima Gro officials say Indian employees on the sludge farm are safe, Loya says he wants proof.

"I want to know how much they are being exposed," he said. 'LIKE A BIG WOLF' George Auclair, a member of the Torres Martinez tribal council, believes waste operators are taking advantage of the shattered economy of many reservations by offering infusions of cash.

"It's like a big wolf going after a little rabbit," he said. "People don't care what it will do to the environment. It's money. It's income."

In the case of Pima Gro, a fee of 50 cents a ton that was supposed to go to the tribe never got there. So the only economic benefit from sludge operations at the moment is the employment of four Torres Martinez tribe members, and preferential hiring of tribe members when new jobs open up.

Perhaps the most visible symbol of the tribe members' objections is Mount San Diego, a gigantic pile of dried sludge heaped on property adjacent to Pima Gro by a San Juan Capistrano sludge operator that went bankrupt last year.

The mountain is named for its city of origin. It stands more than two stories high, weighs about 500,000 tons and stretches 200 yards across.

McManigal, the Pima Gro environmental planner, says he is just as annoyed by the pile as the tribe members. His company, which leases a 40-acre plot from an Indian landholder, is not responsible for the pile. McManigal said he has offered to clean it up but was rejected by the landholder, tribe member Geraldine Ibanez.

At least one other offer from a company to take over management of the site and clean up the pile was rejected by Ibanez. That, and a failure by the bankrupt company, Chino Corona Farms Inc., to meet federal bankruptcy reporting requirements, led to the dismissal of the bankruptcy case in July, said attorney R. Gibson Pagter Jr., -who handled the case.